Sarah Harte: Be a good girl? No, teach girls to be honest instead

To properly tackle domestic violence and gender-based abuse, we need to smash patriarchal stereotypes for young boys and girls at a young age — by the age of 10 it's too late

Floral tributes at the Grand Canal in Tullamore, Co Offaly, where primary school teacher Ashling Murphy was killed last January. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA

We’re in the middle of the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence.

This annual campaign began on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until 10 December, Human Rights Day. This year, Ireland’s theme is ‘zero tolerance’.

This feels apposite because in January, in the wake of Ashling Murphy’s murder Justice Minister Helen McEntee announced her zero tolerance strategy on violence against women.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee launches the zero tolerance strategy on violence against women in January.

The strategy incorporates the four pillars of prevention, protection, prosecution, and policy coordination. Most experts who work in the field agree that prevention is the most effective way to tackle the problem.

Our understanding of domestic violence is evolving, we are learning that it goes beyond physical bruises. Three high-profile coercive control cases in the media this year including one involving a garda means that coercive control and the psychological violence it entails has begun to seep into the public consciousness.

We recognise that stalking and harassment have a devastating effect on girls’ and women’s lives and new laws reflect that fact. Stalking is now a crime.

Coco’s law criminalises image-based sexual abuse and means that anyone convicted of sharing an intimate image without consent and with malicious intent can face up to seven years in prison. A campaign currently on our TV screens gives a hotline number for victims of image-based abuse to contact. So, progress is being made.

Yet, gender-based abuse and violence against women by men remains endemic.

One in four women in this country will suffer domestic violence in their lifetime. Three-quarters of violence against women happens in the home.

Earlier this year, commenting on the zero-tolerance approach, Ms McEntee said “the solutions will not come from legislation alone, what is required is societal and cultural change … we must intervene early to teach our sons appropriate lessons on healthy relationships, gender equality and consent. We will have failed if we allow some men to develop such unhealthy attitudes towards women.”

She’s right. Abusers aren’t born, they’re made. No small boy says, when I grow up, I want to abuse women.

A global comprehensive study released by John Hopkins University and the World Health Organization of how kids perceive growing up shows the effect of gendered early childhood conditioning.

Small kids as young as four internalize the myth that girls are vulnerable, and boys are strong.

This belief shows up in their behaviour and expectations for a lifetime. Gender straitjackets are particularly perilous for young girls, and they ultimately contribute to violence against women among other things.

Intervention at an early age

Intervention is needed to change these biases at a young age, by the age of 10 it is too late.

A further study published in the journal Sex Roles found that kids as young as four strongly associate power with male characters.

For starters, many of the fairy tales we read to our kids which are translated into Disney princess movies have seriously questionable misogynistic messages which ingrain patriarchal opinions towards women.

The prince in Sleeping Beauty kisses the princess when she’s asleep and without her permission. This isn’t romantic, it’s creepy.

Last week, a former RTÉ journalist lost his appeal in a sexual assault case because the judge said consent cannot be implied when someone is asleep.

Rapunzel shouldn’t be hanging around in the tower waiting to be rescued, she should figure ways out of her predicament herself. And the Little Mermaid made a bad call in changing her body and losing her voice to win a prince’s love.

It’s not woke lunacy to be aware of this. Girls can still wear pink, play with dolls, and put sparkly stuff on their faces.

But gender violence is considered to be rooted in harmful gender stereotypes and damaging messages like these need to be deconstructed for kids.

Men who abuse are fully responsible for their actions, there is no victim blaming. But there’s a case to be made that the natural instinct to protect oneself is dulled by being encouraged to be a good girl from a young age.

Girls pick up the harmful habit early of putting up with things, and not asserting themselves in the same way. Some synonyms in the dictionary for the word ‘nice’ include, charming, ingratiating, seemly, likeable, and good.

We can teach our girls to be decent human beings without teaching them to focus on being nice because it disables them. From birth, boys are encouraged to take up more space, nor are they encouraged to be ‘nice’. 

There is a plethora of complicated reasons why women are slow to leave abusive relationships and why some men abuse but cultural conditioning plays a role.

Stop teaching girls to be likeable

In Dear Ijeawele or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues that we must stop teaching our daughters to be likeable.

Instead of being likeable or nice, Adichie writes, we should teach our daughters to be honest and kind: “Tell her that she, too, deserves the kindness of others. Teach her to stand up for what is hers. Tell her that if anything ever makes her uncomfortable, to speak up, to say it, to shout.”

In the early 90s, one law lecturer entirely ignored the females in our class. He effectively ghosted us. Many of us went on to become solicitors and barristers, a species not known for being backwards at coming forwards but although we remarked upon his behaviour and it irritated us, we just rolled with it.

What silenced us and prevented us from saying, hello, we’re here, we’re paying fees, we deserve to have a voice, and this isn’t good enough?

We need to teach girls to recognise the red flags and say 'no, I won't accept this behaviour'.

Retrospectively, I think that although we were reasonably smart academically, we were good girls who had been trained well by the patriarchy.

We can point out red flags to our daughters, so they recognise abusive relationships and pull the ripcord. Behaviours that may seem flattering on the surface but are abusive. 

Things like a boyfriend being too demanding of her time, checking her phone, telling her not to talk to other boys, making suggestions about how she might dress, criticising her, or sending too many messages and demanding a reply.

In one 14-hour period, former garda Paul Moody, who is now in jail for coercive control, sent his former partner Nicola 652 messages, amounting to one message every 90 seconds.

Campaigns raising awareness and laws proscribing certain behaviours are crucial.

But it is only by smashing patriarchal stereotypes for young boys and girls, by unpicking powerful negative cultural narratives and reframing their thinking early, that we’ll properly tackle domestic violence and gender-based abuse.