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Northern Ireland - a sexist's paradise

Alex Doherty — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:14:42 +0000

It’s normal to feel embarrassed when you come from Northern Ireland. Barely a week goes by without some new instance of our abject ignorance, our awful compulsion to behave like noisy, immature yokels, whether it’s rampant homophobia, crazed bible-bashing or sheer dumb political intransigence. But a new Amnesty International poll, which found that almost half (46%) of Northern Ireland students believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she flirts, is especially shaming, even by our usual standards. What’s more, it’s OK to hit your girlfriend if she nags, flirts with other men or refuses to have sex – according to one in 10 local students.

The fact that these are young people makes it even worse. They are supposed to be the ones skipping open-mindedly into the glad new post-conflict future, not shoring up benighted old rubbish like this.

So it’s shaming, yes – but not particularly surprising. Northern Ireland remains a sexist’s paradise. It is the land of the macho swagger, a defiantly unreconstructed outpost of bullish masculinity and aggressive heterosexualism, fuelled by a trenchantly politicised culture and – of course – the long years of violence. (It’s not a coincidence that there is a significantly higher proportion of adult women raped at gunpoint in Northern Ireland than in the Republic of Ireland or the UK, and rape crisis counsellors are familiar with the tactic where perpetrators claim that they belong to a paramilitary organisation, in an attempt to ensure their victim keeps quiet.) Add a dash of the local brand of thin-lipped social conservatism, and you have a recipe for the “blame culture” attitudes seen in the Amnesty survey – whose respondents presumably included young women as well as young men.

Women’s rights have long languished near the bottom of the political agenda in the North, constantly displaced by the constitutional tug-of-war. The situation is really dire. Earlier this year, government figures showed a 50% rise in reported rapes over the previous six years, yet Northern Ireland has the worst support services for the victims of sexual violence in the UK. Our one heroic rape crisis centre is woefully under-funded, constantly teetering on the verge of closure. Women here have no access to specialist domestic violence courts, and there are no support services for women seeking to escape prostitution, trafficking and sexual exploitation. As a society, we can’t even bring ourselves to have a proper debate about abortion – which remains effectively banned in Northern Ireland – and our (overwhelmingly) male representatives continue to piously kick the issue under the carpet.

The strangest thing is the deafening silence on these issues from Northern Ireland women themselves. Why do we seemingly accept the brutish attitudes, the lack of support services, the absence of basic rights? Perhaps it’s because we have no place to find a collective voice. Tribalism has successfully divided us from one another, thrown rigid barriers across potential areas of common ground. It’s as if women have internalised the old hush-hush, lie-low maxim of the Troubles – “whatever you say, say nothing”- and applied it to our whole lives. But saying nothing changes nothing. If shouting is what gets you heard in this place, maybe it’s time to find our voices.

Beyond the dogma: the real abortion debate

tim — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:54:29 +0000

The debate about abortion today often takes the form of competing scientific claims: about exactly when the fetus becomes viable, whether it feels pain, the psychological effects on the woman, and so on. These are the issues regarded on both sides as the crucial ones on which to convince the public and more particularly policy-makers. But fundamentally the question of whether women should be free to have abortions is not a scientific one but a moral and political one. And this was the focus of a public debate taking place as part of the Future of Abortion conference organised by BPAS (the British Pregnancy Advisory Service), with heavyweight speakers on either side.

BPAS chief Ann Furedi was joined by Jon O’Brien of the intriguing US lobby group Catholics for Choice, up against Josephine Quintavalle of the anti-abortion Comment on Reproductive Ethics and conservative journalist Dominic Lawson. The discussion ranged widely, but was most interesting when it touched on the core moral question that is at the heart of the political controversy. While acknowledging that nobody ever sets out to have an abortion for fun, Ann Furedi made the case boldly that abortion can be a morally good thing, as opposed to a ‘necessary evil’. This position is rarely heard, but it is crucial to any serious debate about abortion.

Dominic Lawson’s anti-abortion argument hinged on the idea that a woman’s decision to abort is the crucial moral factor. This seems reasonable enough, but it is one-sided. Too often the discussion proceeds from the assumption that once pregnant all a woman has to do to have a baby is not have an abortion. Debates about ‘when life begins’ focus on the sperm, the egg and the embryo as if those factors alone are sufficient to create a human life. The forgotten ‘factor of production’ is nine months of a woman’s life. The availability of abortion means this factor cannot be taken for granted. The principles of autonomy and equality mean that it should not.

Of course, it is quite true that if a woman does not abort her embryo or fetus, and if she continues to look after herself and eat properly, ‘nature will take its course’, and the chances are she will have a child. But human beings have always tried to exert control over this process, and modern medicine allows women to have relatively simple and easy abortions at almost any point during pregnancy. In this context, it is disingenuous to pretend that women, like wild animals or plants, are mere vessels for natural processes. Not only is it untrue, but it obscures the resulting moral significance of a woman’s decision not to abort. A woman’s decision to go ahead with a pregnancy, to have a child, is not morally neutral – depending on the circumstances, it can be a morally good or morally bad decision. Crucially, since it concerns her own life, it need not – and probably should not – be a selfless decision.

In fact, many mainstream anti-abortion arguments implicitly acknowledge that what is really at issue is not the life of the fetus, but the motivation of the woman, and especially whether it is selfless or selfish. The greatest moral condemnation is reserved for those women who have abortions because they want to pursue their careers, or simply for the sake of convenience (as with the notorious news story about a woman choosing to have an abortion because pregnancy would have interfered with a skiing holiday). Dominic Lawson suggested at the debate that, with so many infertile couples desperate for children, it was obvious that women with unwanted pregnancies ought to opt for adoption rather than abortion. In this view, abortion is immoral because it is selfish.

Ultimately, who is to decide whether any particular woman’s reason is good enough? The real question here is how much value we place on individual autonomy. Anti-abortionists typically see virtue in resignation (especially when it comes to women), and ‘accepting the consequences of our actions’, however avoidable. Those of us who support the right to abortion do so because we believe men and women should take responsibility for our own lives, and assert as much control over them as possible.

Even those who condemn abortion in general are usually sympathetic to women who want abortions because they’ve been raped. Living with the consequences of a careless night of passion is one thing, but the idea that a brutal physical violation should lead to such a serious disruption to a woman’s life as having to carry the child of her attacker is abhorrent to most people. Given the possibility of a swift abortion, it is impossible to justify in ordinary moral terms. Here, anti-abortionists must fall back on ‘the absolute sanctity of life’. Josephine Quintavalle deliberately brought the example of rape up at the debate, because it is the one most often used against her. She gave the example of a woman she’d counselled and who had gone ahead with a pregnancy in such circumstances and now had no regrets. This anecdote is hardly a convincing argument for denying abortion to anyone else, but Quintavalle had already confessed that her position is grounded in Roman Catholic doctrine rather than moral reasoning.

Too often, religious doctrine is presented as the beginning and the end of the anti-abortion argument. This is partly because Catholics and other religious activists are the most vocal opponents of abortion. But Jon O’Brien reminded us that millions of morally thoughtful Catholics do not accept the teaching of the Vatican on the issue (as is even more the case with contraception), and some actually question its theological foundations. Perhaps more importantly, millions of non-believers (like Lawson) have strong moral intuitions against abortion, which they bring to bear on the political debate without recourse to irrational absolutes. It is not enough, then, to dismiss anti-abortionists as zealots.

Most people, certainly in Britain, do accept that abortion is morally acceptable at least some of the time, and further, that the best person to decide whether it is or isn’t is the particular woman in question. If these women are to continue to have access to safe abortion, we must not be afraid to have out the argument, and should not be afraid to make a strong moral case grounded not in science, but in respect for individual autonomy and equality between the sexes.

"She was probably glad of the attention": tackling rape in the UK

JamieSW — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:42:33 +0000

Globally, the prosecution of rape is given a low priority by criminal justice agencies, and across most of Europe the rape conviction rate has fallen continuously in the last thirty years. In the UK, in 1977 33.3% of all rapes reported to the police led to a conviction. In 2007, this figure has fallen to 5.7%. The shockingly low rate of conviction for rape has made headlines numerous times in the intervening years, most recently as the government announced reforms to rape trials this week.

Although the vast majority of rapes in the UK are still not reported to the police, there has been a marked increase in reportage in recent years. With more women coming forward, the police have been handed an opportunity to pursue more cases and to see more rapists convicted. But this opportunity to tackle violence against women has largely not been taken. There are complex reasons for this failure, but popular misconceptions of how and why rape occurs are central to the problem.

“Know your limits”

Beliefs still prevail that women are raped because they expose themselves to danger or even ‘imply consent‘ by being too promiscuous, too flirtatious, drinking too much, wearing short skirts or walking alone at night in dangerous areas. One third of people believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she ‘flirted‘ with a man who later raped her.

Such statistics reflect the disturbingly common idea that the sexual coercion of women in certain circumstances does not count as rape, and that rape is somehow inevitable in contexts in which women are seen to ‘make themselves available’ sexually in some way by participating in what is, in reality, normal social life. Meanwhile, Home Office campaigns caution women to avoid the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption, drink-spiking and illegal taxi cabs, implicitly supporting the notion that it is women’s ‘risk taking behaviour’, rather than the perpetration of sexual violence itself, which is the real problem.

The uncomfortable truth

Stereotypes about what kinds of women ‘attract’ rape are reflective of dominant notions about what kinds of men commit rape and why. Rapists are commonly figured as loners who attack women as they walk down dark alleys, men who are starved of sex and driven by ‘uncontrollable’ sexual urges. Conversely, it is often assumed that cases of acquaintance rape, where the stereotype of the knife-wielding stranger does not apply, are the result of a misunderstanding or women’s ‘misinterpreting’ of events, rather than violent impositions of power. In other words, the normal, decent man involved was not aware that he was committing a rape, and simply got ‘carried away’, or was led to believe a woman consented by her ‘flirtatious’ behaviour.

In fact, the majority of rapists are known to their victim, and about 50% of rapes in the UK occur in the home of the woman or the perpetrator. Most rapes do not involve violence beyond the act of rape itself, and rapists are predominantly ‘normal’ men who have steady jobs, nice homes and established relationships. The uncomfortable truth is that rape is much closer to home than many people would like to admit.

Rapists are often pathologised and viewed as a small minority of deviants, and yet studies show that rape and sexual coercion are in fact widespread. Four in ten young people know girls whose boyfriends have coerced or pressurised them to have sex, while significant proportions think it is acceptable for a boy to expect to have sex with a girl if she has been ‘very flirtatious’, if sexual activity has been initiated, or if he has spent a lot of time and money on her. This is not just a UK phenomenon; studies in the US have found that one in four men reported having forced women to have sex despite their visible distress, and a third of male college students reported that they would rape a woman if they knew that they would not be caught or punished as a result.

These statistics reveal both the widespread practice of sexual coercion by men, and the high level of public acceptance of such behaviour. In an astonishing variety of circumstances, it is seen as understandable that a man should presume that a woman is sexually available to him. There is a naturalisation of the idea that men can’t, or shouldn’t, be expected to control their sexual urges in the company of an attractive, ‘flirtatious’ or intoxicated woman who they view as sexually available, and that women are to blame if they do not understand and obey these unwritten sexual rules. In this way, sexual coercion is normalised and women are denied any real choice regarding the degree to which they can engage in a social life or in relationships without effectively losing their rights to safety.

Deconstructing the myth

Prevalent public attitudes about rape also have a clear influence on the investigation and prosecution of rape cases and at court, and contribute to the low rape conviction rate. Police, prosecutors, judges and, perhaps most importantly, jurors are as likely as any other members of the public to internalise common attitudes about rape, and misconceptions about who are ‘real’ rapists and victims.

The stereotype of stranger rape continues to create obstacles to prosecuting the majority of rapes, which are committed by acquaintances, partners or ex-partners. It is only since 1991 that there has been a precedent in English law for prosecuting rape within marriage. Even today, the police are still less likely to prosecute cases where, for example, the victim was willingly within the home of the perpetrator, and sentences for marital rape continue to be lower than average rape sentences. Women are often viewed as partly responsible for the state of their relationship or partner’s behaviour where rape takes place within a marriage, and the links between rape by partners and domestic abuse are not always recognised. It is often presumed that rape within marriage is less violent and traumatic, although psychological studies and accounts by victims of marital rape contradict this assumption (pdf).

Judgements about the credibility of charges of rape are often influenced by impressions of the woman’s attractiveness, demeanour, dress and alcohol consumption which are in fact irrelevant to the real issue of consent and the perpetrator’s culpability. Defence lawyers realise this, and often cynically attempt to use juries’ misconceptions to their advantage. For example, earlier this year, the defence barrister in a trial concerning the alleged gang rape of a sixteen year old girl notoriously made the argument that the girl had ‘slimmed down a lot’ since the attack and that at the time “she was 12st 6lb – not quite the swan she may turn into – she may well have been glad of the attention”.

Similarly, when women have been drinking before an alleged rape, even if the amount they drank was small, or their drink was spiked, this is seen to cast doubt on their testimony. A recent study found that when a woman had her drink spiked, juries were reluctant to convict unless they were convinced that the drink had been spiked with the specific intention of sexual assault, as opposed to ‘loosening up’ a reluctant partner. Similarly, jurors were less inclined to equate ‘taking advantage’ of a drunken women with rape in situations in which the woman’s normal behaviour was to drink heavily in the company of men. This shows the extent to which spiking a drink to encourage a woman to have sex is viewed as acceptable male behaviour, and women who drink regularly are seen not to qualify as real victims.

Creating change

The prevalence of disturbing public attitudes to rape, and their relationship to criminal justice failure, point to a need re-examine ideas about how and why rape happens. The UK Government needs to do more to ensure that problematic attitudes amongst staff in criminal justice agencies are addressed through training, that further investment is made in specialist rape investigation and prosecution services, and that all rape is properly investigated by police from the outset. A greater focus should be put on interrogating the behaviour of the perpetrators of rape, rather than dissecting the character of victims.

However, the extent to which sexual coercion is a common and socially accepted fact points to a need for a wider debate on this issue, and a re-imagining of our understandings of masculinity, femininity and sexuality. We need to ask questions about how sexual coercion is tied up with current ideals of masculinity which are defined in terms of assertiveness, virility and sexual conquest. At the same time, its necessary to interrogate assumptions about women’s sexual passivity and the lessons which women are being taught about having reduced rights to safety if they are seen to make themselves sexually available by engaging in relationships, drinking, flirting or walking alone at night.

Amongst the reforms announced by the UK government this week was a plan to provide juries in rape trials with information packs compiled by experts, which would dispel myths around rape victims’ behaviour. These proposals are a start, but if there is to be real change, what is needed is a much deeper questioning of what children are taught both in school and daily life about gender and power dynamics, choice and coercion in sexual relationships.

Rape Rules OK?

Ellie Keen — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:48:11 +0000

Solicitor general Vera Baird has announced that the government is to abandon a proposal to use expert witnesses to brief juries on the “myths” surrounding rape after judges warned the plan could lead to miscarriages of justice.

Now which miscarriages of justice would they be? The serial date rapists who walk away again and again from rape trials, having convinced the jury that the woman, often met only in the previous 24 hours, had said yes?

Would that be the miscarriage of justice that repeatedly sees men with long records of rape and sexual assault declared innocent by a jury because the victim was too brazen or unemotional or cocky or because she failed to recall a series of traumatic events in a clear, concise and unemotional manner?

Only one in 20 reported rapes lead to a conviction: a poor rate that is plummeting further. Research (see Sue Lees’ book Carnal Knowledge) shows what often happens – police, while improving, may fail to investigate properly; the Crown Prosecution Service is at times too eager to drop cases; a case is further damaged by inadequate prosecutors and finally juries are expected to come to a decision perhaps utterly at odds with each other, irrespective of the details of the case, about the “right” rules of engagement between men and women; husbands and wives; boyfriends and girlfriends.

“Consent” is that magic word that has allowed the crime of rape to become the safest offence for any man to commit if he is so inclined to take what he wants from a woman who is upset; drunk; terrified or laid out cold: male power gone mad.

In war, of course, as we’ve seen in Darfur, consent is brushed aside because rape is a weapon of war. However, in what passes for peace, every decade has had its own variations on what consent may mean – almost all of them laying the burden on women to behave according to an ever-growing list of rules, removing the responsibility from men.

Thirty years ago, a teenager only had to stick out her thumb and hitchhike to be told she was “asking for it”. Judge Betrand Richards in Ipswich crown court in 1982, fined a convicted rapist £2,000, because he believed the victim, a hitchhiker, was guilty of “contributory negligence” for being out on the road.

Even earlier, one of the “rules” of engagement was the conviction that a woman said “No” when she meant “Yes” – because she didn’t want to be seen as too easy. So, wasn’t a man capable of taking the word “No” on face value?

A Home Office report Concerns About Rape, published in 1989, included the results of an unpublished study of male students. Half thought it acceptable to force a woman to have sex under certain circumstances. These included if the man had spent a lot of money on the woman; if she’d had intercourse with others; if they had been dating a long time; if the woman had “led him on” and if the man was so turned on he couldn’t stop (a mythical state much loved by rapists).

Arguably, a similar survey today would not only have similar responses – the list would be longer. And justified because some women now are sexual exhibitionists on a scale not seen since Sodom and Gomorrah. An Amnesty International poll in 2005 found one in three respondents thought a woman was partly or wholly responsible for being raped if she acted flirtatiously – one in four held the same view if she wore sexy or revealing clothing.

It’s not provocation that’s the crime – it’s rape. The fact that half of the students in that 1980s study, did not share these views underlines how rape is sited less in sexual activity and alleged confused communication between the genders and more in a dark and predatory misogynistic streak endorsed by popular culture, and the lack of legal redress.

So, why not have a public inquiry into rape, so we do have a clearer picture of how and why the crime is committed and how and why the culprits walk free again and again? And who the culprits really are. That same Home Office report referred to a Californian study in which SC Smithyman advertised for men who had committed rape (defined as non-consenting penetration of vagina, anus or mouth) to volunteer for a confidential interview (no clue is given as to how the men’s stories were verified).

While American jails were and are full of young, ill-educated black rapists, the men who responded to the ad were mostly white, had qualifications and were in professions.

The Home Office study said:

“... it highlights that men who admit rape may be more evenly distributed through the male population than previously imagined. If this is true then the role of masculine culture, socialisation, attitudes towards women and the differences between men and women’s expectations of behaviour and, in particular of sexual behaviour should be considered if a fuller understanding is to be gained of why rape occurs.”

That was 1989. And a fuller understanding of why rape occurs is nowhere near being part of the mainstream of thought that influences police, prosecutors, juries, judges, ministers and crucially ordinary members of the public, women as well as men.

Now, the minister Vera Baird says the danger in calling psychologists and psychiatrists to give evidence on the range of behaviours among rape victims, is that the defence could call expert witnesses too. And that there would be established: “a profile of a true rape victim, how they behave, and then woman would be put off complaining, thinking ‘I don’t know if I fit this profile’.”

What a load of cobblers. The whole point is to establish the range of reaction and behaviour. If that’s not acceptable then why is it OK for a groups of experts to draft a statement about rape and its impact that will be presented to the jury in a booklet or by the trial judge – losing all the power of being directly related to the individual woman whose word is on trial in the court?

A US study in 1989 found that myths and stereotypes affected the outcome of rape trials more than any other evidence. Rape isn’t sex between lovers with a bit of rough. Talk to rape victims – many of whom don’t report the crime for obvious reasons, only to have to cope with the knowledge that the rapist has attacked again. It even happens in Ambridge (Cathy in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers is facing this dilemma now). Talk to rape victims and the details are frequently horrific, physically and mentally. Humiliation can often leave even deeper scars than having to be stitched as if after childbirth.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Home Office and the police had begun to sharpen up their act – challenging attitudes; conducting research; making changes. Harriet Harman as solicitor general also tried to initiate improvements – but now this has become the equivalent of stitching patches on a threadbare system.

Vera Baird should order an inquiry; collate the plentiful research that already exists; monitor the courts; study how juries reach their verdicts; talk to serial rapists who have had years of successful activity before, perhaps, finally being convicted.

It’s not just expert witnesses that are required. It’s a complete overhaul. Until then, rape continues to rule, OK.