Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Mary Beard tackles online abuse

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 06:43 AM PST

boston stumpWomen have been told to take abuse for millennia, says Mary Beard, and calls for an end to it.

Like any participant preparing to enter a debate, Mary Beard wanted to ensure that she had done her research when she appeared on BBC’s Question Time, in Lincoln’s Drill Hall last month.

She could not have imagined, however, that an exchange with an audience member about the effects of immigration on the small town of Boston in Lincolnshire would provoke the disgusting personal attacks it did.

Beard referred to a report, published by the local council, which casts doubt on the publicly held opinion that the town’s infrastructure is being threatened by immigration.

A Twitter storm immediately ensured – and Beard was placed right at the centre.

Twitter has, as Beard rightly point out, ‘revolutionised’ programmes like Question Time, enabling viewers to engage with the arguments and comments raised, as well as providing a useful gauge of public reaction to key issues.

However, as is well documented, the internet also offers a safe haven for bullies to act anonymously, spouting aggressive and misogynistic bile, and even making death threats, two earlier victims of that being former Conservative MP Louise Mensch – whose children were threatened – and singer Adele.

On a show like Question Time, however, a programme which encourages thought-out debate and analysis, it seems particularly disgusting when the discourse is hijacked and used to attack an individual’s appearance – or worse.

Mary Beard had to face some extremely unpleasant attention in the wake of her television appearance and revealed what had been said in her blog for the Times Literary Supplement (TLS).

‘Why is it’ she wrote, ‘that people think that having a jibe at my surname is actually very interesting: she “is in fact the twin sister of the Tree Beard”, “…I do not know whom Mary Beard is but wyth a name lyke that she surely hath a thyrd teat and a hairy clopper [sic].“‘

In a subsequent appearance on Woman’s Hour, Mary Beard explained that it had been a ‘difficult’ decision to go public about the online abuse because, ‘ “…women are usually told, “If you respond, if you react, you bring it just the kind of publicity it’s been looking for.”

“But I didn’t feel comfortable with that…

“Women are always being told, “shut up and take the abuse because otherwise you’ll make it worse”.

“Women have been told that for millennia, so look, sorry mate, not on!”

The Twitter comments, which Beard described later as ‘feeble jokes about [her] surname’, are not the first to be directed toward her appearance rather than her argument.

Beard, a professor of Classics at Cambridge University, is more widely known for her BBC programme ‘Meet the Romans with Mary Beard’.

In a review of the programme for his column, AA Gill wrote, ‘for someone who looks this closely at the past, it is strange she hasn’t had a closer look at herself before stepping in front of the camera.

‘Beard coos over corpses’ teeth without apparently noticing she is wearing them.

‘The hair is a disaster, the outfit an embarrassment,’ he went on. ‘If you are going to invite yourself into the front rooms of the living, then you need to make an effort.’

Would ‘the hair’ or ‘the outfit’ be as much of an issue if she were a man?

As Alice Arnold rightly points out, when David Starkey made the claim that there was some truth in Enoch Powell’s  ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, the public outcry was based on the rationale, or lack thereof, of his argument – not his unkempt hair or the colour of his shoes.

Still, Beard draws a clear distinction between the comments from Gill and those from the internet trolls.

‘I’m not defending Gill, and there is a sense of continuity between various form of misogyny, but Gill was not commenting anonymously, and it really didn’t have the sexual violence.’

The Spectator columnist Rod Liddle revealed that he was running what he calls a ‘light-hearted competition’ to find “the most stupid woman” to have appeared on Question Time and, suggested Beard.

And as Beard said: It’s interesting that he didn’t have a competition for ‘worst man’ on Question Time.’

Some of the most egregious and malicious abuse was posted on a website called Don’t Start Me Off!, a website for spouting vitriol on a chosen topic that posed as a place to air gripes about current affairs. It named Beard “Twat of the Week”.

The website was moderated by co-owner Richard White. In an act of ‘gobsmacking misogyny’, as Beard called it, one of the posts on the site superimposed her face onto a vagina – an image that White claims he failed to notice.

After Beard named and shamed the website in her blog and subsequent interviews, it was closed down.

The reason given? Because Beard supporters apparently flooded the site with Latin poetry!

Despite this small success and the claim that her 58 years have given her a thick skin, Beard doesn’t entirely dismiss the effects of the horrific and graphic sexual comments made about her.

“It’s a bit like somebody giving you a punch,” she explained.

And, like the rest of us when we have to read troll rubbish, she thought  we had moved on.

She doesn’t want the internet to be policed. She knows that unacceptable things will always be posted. “We are still working out the boundaries. The key is [that] we learn to say ‘Hey – that’s not on,’ and to say sorry.”

Judge feared for footballer’s career

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 03:46 AM PST

stop violenceDo even members of the judiciary see footballers as different from and better than the average Brit?

When Cardiff City midfielder Kevin Sainte-Luce was found guilty of punching one woman unconscious and shoving another woman in a Cardiff nightclub, the story passed with little comment from the mainstream media, with only Wales Online reporting on the case.

The lack of exposure for this story is particularly concerning for those who feel that violence against women is not taken seriously enough, not least because Sainte-Luce escaped a jail term and was only fined £1,250 and given community service.

District judge Bodfan Jenkins defended the decision not to jail the footballer because he said that the assault was "drastically different to the behaviour Sainte-Luce exhibited in his work and home life".

Apparently knocking a woman out in a nightclub is not sufficient to merit jail time as long as you keep your nose clean elsewhere.

What is perhaps most disturbing is Judge Jenkins' further justification for the lack of a custodial sentence, which is that "because your promising career could be compromised by prison time, I want to avoid taking such action".

We can only wonder if the judge would have said the same to a defendant whose career was less glamorous – e.g. a talented IT consultant, or a dedicated care assistant.

It seems that even members of the judiciary – who are supposed to be impartial - cannot resist the temptation to canonise footballers as somehow different from and better than the average Briton.

It should be noted, however, that Cardiff City Football club have taken it upon themselves to send out a stronger message than Judge Jenkins' faint condemnation of Sainte-Luce's behaviour.

The club has terminated Sainte-Luce's contract with immediate effect, therefore making a mockery of Jenkins' main reason for not jailing the footballer.

Sadly, it was only when Sainte-Luce was dismissed from the team that any of the non-Welsh media bothered to report the story, with The Sun describing the footballer as a 'Cardiff bad-boy'.

Judge Jenkins did warn Sainte-Luce that if he committed any further offences during the next 12 months, he would be recharged for the two offences as well as the new offences.

This implies that the judge recognises his sentencing has been pitifully light, so why he did not impose a stronger one to begin with remains a mystery.

It seems that when it comes to taking violence against women seriously, even members of the UK judiciary are still – inexplicably – dragging their feet.

Rape culture and the “real girl”

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 01:23 AM PST

eavesInequality between women and men will only end when women's consent is meaningful.

Guest post by Julia Hilliard, from Eaves.

While researching for the recent Eaves report "Just the Women" on sexist treatment of women in the press in September last year, I was very struck by a particular tactic of the grubbier tabloids, especially the Sport.

It's easy to dismiss a paper like the Sport as so extreme that it's not representative of the mainstream – but looking at it closely, we get can a look, undisguised by pretence, at themes running through the rest of our culture.

There would be a page of adverts for "escorts" all over the UK, and in the middle there would be a picture of a "real girls getting 'em out" – that is, a woman not working in the sex industry, who had sent in a picture of herself, topless or naked, to the paper.

She sends in this picture of herself for her man – "Remember what we were doing when we took this picture, Gaz?…Happy birthday…there's more to come!" – but also for all the men reading the paper.

The men reading the paper might not be able to touch her but they can look at her, and if they want to touch they can phone the numbers of the women whose photos surround her, who are also naked or topless and in similar poses.

Or there would be an interview with a nude or topless model, where she talks about how she used to work in McDonalds, but she was skint all the time, so when she was offered the chance to be photographed naked she jumped at the opportunity, because she's always had a "sexy side", and anyway, it pays better than McDonalds: "Last summer, I had no job and needed money…I guess I just thought, f*** it, if it's going to help me out financially, I'll do it … And it beats my old job working at McDonalds, too!"

Or there would be an interview with a man who somehow encountered a woman who is now at least slightly famous at a time when she was broke and worked in the sex industry. "Speaking about her time as a phone sex worker, Danica said ‘When you need money instantly, you do things you probably shouldn’t.  I can’t regret it because I didn’t have a choice!"

Access to women who are selling sex because of poverty, who are "good girls" who have fallen on hard times, is presented as particularly exciting, as a particular triumph.

There's no attempt to conceal the fact that they're there out of financial need.

Constrained choice is apparently a desirable trait in a woman.

Or there would be adverts for porn or sex chat where the women are advertised as women who already have other jobs, and are doing it for fun or for sexual gratification.

"Man wanted: Dani is a hot 27 yo divorced blonde who is working as a shop cashier and looking for men who will f*ck her hard then f*ck off…Carol loves it hard in the bum. This randy carer spends her days in a nylon smock looking after oldies then slips into pretty lingerie and prepares to f*ck!"

The description of women who supposedly don't, or don't usually, work in the sex industry as "real" is telling – it shows that they do not see women who work in the sex industry as "real" people.

Certainly it seems that buying sex from them is not as transgressive a thrill as buying sex from a woman who mostly doesn't take money for it.

For the male reader, this presents a pretty unambiguous message.

It says that any woman is up for grabs, can be seen naked, can be bought.

She just has to get to that point where she's broke enough and she too will be for sale.

A man never has to accept that he does not have a right to our bodies, or that we don't have to say yes if we don't want to.

When a man pays a woman for sex, or pays to see her naked, he pays her to conform to stereotypes of what women are supposed to be like in a patriarchal society.

That is, always excited, always ready, always enjoying what is done to her.

This way he never has to accept that she could be any other way – uninterested, unconsenting, not taking pleasure.

For the female reader, the message is also clear.

We are all the same.

We shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that we can say no, or that we will not one day be expected to sell access to our body, whether to look or to touch.

And that's actually true.

We are all the same.

Women in the sex industry and women outside the sex industry are only different in the fact of our circumstances.

That's why our no is never truly meaningful – either because our no will be ignored (when we are raped or sexually assaulted, like one in five women in the UK in their lifetime) or because at any time we could find ourselves (or already have found ourselves) in a situation where we had to allow our yes to be bought.

And the no of a woman who sells sex is treated as if it is impossible, or silent: more than half of women involved in prostitution have experienced rape.

And that's just the ones the women interviewed would talk about.

Some studies show as high as 80 per cent.

And 25 per cent of the men interviewed in Eaves' study "Men Who Buy Sex" told us that the idea that a woman involved in prostitution can be raped is "ridiculous".

Inequality between women and men will only end when women's consent is meaningful; that is, when no woman is pushed by circumstances outside her control  – her level of education, the class she was born into, the race she was born, the disability she has, the family life or life experiences she has, the job she has or doesn't have – to have sex with a man she would not otherwise have consented to.