Dismantling Sexual Violence
CW: Sexual violence and rape
33-year-old Sarah Everard was kidnapped and murdered by a serving Metropolitan Police officer as she walked home alone at night wearing headphones in South East London last month. In the same week her body was found, we celebrated International Women’s Day and UK Mother’s Day whilst the internet and media imploded with retaliation against women voicing their truths; notice Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah, and The Guardian’s statement that 97% of women aged 18-24 in the UK having been sexually harassed. Male officers restrained and intimidated women attending a peaceful vigil in memory of Sarah Everard’s murder and demonstrated just what that abuse of power resembles. #NotAllMen has been trending on Twitter. Wellington women took to the streets at #LetUsLive: Rally for a City Free From Sexual Violence, after increasing issues of sexual violence and assault in the Capital. Put simply, it’s been a cataclysmic couple of weeks to be a woman.
But also, not really. Every day as a woman is another day we might be told we’re ‘too sensitive’, maybe followed home, perhaps groped on a busy bus, possibly beaten by our partners, raped by someone we know, or even killed. Violence against women is not news.
Violence and harassment of women go hand-in-hand. The absence of physical touch does not remove the emotional stains on the hearts and minds of women alike at the glares, words, and hands of a man abusing his power.
The New Zealand Government’s Manatū Wāhine website states the ‘critical component of all violence against women is that perpetrators exercise power and control over their victims through fear. It is fear that often distinguishes men’s violence against women from women’s violence against men.’
NZ’s statistics show that 1 in 3 women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime and 76% of reported assaults against women are perpetrators in the family. On top of this, Māori women, solo mothers, unemployed, single women and women with flatmates are at higher risk than other women in Aotearoa of partner violence and sexual victimisation. So, why is this?
The power under scrutiny is that of the patriarchy, and how society upholds this in a way that continues to oppress the lives of women internationally.
The problem of patriarchy isn’t a question of men vs. women, it’s that men as a whole, are complicit in the oppression of women if they are not actively working on dismantling the power they benefit from.
The fact that women have been saying for centuries that we’re scared of men as a collective and looked down on, feeling silenced or disbelieved by others shouldn’t make you defensive, boys, it should make you angry. Let’s see about putting that anger to good use.
Green Party MP Jan Logie says “I’m fighting for these experiences to become the aberration that they really are, rather than the normal experience for so many of us as there are at the moment.”
Logie introduced the ‘Thursdays In Black’ campaign to Aotearoa in 1994 as a mark of solidarity with victims of gender-based violence. By working closely with women, Māori, and socio-economically disadvantaged people’s needs at the forefront of her parliamentary agenda, she says she is more hopeful than she has ever been for change.
But what change looks like isn’t a one-size-fits-all method. There is a growing recognition that the Government can’t fix everything, so we need to work together as a community. In order to curb social complicity, the system needs a reboot.
Massive spoke to Sophie Bailey, the National Operations Manager and Facilitator at Empowerment Trust, about the organisation’s primary-prevention methods of education. They use toolkits for children of all ages, families and those living with disabilities to develop the skills they need to protect themselves and avoid harming others in our society “from bullying all the way to sexual violence”.
Bailey explains that part of the organisation’s Kidpower approach builds skills and strategies for creating common language around conflict resolution, boundary-setting and consent. They use positive role-plays and whānau engagement to uplift these values in young people to prevent people experiencing and perpetuating harm now and throughout their lives.
Bailey also works with Mates & Dates (ACC) which operates in schools to teach young people about consent and preventing sexual and dating violence. Here, she says she witnesses glimpses of hope and change in years 9-13 students at their “realisation around what makes a healthy relationship, what violence is, or what are some of the dynamics that might happen in unhealthy relationships”.
Being able to shift the perspectives of young people growing up in a world where male entitlement permeates pretty much every layer of our day-to-day is monumental. If we can take the fear-based lessons out of our curriculum (telling girls to protect themselves, never be alone, holdback on partying as hard as boys) we might actually stand a chance. Because little of what we’ve been taught about self-protection so far has actually stopped us getting hurt.
“That’s why with young children we focus on the positives and the skills, rather than fear-based material. Because they can learn the skills to be kind, treat others and stay safe,” Bailey says.
Empowerment Trust is just one of many organisations including Toah-Nnest, ACC Mates & Dates, RespectEd, Korowai Tumanako, Te Whāriki Takapou and Whakatu Mauri Trust working to educate and prevent future violence. It’s a hugely positive move for our society. I speak for many when I say it stings to think just how much our own generation and all who came before us would have benefited from educational causes like these. So, for most of us today unlucky enough to miss out on the teachings discussed above, let’s take this outside of the classroom and into the world.
Baby Blue is a London activist whose hard work is rooted in true intersectional feminism and dismantling systemic oppression (Instagram: @justice_forblacklives). In a perfect sentiment, she says,
“Men: Unless you are spending your time actively dismantling the power you benefit from, just know you are sitting comfortably and enjoying the oppression of womxn. Patriarchy has no gender so we should all be asking ourselves: What actions are you unlearning? What books are you reading? How are you, yes you, supporting womxn, trans and non-binary folk? Men: what other men are you calling in?”
Blue also mentions how women can be complicit too. We cause harm through through slut-shaming, white supremacy, fat-shaming and being ‘pick-mes’. Telling boys and men to “man up” and invalidating their emotions. All of these also feed into an emotionally-avoidant rhetoric that leave men to grow into perpetrators of violence and uphold patriarchal oppression.
Women aren’t the only ones who need to hold up the ship. I bet this all seems pretty heavy now, doesn’t it boys? Good. Because there’s a lot of work to be done.
If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual violence, support is available:
Rape Crisis – 0800 883 300 (for support after rape or sexual assault)
Lifeline – 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP)
Safe to Talk- 0800 044 334