As regular readers will now I often blog about violence, both institutional and interpersonal, often with a focus on girls and women. In my most recent entry focused on Violence Against Women and Girls [VAWG], I created a male character, Jimmy who I followed from birth to adulthood. This was fictional, but as I noted at the time, what I described is oh too familiar to many women and girls.

Usually, people don’t appear to care about the women and girls subjected to sexism, misogyny and violence of all kinds. You’ve only got to look at newspaper headlines and the commentary below to know that SHE is probably making it up, making mountains out of molehills, attention seeking, after all why would any man be interested in HER! It’s bound to be lies, you can’t say anything these days without someone taking offence, false allegations to blackmail some poor chap, ruining boys and men’s lives, no wonder they’re attracted to the likes of Andrew Tate (who despite some issues, apparently still manages to talk some sense, blah blah blah)! Note that this regular commentary comes from men and women alike…

Organisers and campaigns such as Fixed It, This Ends Now, #UseYourRedPen, Fix That |Headline and Hacked Off strive to rewrite misogynistic headlines, to argue again sexist advertisements, to complain about the portrayal of women in the media. Media, where women are simply appendages to men, or objectified as body parts to be gawped at, or their victimisation is less interesting than the men who harm them. These are worthy campaigns, well-meaning and designed to bring about positive change, but the deluge just keeps coming and coming If you don’t believe me, here’s a couple of recent examples: the world champion and Olympian Simone Biles is taken seriously ill, but is she central to the news report? No, she is described as a ‘NFL wife‘ as if her marital status mattered more than her identity. Another example, closer to home, Kingston council, in an equalities report wrote that electric bikes ‘‘may increase women’s access to cycling and physical activity by making it easier for women to meet their traditional domestic responsibilities, as well as stay looking “nice” on a bike’. Or what about the Northampton councillor who said that ‘some women should never have left the kitchen’. Half hearted apologies inevitably follow, no offence was meant, it’s been taken out of context, I will do much better, urging women to take pity on their plight. Nevertheless the constant flood of misogyny continues unabated.

This misogynistic nonsense runs throughout society unnoticed and unquestioned. Even when we pretend to take it seriously, for example, the government’s “commitment” to halve VAWG in a decade is vague and confused. As the Women’s Social and Political Union [WSPU] t made clear over a century ago, it is “deeds not words” that change the world. But it appears that many. in our society simply have no idea of the problems faced by girls and women, or if they do, they simply don’t care.

That is until very recently, when three teenage boys escaped custodial sentences despite convictions for the rape of two teenage girls. Suddenly, everyone has a view, the law is too lenient, the judge is out of touch, something must be done etc etc etc. On the surface, all of this interest is very laudable, but will anything change?

What message does this send to boys? They’re untouchable, their only mistake was in getting caught. And in getting caught, there is plenty of support to speak eloquently on the impact of their neurodiversities, their anxieties, their learning challenges, their friendship group. As the judge put it: these young boys ‘had low intelligence’, and a ‘limited understanding of consent’ adding that ‘peer pressure played a large part in what went on’. He praised the boys for their engagement with the CJS throughout the process, noting that ‘I think of you as very young and none of you have been in any big trouble before’. As @5teveh noted last week, the focus is on support, rehabilitation, an opportunity to reintegrate with society.

But what of the other children in the case, what message does this send to girls? They’re expendable, they should put up and shut up. No mention of their challenges, no recognition of what it took for those girls to report the violences unleashed upon them. No opportunities for support, other than that provided by woefully underfunded charities, no interest in their neurological development, their anxieties. No opportunities for reintegration, but another opportunity to let them know that they are what Simone de Beauvoir (1949) titled The Second Sex, their needs continually subjugated and secondary to those of men and boys.

We created and continue to create the conditions where violence against women and girls is normalised, part and parcel of British society. We might think we care deeply about the girls who were raped, but that care doesn’t extend to the 1. 9 million women who were the victims of rape or attempted rape, recorded in the Crime Survey for England and Wales [CSEW]. Neither does that care extend to the 739,000 women subjected to sexual abuse recorded in the same survey. It doesn’t even seem to extend to victims of femicide such as those recorded in the Femicide Census. Even when we pretend to care, like former minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, MP Jess Phillips, the language is all wrong, the victims in the case above are children, not as she described ‘young women‘. By describing them using adult terms, we automatically attribute greater responsibility to the daughters and not the sons. In doing so we show an understanding of childhood vulnerabilities for the boys, but not the girls.

If we really care, we have to consider what kind of society accepts that over 50% of its population are worth less?

*_{The kind of problems identified above are not unique to VAWG. Similar issues are apparent in relation to race, ethnicity and immigration but I need to leave that for another day.}