Sunday 08th March 2015 is International Women’s Day. Unless you’re already passionate about gender equality, this has may have passed you by. You may have gained a vague awareness when scrolling through your Facebook or Twitter feed of articles mentioning something of the topic, but, generally, your reaction upon seeing it mentioned is likely to fall into one of these following categories:
1. [Blank space] the article could have been written in French, your eyes saw but no thought process followed.
2. Oh it’s International Women’s Day. Some people like to fight for equality but it’s not really my thing.
3. International Women’s Day? That’s sexist. Why isn’t there an International Men’s Day? Women are equal now I don’t see why they have to go on about it (could be said by a man or a woman – International Men’s Day is Nov 19th).
What I think is important to recognise is that this is INTERNATIONAL women’s day. We aren’t just talking about inequality that takes place in ‘the west’, where, of course, a large number of people deny that there is such an issue and therefore cannot see the drive behind such movements. We are talking about showing solidarity and raising awareness of gender inequality that exists on a WORLDWIDE basis.
Perhaps it’s easier for sceptics to get behind the more ‘black and white’ issues that affect our international sisters, which we surely cannot sit by and ignore. I take a few examples outlined in an article by Lucy Mangan.
A campaign by Equality Now gives examples of women not being allowed to work at night in Madagascar, Russian women forbidden from working in over 400 types of work, and of women in Saudi Arabia being forbidden to hold driving licences…
…Other globally #UnsexyLaws, include marital rape being legal in the Bahamas, men in Afghanistan and Yemen being entitled to stop their wives leaving the house without their permission and one in Malta that permits abduction and rape of a woman as long as the man marries her afterwards.
International Women’s Day is about raising a worldwide dialogue, showing solidarity and support to women whose voices are otherwise un-heard, piercing the bubble of ignorance that is occupied by too many, challenging an attitude of “it’s not my problem”. It is about being collectively outraged, kicking up enough of an awareness that from it springs a movement from which a worldly enlightenment can be gained and oppressive laws and attitudes can then be changed.
Are we in agreement about this at least? I hope so!
So what about all these voices who still think ‘the west’ is a place of gender inequality? Where are they coming from and why do they feel so passionate about it? Well, the article I mentioned gives a statistic about the UK, that one in 20 women under 60 has been raped or sexually assaulted in her lifetime, which in my opinion sounds frightfully low, given the amount of rape/ sexual assaults that still go unreported.
This then got me thinking about my own experiences which have lead to me becoming very passionate about gender equality. I wondered where my experiences would fit in to this set of statistics? had I ever suffered a sexual assault? As your average ‘working class’ female, I grew up in a safe area, in a ‘stable’ family, I had a good education and a good mixture of friends. I am told I live in a society where ‘we are all equal now’, so surely the risk of my falling into the one out of the twenty category is quite slim?
Well let’s look at the definition of assault from the LII (Legal Information Institute):
Intentionally putting another person in reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact. No intent to cause physical injury needs to exist, and no physical injury needs to result.
I don’t think I’m alone is saying that, yes, I have experienced being touched in a sexual manner where offensive contact was made but no physical injury occurred. Perhaps people would more commonly refer to this as ‘groped’? How many women reading this can say that they have never had unwanted sexual contact from someone groping their breasts, bum, or in-between their legs? I can say that this has certainly happened to me on more than one occasion, usually on a ‘night-out’ (an incident of which I will be sharing with you shortly).
As a result, I think we should be just as interested in the statistics of non-violent assault, and by extension verbal abuse, which will undoubtedly show how common and more widespread sexism is within Western society, and that it happens to ALL women regardless of what background they come from (see the #everydaysexismproject for more on this).
My main experience of ‘everyday sexism’, was when I was a student living in Leicester. I could guarantee that as I walked about the city centre, no matter the time of day, someone would choose to say something to me. Usually ‘suck my cock’ or ‘I’d tap her’. I also experienced kerb-crawling right on campus on three separate occasions, where a car full of men would slow down by us as we were walking home and try to get us to climb into their car. I’m quite sure they knew where to find actual sex-workers if they wanted to, but, clearly, just being a woman walking down the street was all that was required to qualify for a for a sex request. Even when met with a ‘no’/no response, big congratulations ladies, you would still qualify to be followed a bit more and further attempts be made to get you into the car.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned, I have not only experienced sexist comments and intimidating behaviour, but I have also experienced non-violent physical groping/ sexual assault: to me the two are one and the same but not everyone would agree with that – I should mention that there was an article in The Guardian this week My Boyfriend ‘sort-of’ Raped Me which attempted to highlight the fact that when sexual assault isn’t overtly violent there is a missing dialogue, there is less of a wider outrage, there is a trepidation over what words should be used to describe a sexual violation, the author herself did not know whether she should call what happened to her rape or not.
Well, for me, there is no ‘sort-of’ assault in what I am about to share, non-violent, yes, but a forced, un-wanted, sexual violation of my body against my will all the same…
I had gone on a night out with two work colleagues, again when I was at uni. I can’t say that I was close friends with them but I worked with them and trusted them enough to go out with them, why wouldn’t I? We were standing near to the bar, there were other people around, although it wasn’t busy, and suddenly I am being picked up in an arm lock by one, whilst the other – who was actually gay – decided to rub his hand over the top of my jeans, in between my legs as he simulated jerking me off… All’s I could do was yell, and try to get the guy who was holding me to put me down. But he was massive, and I was small and no match against two men straddling me about, so I just carried on kicking my legs and yelling until he put me down. They were both laughing away. No violence intended. It had all been a joke.
Well, not one for conflict, I went off to the loo’s and sucked up my outrage. Due to reasons mentioned previously, the prospect of leaving and going home alone was a scary one for me as I would have felt un-safe, so I settled for the lesser of the two evils and stayed with the two people who had just unfairly violated me for their own amusement. Needless to say no one around me stopped to intervene either, all far too normal I can only presume? Although I clearly wasn’t laughing along.
I never told them that I thought it was out-of-order, although my yells of ‘no’ and ‘get off me’ should have been enough to indicate this… I never told anyone at work either because I was in what I thought was a weird grey area, whereby their intention was not to do harm, their intention was to ‘have a laugh’. So the person whose body was used for the amusement of others, mine, remained voiceless, silent. I was trapped knowing that I lived in a society where no one would take this seriously… Instead I would be looked down upon for not being able to ‘take a joke’.
When I look back on that incident I feel it just reinforces the reasons why I am passionate about gender equality in the first place and I hope by sharing my experience I can help others to understand why, for many women, sexism is still such a huge problem. What it hi-lights is the fact that women are far too often seen in sexual terms, for their bodies, in the first instance, before they are ever seen as a whole human being. Due to the fact that women are objectified so much within the media and on film it’s almost as if our bodies have become public property, rather than something we hold our own individual agency over. The two men who did this to me weren’t even interested in using my body as a sexual ‘conquest’… they just pre-supposed that they had an UNSPOKEN RIGHT to use it, against my will, to simulate a sex act for a joke – a joke which was on me might I add?
What they did was totally un-acceptable. However, I do think that they just did not know that this wasn’t okay: a sign of how deep-rooted and un-challenged objectification of women is within our ‘equal’ society. To me, it was just an extended product of the everyday sexism I have been describing, a culture so obsessed with the act of sex, over and above the real people doing it, that any body, my body, can be used to reenact a sex act without first gaining my consent. I don’t care if it was a joke, my body is not there to be man-handled, I am a person first and foremost, with her own agency and emotions, my body belongs to me only, anyone else who wants to touch my body can only do so with my permission. Why the heck should I even have to write this!?
I am someone’s daughter, I am someone’s sister. I live in one of the most progressive societies our little Earth has to offer. We need International Women’s Day, not just because of the outrageously oppressive laws and attitudes that are being held towards women overseas, but because there is also sexism here in the UK, that somehow manages to stay hiding in plain sight… Unless we push for a dialogue surrounding these issues and better educate both men and women about respect and boundaries, the need for International Women’s Day will, unfortunately, be around for quite some time to come.
Mixey Corner 