Joyce Fegan: Deconstructing a sexist culture is heavy work and we need more than women to do the lifting

In a world where we ask such ridiculous things of women like to not go out, to not let their hair down, to not venture out alone after dark, is it too much to ask non-offending males to call out the sexist jokes of their mates, the 'banter' in the locker room and the ridicule of anyone who confronts their 'humour'?

Tributes left for 28-year-old school teacher Sabina Nessa at Pegler Square in Kidbrooke, south London.

It's the jokes. It’s the banter. It’s turning a blind eye. It’s the cat-calling. And it is the accepted ridicule of anyone who confronts any of the latter: ‘God, you’ve no sense of humour’; ‘You’re so sensitive’; ‘You’re a ‘ball breaker’ ’; ‘You’re such a bra-burner’; ‘What a snowflake’; ‘Can you not take a compliment?’

While these ‘jokes’ are being shared, and those who find them offensive are being rebuked, women and girls are being assaulted, raped, and murdered.

This week, Wayne Couzens, a former Metropolitan Police officer, received a whole-life sentence for the kidnap, rape, and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard in London in March. Ms Everard was walking home from a friend’s house in Clapham. It was 9:30pm.

This week, a man appeared in court accused of the “premeditated and predatory” murder of 28-year-old primary school teacher, Sabina Nessa, on September 17. Ms Nessa was walking through a park in southeast London. It was 8.30pm.

This week, a 64-year-old West Cork man got a 27-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl near Parnell Place, in August of last year. The teenager was standing at a bus station. It was the afternoon.

This same man already had a conviction for sexually assaulting another teenage girl, in May 2018. He received an 18-month suspended sentence for that crime. The man and teenager had been patients in the same hospital ward when the assault occurred.

To protect women and girls from male violence, what should we do?

Should we tell girls to avoid being admitted to hospitals? Should we tell women to stay home after sunset? Should we tell girls not to stand at bus stops? Should we tell women to avoid parks?

Those directions are as ill-informed and futile as telling girls and women not to wear short skirts, to wash the make-up off their face, to never flirt, and to never, ever let a drop of alcohol pass their lips.

If, for example, revealing clothing were a leading cause of rape, attacks would increase in the summer or on beaches populated by bikini-clad people, but they do not.

And in lieu of getting into the heads of perpetrators and convincing them not to rape or pre-empting their next assault, what can we do?

We need to arrest our own inner snowflake, decentre our sensitivity to criticism, and accept that we partake in a culture that normalises sexist attitudes and behaviours: The jokes; the banter; the cat-calling, and the rebuking of those who call us out.

Sabina Nessa.

In 2016, a graphic called the ‘Rape Culture Pyramid’ went viral. It was created by Ranger Cervix and Jaime Chandra and posted to a Facebook page called the 11th Principle: Consent.

At the bottom of the pyramid are the jokes, the “locker room banter” (think your schoolmates’ WhatsApp group) and sexist attitudes. Next up is the cat-calling and the unwanted non-sexual touch (think the stranger sitting far, far too close to you on the bus and how you don’t want to make a scene by naming it or offend them by moving seats).

Further up are the unsolicited nude photos sent via social media or over WhatsApp, or a non-consensually captured video or image of a woman.

At the top end of the pyramid are coercive or controlling behaviour and victim blaming (the length of the skirt/the time of the night) and then there is the drugging, the attacks, and the rape.

“Tolerance of the behaviours at the bottom supports or excuses those higher up,” states the 11th Principle pyramid.

In public conversations, we vacillate between blaming victims for their choice in clothing and defending innocent men who feel tarred with an unsavoury brush.

Perhaps we need to spend less time reacting and, instead, decentre ourselves. Are we having these conversations to defend innocent men or are we having these conversations to make use of our grief and our outrage and make sure fewer people are assaulted, raped, and murdered?

When Sarah Everard was murdered last March, a 2019 clip from a show by Scottish comedian Daniel Sloss went viral. He took on men’s reaction to the conversation around rape.

He said the solution to the problem had to “involve us”, and “by ‘us’ I mean men”. The comedian first had to tell the men in the room that his words were not “an attack” on them, before going on to explain that good men sitting back was not fixing the problem of male violence.

Sarah Everard.

He then shared that a friend of his raped another friend.

“Were there signs in my friend’s behaviour towards women that I ignored? Yes. And then he raped my friend. That’s on me until the day I die,” he said.

“Talk to your f***ing boys. Get involved,” he added.

In a world where girls and women always have to take a backwards glance or remove their earphones before walking under a tunnel or down a laneway in daylight, maybe we could make room for a less-reactive conversation around the responsibility of the non-offending male.

In a world where we ask ridiculous things of women (not go out, not let their hair down, not venture out alone after dark), is it too much to ask non-offending males to call out the sexist jokes of their mates, the ‘banter’ in the locker room, and the ridicule of anyone who confronts their ‘humour’?

Deconstructing a sexist culture is heavy work, and we need a lot more than women to do the heavy lifting. Why?

As Mary McGill writes in her new book, The Visibility Trap, our impulses to silence women go way back. In the 16th century, women were condemned to wearing an iron muzzle, a “scold’s bridle”, for “being judged rude or nagging or otherwise making a spectacle of themselves”, writes Ms McGill.

The bridle both humiliated and flattened the tongue, rendering the woman silent as well as a figure of ridicule.

We still make women who speak out feel this way today and that’s why we need everyone’s help in changing a culture that harms, at best, and kills, at worst.