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Let’s pretend to care*
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.
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That’s not misogyny….it’s just your imagination
Imagine a little boy1 called Jimmy, he could be called, Aaron, Daniel, Joshua, Matthew, Samuel or any other other traditionally male name, but for expediency, we’ll call him Jimmy, short for James. From the moment of birth he becomes somebody’s son, the light of their lives, new beginnings for all. Lots of people comment, how lucky to have a boy, not that there’s anything wrong with girls, but a son is something special, somebody to carry on the family name. Gifts are bestowed, and anyone who has looked for children’s clothes recently, will see that tradition still holds sway, blue for a boy, pink for a girl. And what about toys, no dolls for little boys, unless they’re in military attire, instead, some bricks, some cars, a gun, something sporty, a ball, a bat, to keep their mind and body active. What about some books, we’re told that boys don’t really like those, a message they absorb quite readily, reading is hard to learn and requires patience and perseverance. Nevertheless, we don’t want Jimmy to be illiterate, so let’s find some books about his place in the world, tales of empire, princes and superheroes who save the world. Books that really centre the male experience, where girls and women are secondary characters to assist or be rescued, that’s if they appear at all. Think of all those traditional fairy tales where girls are told again and again to stay on the right path, to do as they’re told, to defer to the male characters. All this while the men are fighting dragons, ogres, travelling the world. But don’t forget he loves his mummy dearly, she understands him, that’s why she reads those stories to him.
All too soon little Jimmy has to leave his mother’s bosom and enter the world of formal education. Mummy tells him “boys don’t cry” whilst all the while worrying what school will do to their little boy who loves animals and cries when watching Bambi. Nevertheless, he is mummy’s “brave little soldier” and he will do his best to toughen up in the classroom, in the playground and on the playing fields. As we are told boys don’t really like girls games, they’re boring and dull, and even if they do, what will the other boys say? A steady drip drip of intolerance, never compromised, in the instruction of young Jimmy. When things go wrong, as they often do in human relationships, Jimmy’s behaviour is excused, he’s young, he’s enthusiastic, he’s exuberant, he’s misunderstood. And after all “boys will be boys”, he’s probably just ended up with the wrong crowd. He’s only playing, he’s only teasing, it’s only banter, nothing serious, nothing to get wound up about. We must be patient, after all boys mature much slower than girls, or so we are told. Give him time, give him space, he’ll grow out of it. But don’t forget he loves his mummy dearly, she understands him, she knows that he’s her “little hero”.
And what happens to the girls whilst they wait for little Jimmy to grow up? They learn too, they learn to take up less space, to stay out of Jimmy’s way, they learn to keep quiet, because nobody’s hearing, although everyone says they’re listening. The girls are whipping things out of all proportion, they don’t understand, they’re gunning for poor Jimmy who is such a delightful little boy , apart from when there’s no adults around. Anyway, Jimmy said sorry, begrudgingly and because he was told to, but it is an apology nonetheless. So there is no need to hold a grudge, let’s go back to where we were before you started your silly complaints to busy adults. Don’t forget nobody likes a girl that whines and nags, everybody benefits when they have a smile on their face and an eagerness to support and nurture, it doesn’t become a young lady to be tiresome and needy. So the powers that be excuse, minimise and ameliorate Jimmy’s behaviours, attitudes and actions. But don’t forget he loves his mummy dearly, she understands him, even if she does go on a bit.
So off Jimmy goes to university, where women predominate undergraduate studies. Here, there is less tolerance, for Jimmy’s behaviours, but there are plenty of others like him. All are focused on the transition from childhood to independent adult. There is more opportunity to live freely, to decide who you want to be, but there are also lots of challenges to your beliefs, your attitudes, your behaviours. Still that freedom, means you can avoid those difficult conversations in classrooms, you can keep your head down, you can focus on a different kind of education, one freely available from like-minded peers, the internet, AI etc. There’s nobody to chase you, to pick up after you, to make sure you’re not staying up too late, or getting in with the wrong crowd, there doesn’t appear to be any consequences. You don’t need to engage with women, their study groups, their friendships, their desire for education as an escape from their own mother’s experiences, Jimmy’s had years of being told what to do, how to think, how to behave, now he gets to decide, he’s in charge of his own destiny and those around him, need to sit up and take notice. But don’t forget he loves his mummy dearly, she understands him, she can empathise with how hard he works, how tough life is for her little Jimmy.
After university, Jimmy’s off to be a professional. A fully formed adult, with a degree under his belt, and a lifetime of reassurance that he’s supported. He didn’t get the degree classification he deserved, too many rules and regulations, too many classes, too many assessments, but that’s not his fault. Everyone knows there is a gender disparity in attainment, so it must be the fault of those academics, who tried to challenge his thinking because they don’t understand the real world. None of that matters now, he has a job, a career, and he’s going to change the world. By now he’s used to being listened to, all the times in headteachers’ offices where his behaviour was deconstructed, analysed and reinterpreted. His mummy, who had no opportunity to go to University, listens to her clever son who tells her how things are in the world. He talks about ideas and people that she’s never heard of, some with some very nasty things to say and she presumes this is what the educated discuss. Little does she know, this does not come from the classroom, but from podcasts, pornography, late night chats whilst playing violent video games, and little Jimmy’s banter with his mates. The problem is the women in his workplace, don’t like his banter, his jokes, his little comments. They’ve been working for a long time, alongside raising their own little Jimmys, and they know what this is. They sense the misogyny all around them, they’ve had a lifetime of feeling, hearing and seeing men like little Jimmy. They talk over them, they talk about them, they take their ideas and their work and they demean and diminish at every opportunity. They exaggerate their knowledge and experience and use ad hominem attacks and whataboutery to great effect. They take it for granted that they have something to say, that people want to listen to them. They sit in meetings and say “what about the men?” yet never, “what about the women?”. Anything to shift attention back to them, centre of attention, supported, enabled and encouraged. But don’t forget he loves his mummy dearly, she understands him, even if she does switch off when he goes off on one of his rants, after all he knows best, he’s her “clever little boy”.
But what about the women in little Jimmy’s workplace? They’ve seen it all before, they’ve read the fairy tales and they know that dragons can be vanquished, but only by men. They laugh and joke about their experiences with other women, but this dark humour, reverberates at night and in quiet moments, and they know they are avoiding confronting the issue. By doing this there is collectivity but they know such humour protects no girl or woman. But professionalism means they cannot tackle the problem head on, they cannot call it out for what it is, there are policies and processes, institutions must have evidence, what happened, when did it happen, who saw it happen, what did you do/say, have you tried an informal approach etc etc. Before the women even begin, they know that they’re at a grave disadvantage, after all little Jimmy is new, he’s ambitious, he’s enthusiastic, he’s exuberant, he’s misunderstood. Let’s see if we can get him some training, some unconscious bias, some cultural competency, some management expertise, the list goes on. But little Jimmy is well versed in avoiding challenge so he goes through the motions, another certificate to remind him of all that he has achieved. The women relearn what they already know from a lifetime’s experience, take up less space, stay out of Jimmy’s way, keep quiet, because nobody’s hearing, although everyone says they’re listening. The women are catastrophising, they don’t understand, they’ve got it in for little Jimmy who is so delightful when talking to management, but far less charming when nobody is around. Anyway, Jimmy declares remorse, begrudgingly, without ever mentioning the words sorry or apology, and only because he was told to, but it is an apology nonetheless. So there is no need to hold a grudge, let’s go back to where we were before you started your tedious complaints, it will make a happier workplace for all. Don’t forget nobody likes a woman that whines and nags, everybody benefits when they have a smile on their face and an eagerness to work hard and pick up the slack, it doesn’t become a lady to be tiresome and needy, so get back to work. Again the powerful excuse, minimise and ameliorate Jimmy’s behaviours, attitudes and actions. But don’t forget he loves his mummy dearly, and he deserves to rise to the top in whatever he does, after all he’s a “born leader” and those women will only waste the opportunity because of their biology.
A lifetime of always getting his way, nobody ever saying NO and actually meaning it, always somebody to make space, make time, make allowances, makes it very difficult to stop Jimmy’s misogynistic proclivities. He certainly would not recognise that misogyny has anything to do with him or his mates, what a Silly Billy. Instead, he carries on oblivious to the misery he leaves in his wake. But don’t forget he loves his mummy dearly, and it’s not his fault women misinterpret his intentions. But what happens when somebody says NO, and means it? In the very best case scenario little Jimmy take this as a learning opportunity, listening and actually hearing the words spoken to him, doing the important work on himself. If you want to know about the worse scenario, read the lived experiences encapsulated on the Everyday Sexism Project or Everyone’s Invited from which this blog entry has taken inspiration. You could also ask the women who pick up the pieces, mop up the tears, tend to the broken bodies and minds on a daily basis, by following the work of charities such Northamptonshire Rape Crisis and Eve Domestic Abuse. You could take the time to listen to the girls and women in your lives about their experiences, but proceed with caution, you may not be ready for what you might hear.
The words above are a figment of my imagination, but the content described happens everyday, all around us in plain sight. The story above is not just about Jimmy, but lots of Jimmys, whose misogynistic attitudes and behaviours are facilitated, encouraged and tolerated by all of us. Men, women, institutions, society are complicit in the continuation and perpetuation of misogyny. In the UK and further afield, adults, children and institutions continue to operate within the parameters of the British Empire, enabling attitudes such as misogyny, racism, homophobia, disablism and all of the other miseries to continue unabated. However, much we might want to pretend these attitudes are outdated and the behaviours, simply symptomatic of an overactive imagination, if you open your eyes you will see it all around you. It is not enough to wring our hands whilst watching Adolescence or Eastenders or Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, kidding ourselves this doesn’t happen around us, only to other people. Bear in mind also, that the attention is always focused on the male characters, as always, girls and women are bit players, secondary to the main story, appearing only as victims and survivors and often causal factors in their own victimisation (see Jimmy’s mum above). Programmes such as these, offer the promise of awareness raising, but we swiftly move onto the next offering. We all have a responsibility to call out misogyny, to listen when girls and women try to explain their experiences, and the powerful have a duty to protect all, not just some of our society. If you don’t understand or recognise another’s experiences, don’t dismiss, ask questions, centre that person’s dialogue and then act on it.
- I have deliberately focused on girls and women, at the expense of other intersectionalities such as race, religion, sexuality, age and disability, simply because the problem is just too large for a single blog entry. But you could consider the misery of misogynoir or hijabophobia or many other contexts in which male supremacy continues to have a devastating and generational impact on individual lives. ↩︎
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A Love Letter: in praise of board games
This my fifth love letter, previously I have written in praise of poetry, art, Agatha Christie and the Thoughts from the Criminology Team blog. Since early childhood, I have loved playing games and today’s entry is dedicated to this form of media. In the early years, the focus on fun is paramount, after all who wants to play a dull game? Equally important, the educational aim of games is sometimes explicit, other times less so. Nevertheless, they help us learn to match and sort colours and shapes, to develop our counting skills in an applied setting and improve our memory recall, as well as spelling. Games likes Snap, Happy Families, Hungry Hippos, Snakes and Ladders, Guess Who, Junior Scrabble offer a variety of different ways for children to learn important skills whilst playing. These games enable even very small children to share space, develop important interpersonal skills like taking turns and learn to deal with winning, and of course, losing. Often the latter is a very slow and painful lesson to learn….and one that isn’t always remembered into adulthood!
Of course, one of the most explicit part of playing games is learning the rules of the game, and of course, what happens when we deviate from those rules. It might lead to the loss of a turn or even forfeiture of the entire game. People interpret rules in different ways and families often develop their own “house” rules, but nevertheless there is always an agreed upon set of rules and a way of policing and punishing those who break them.
But once these lessons have been learned, what do games have to teach us as adults? I would say plenty! On a surface level, they offer an opportunity to relax and do something outside of our humdrum lives. Once the games have been purchased, they generally cost nothing to play unlike other forms of leisure time.1 Some can be played alone, others require competitors or even teams. They can aid our thinking, concentration and develop skills of strategy and tactics. They also have the general benefit of not being all consuming (unless at competition level), allowing for conversation to flow. The latter, conversing whilst doing something else, can often be useful for difficult emotional conversations, allowing people to open up without pressure (known colloquially as “health by stealth”).
But do board games have anything to offer to Criminology? Again, I would argue yes! Most games involve chance or luck, will you get the numbers you need, will you have the right pieces/cards in your hand, will the other person play their game in a way that benefits you? It is easy to recognise the role that luck or chance plays in games, but are we equally aware of their role in our lives. More importantly, as criminologists do we fully understand and acknowledge the role played by both in relation to criminality and victimisation?
We have no choice about whether we are born or not, when and where we arrive on the earth, who our parents are. These are all down to forces outside our individual and collective control. Our upbringing, our education, our employment opportunities are largely constrained by geography, money and influence. Compare the opportunities available to a baby born today in Sudan, with one born in the UK, another born in Palestine, and another born in Finland. Compare again, thinking about race, sex, class, disability, sexuality and so on. Very quickly you begin to understand the role played by chance and luck.
So if all of the above are imponderables, how much of a role does luck play in relation to criminality and victimisation? The regular publication of data relating to crime in postcodes, towns/cities and globally show huge diversity in the chance of victimisation. Lucky you, if you were born and live in the ‘Nordic countries of Europe (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland) who rank among the 25 safest globally, most of them also being among the top 10 happiest nations worldwide’. Less fortunate, if you were born in Haiti, Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan or Iraq identified as some of the most dangerous places on earth currently. It is not very difficult to imagine the difference in opportunities in fundamental human rights; food, shelter, healthcare, education and so on. In war ridden nations it is incredibly difficult to separate different typologies of victimisation and for the individuals living under these conditions, it makes no meaningful difference who is/are the perpetrators.
Even if you are living in a “peaceful” state2 such as the UK, there are vast differences in the opportunities available. If you have money you can buy a car to get to work in your evening/night job, if you don’t, maybe you can take a bus, failing that you can walk. Each of those journeys carries its own risks. Your sex, your race, your ethnicity, your sexuality, your abilities/disabilities, your age add the aggravating/mitigating factors and see your risk increase/decrease. All a matter of chance and luck
What about criminality, is this, as the Classical School of Criminology would have us accept, a matter of free will, weighing up the pros and cons and making a deliberate and calculating choice to commit crime? Or can we also identify the same issues of luck and chance as shown above? If your family is loving, everyone has good health, housing is secure, food is plentiful and there are plenty of educational and employment opportunities in your area, would you still choose a life of crime? If there is violence at home, poverty impacts health, housing and regular meals, making it challenging to study or work, would you perceive crime to be a choice?
And what of those board game rules and consequences, real life has its own rules, some written in the forms of laws, others engrained via family, friends, institutions; the norms of our society. In the board game, these rules apply equally (aside from luck and chance) but in real life, not so much. Consider racial and ethnic disproportionality and the treatment of vulnerable women in the CJS, as just two examples. We may all be playing in the same “Game of Life”, but luck, chance and the rules we are subjected to are very different when it comes to criminality and victimisation.
- I appreciate that there are some very expensive board games out there, as well as expansion packs to enhance play. ↩︎
- There are lots of academic arguments around what constitutes a peaceful state, most agree that it more than just the absence of war. Whilst the UK has not seen active warfare on its shores for decades, its military has been involved in conflict throughout the world for more than a century. ↩︎
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Let’s talk about sex!
Very few topics receive attention as much as sex. A very primal human behaviour that gets people talking. In Criminology any discussion on sex contains those elements that make it less than appealing, abuse, exploitation and violation. Our focus on the criminal dimensions of sexual behaviour can disfigure the way we talk about it and misrepresent the joys of sex. It can be argued however that outlining the negatives gives way to a positive outlook to sex in a similar way to health professional’s focus on avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, leading to a healthy sexual life.
Sex is about affirming social relations, as part of our own intimacy. There is a variety on sex from feelings, practices and expressions that is as wide as humanity itself. It is a language we talk that needs no translation. This is why that abusive behaviours are regarded such a violation of the person. Rape, legally, is as serious as murder. The person victimised is losing something so intimate that it may never be recovered; one of the many reasons why people who suffered abuse are called survivors.
Our perspectives on sex changes and our society tried to accommodate them. Some years ago, Holland decided to include some scenes on “public liberal expressions on sexuality” as part of their material for their immigration test. This is a marked difference from the UK who decriminalised homosexuality but only behind closed doors.
Criminologically speaking there are certain elements that safeguard sexual behaviours. Age, relation, location and consent. The age of consent is recognising the minimum age any person can be legally responsible to engage in sexual relations. Under that age and it is statutory rape. Any relationship between close relatives in the UK can lead to imprisonment. Any sexual acts in public are regarded illegal, including sex in public toilets (cottaging) so sex remains behind closed doors. The final point is the most controversial; consent is paramount to any sexual relations. The important thing in sex is that we choose to engage with others or not.
Part of the criminological process is to ascertain how we understand consent and disseminate it to others. Academically there are several issues to consider and to investigate. This is one of criminology’s strengths to tap into the sociological and philosophical discourses offering some practical perspectives. In recent years the discussion about sex on campus for example has been one that raised awareness on consent. In criminology we discuss it in ways to amplify the importance of consent in sex and in relationships in general.
For a long time now, we have talked about safe spaces as a mechanism of allowing people to talk without judgement. We focus on educational practices that are focused on inclusion and empathy and disseminate work that challenges established notions that mythologise sexual relations and minimise the importance of consent.
Let’s explore some of the key points we disseminate. Sex is an individual right for all regardless of origin or identity, which makes it also a universal right. Law safeguards sexual relations, but the lack of reporting of sexual violence, the low conviction rate of those processed cases and the volume of unknowns underscore that we cannot resolve sexual violence legally. We cannot police sexual relations when our community does not prioritise the importance of safeguarding human rights. What we can do instead is to change that social discourse on sex. In one of my previous posts, I underscored the irony of proliferating legal interventions, whilst culturally we seem happy to receive expressions on misogyny, abuse and exploitation as legitimate expressions on sexuality. Policing sexual behaviours for example comes with a long history of retaining the straight man’s privilege of pleasure over all others. A privilege long retained unchallenged making the work of current and future criminologists even more pressing! At the end of this month, it is International Day of Consent in November 30, so from today until the end of the month, ask yourself what you have done to change the established narrative to make your own space more inclusive.
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Gen Z’s gender divide
How can we help bridge Gen Z’s global gender divide as they negotiate for their futures? Unique to Gen Z, according to a recent study, women and men aged 16 to 29 diverge greatly on how they perceive existing inequality as well as assess their futures. That’s according to a widely-reported King’s College study, ‘Emerging tensions? How younger generations are dividing on masculinity and gender equality’, which also found:
- Men are around twice as likely as women to say doing housework and caring for family members are things that apply to both genders equally, despite evidence showing that in reality women do more of both on average. (See also: the Mental Load)
- A higher proportion of men also think there is no gender difference in likelihood of being a senior manager or earning a high income, yet research suggests these characteristics apply to men more than women in the UK. (See also: the UK government’s Gender Pay Gap index, and the Economist)
Family and parental leave – is just one way home and work lives overlap in policy, practice and legislation, acknowledging the importance of unpaid (domestic) labour. BBC news reports on one study that found, “men who take paternity leave do more childcare later.” How might these ‘emerging tensions’ impact the gender inequality in parental leave laws, policies, and practices?
One trend is for companies to create equal and pro-social family policies far beyond laws, not least of which is hybrid working. Flexible/hybrid work has been a lobbying target long before Covid by the Fawcett Society, which champions the Equal Pay Day campaign, and consults the government on the Gender Pay Gap. In 2023 their data highlighted that: “77% of women agreed that they would be more likely to apply for a job that advertises flexible working options.”
Other parental leave policies are gender-neutral, include IVF, adoptive and LGBTQAI+ parents, incentivise paternity leave, and host gendered employee networks. How else will these ‘emerging tensions’ show up in the workplace? One wonders how are other policies and practices promoting a fairer workplace and a healthier work/life balance?
It’s hard out here for…
Notably, all sorts of business news outlets have been reporting about this issue, and more recently about King’s College study, including Forbes, which found it curious that: “for those aged between 16 and 29…some 68% of women said that it was harder to be a woman, while only 35% of men agreed with that statement.” This article shines light on a gap and leaves it at that.
The Guardian has produced a series of articles and podcasts about the growing number of studies and polls reflecting this same cross-gender cultural rift: Here are a few headlines from just this past February:
1/2/24: Gen Z boys and men more likely than baby boomers to believe feminism harmful, says poll.
2/2/24: Friday briefing: Why the politics of young men and women are drifting further and further apart.
7/2/24: Why is generation Z so divided on gender? [Podcast]
Reporting on the study, The Independent headlines: “Of course Gen Z boys believe feminism is harmful – they’ve learnt it from the internet.” Indeed, the author reminds us that social media is quite apt at seeding and feeding division. “Algorithms often operate on extremes: because people tend to click on and engage with the most sensational, hyperbolic content, this is what the algorithm serves up.” Subsequently, young men and women grew up in two very different virtual worlds.
Feminism, the new F-word
According to the King’s College study: 42% of the public say, “equal rights … have had a positive impact on today’s young men.” This is acknowledged in the 2019 Government Equalities Office report, Changing Gender Norms: Engaging with Men and Boys, regarding the Advertising Standards Authority’s guidance on toxic masculine images, stating: “stereotypes implying that men should be physically strong, unemotional and family breadwinners are limiting and potentially damaging.”
Ironically, my career began in international development, which has long since addressed the role of boys and men in gender equality and masculinities, especially through the lens of sexual and reproductive health. In parallel, the work to decriminalise LGBTQAI+ communities simultaneously made alternative masculinities more visible to the wider society which lead even more to question, well frankly, patriarchy.
Still, in America, the majority, “whether they identify as feminists or not – say it is very important for women to have equal rights with men.” Could this be cognitive dissonance?
As these changes grow in wider society, we see organisations responding externally, e.g. virtue-signalling, diversity training, and rainbow advertising. How will organizations shift internally, e.g. in recruitment, retention, leadership, and reward?
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Pregnancy and Lavender Fields
If being a women means that you will experience harm due to your socially constructed sex/gender, being pregnant and a mother certainly adds to this. The rose-tinted view of pregnancy implies that pregnancy is the most wonderful of experiences. There is imagery of the most privileged of mothers with their pregnancy ‘glow’, in fields of [insert flower here] holding their bumps with the largest of smiles. Outside of smiles and lavender field imagery, judgment is reserved for pregnant women who do not enjoy pregnancy. In a world of ‘equality gone mad’, it seems that whilst some pregnant women may have a variety of hurdles to face, it is presumed that they should carry on living in the exact same way as those who are not pregnant.
Maybe you lose your job upon becoming pregnant and your workplace does not provide you with sick pay when needed. Maybe it is harder for you to access healthcare and screenings due to racism and xenophobia. Perhaps it is a Covid-19 pandemic, your boss is a bit disgruntled that you are pregnant and despite the legal guidance stating that pregnant people should isolate you are told that you need to work anyway. Or perhaps you are quite ill during your pregnancy, you must try to cope and continue to work regardless, but must also hide this sickness from your customers and colleagues. Whilst at the same time it is unlikely that there are places for you to rest or be sick/ill in peace. If any time is taken off work you may then be considered as being work-shy by some. Despite it being well documented that some pregnancy related ill-health conditions, like hyperemesis, have serious consequences, such as the termination of pregnancy, death and mothers taking their own lives (with or without suitable interventions).
Before labour, if you go to the triage room screaming in pain, maybe you will need to wait some time at the reception for staff to assist you, and perhaps you may be asked to ‘be quiet’ so as to not disturb the equilibrium of the waiting room. Maybe your labour is incredibly painful but apparently you must ‘take it like a champ’ and pain relief medication may be withheld. Maybe you will receive a hefty bill from the NHS for their services due to your undocumented migrant status, refused asylum application or have no recourse to public funds. If experiencing pain post-labour, maybe your pain is disregarded, and you face life-threatening consequences due to this.
Once you become a mother maybe you are more exhausted than your partner, maybe your partner is a abusive, maybe they cannot push a pram, change nappies, calm a crying baby because of toxic masculinity. If your baby becomes upset (as they do sometimes) whilst out and about you may need a quite low sensory place to feed them, or for them to relax but there is nowhere suitable to go. If looking flustered or a bit dishevelled whilst out maybe you are treated as a shop-lifting suspect by security and shop assistants.
If you have the privilege of being able to return to work, ensure that you return within the optimum time frame as having too much or too little time off work is not viewed as desirable. Also, make sure you have some more babies but not too many as both would be deemed selfish. Whether you breastfeed or provide formula both options are apparently wrong, in different ways. If you do breastfeed and need to use a breast pump whilst returning to work you may find that there are no/or a limited amount of suitable rooms available on public transport, at transport hubs, in public venues and workplaces for using a breast pump. This, among with other factors, such as the state of the economy, the lack of/a poor amount of maternity pay, and childcare costs, make the ability to both maintain formal employment and be present as a healthy mother difficult. Notably, the differences, extent and severity of harmful experiences differ depending on power, your status and identity attributes, if your gender does not neatly fit into the white privileged/women/female/mother box you will face further challenges.
It seems that society, its institutions and people want babies to be produced but do not want to deal with the realities that come with pregnancy and motherhood.
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The dance of the vampires
We value youth. There is greater currency in youth, far greater than wisdom, despite most people when they are looking back wishing they had more wisdom in life. Modernity brought us the era of the picture and since then we have become captivated with images. Pictures, first black and white, then replaced by moving images, and further replaced by colour became an antidote to a verbose society that now didn’t need to talk about it…it simply became a case of look and don’t talk!
The image became even more important when people turned the cameras on themselves. The selfie, originally a self-portrait of reclusive artists evolved into a statement, a visual signature for millions of people using it every day on social media. Enter youth! The engagement with social media is regarded the gift of computer scientists to the youth of today. I wonder how many people know that one of the first images sent as a jpeg was that of a Swedish Playboy playmate the ‘lady with the feathers’. This “captivating” image was the start of the virtual exchange of pictures that led to billions of downloads every day and social media storing an ever-expanding array of images.
The selfie, brought with it a series of challenges. How many times can you take a picture, even of the most beautiful person, before you become accustomed to it. Before you say, well yes that is nice, but I have seen it before. To resolve the continuous exposure the introduction of filters, backgrounds and themes seems to add a sense of variety. The selfie stick (banned from many museums the world over) became the equipment, along with the tripod, the lamp and the must have camera, with the better lens in the pursue of the better selfie. Vanity never had so many accessories!
The stick is an interesting tool. It tells the individual nature of the selfie. The voyage that youthful representation takes across social media is not easy, it is quite a solitary one. In the representation of the image, youth seem to prefer. The top “influencers” are young, who mostly like to pose and sometimes even offer some advice to their followers. Their followers, their contemporaries or even older individuals consume their images like their ‘daily (visual) bread’. This seems to be a continuous routine, where the influencer produces images, and the followers watch them and comment. What, if anything, is peculiar about that? Nothing! We live in a society build on consumption and the industry of youth is growing. So, this is a perfect marriage of supply and demand. Period!
Or is it? In the last 30 years in the UK alone the law on protecting children and their naivety from exploitation has been centre stage of several successive governments. Even when discussing civil partnerships for same sex couples, Baroness Young, argued against the proposed act, citing the protection of children. Youth became a precious age that needed protection and nurturing. The law created a layer of support for children, particularly those regarded vulnerable. and social services were drafted in to keep them safe and away from harm. In instances when the system failed, there has been public outrage only to reinforce the original notion that children and young people are to be protected in our society.
That is exactly the issue here! In the Criminology of the selfie! Governments introducing policies to generate a social insulation of moral righteousness that is predicated on individual – mostly parental – responsibility. The years of protective services and we do not seem to move passed them. In fact, their need is greater than ever. Are we creating bad parents through bad parenting or are people confronted with social forces that they cannot cope with? The reality is that youth is more exposed than ever before. The images produced, unlike the black and white photos of the past, will never fade away. Those who regret the image they posted, can delete it from their account, but the image is not gone. It shall hover over them for the eternity of the internet. There is little to console and even less to help. During the lockdown, I read the story of the social carer who left their job and opened an OnlyFans account. These are private images provided to those who are willing to pay. The reason this experience became a story, was the claim that the carer earned in one month of OnlyFans, more than their previous annual income. I saw the story being shared by many young people, tagging each other as if saying, look at this. The image that captures their youth that can become a trap to contain them in a circle of youth. Because in life, before the certainty of death there is another one, that of aging and in a society that values youth so much, can anyone be ready to age?
As for the declared care for the young, would a society that cares have been closing the doors to HE, to quality apprenticeships, a living wage and a place to live? The same society that stirs emotions about protection, wants young people to stay young so that they cannot ask for their share in their future. The social outrage about paedophiles is countered with high exposure to a particular genre in the movies and literature that promotes it. The vampire that has been fashioned as young adult literature is the proverbial story of an (considerably) older man who deflowers a young innocent girl until she becomes infatuated with him. The movies can be visually stunning because it involves the images of young beautiful people but there is hardly any mention of consent or care!
It is one of the greatest ironies to revive the vampire image in youth culture. A cultural representation of a male prototype that is manipulative, intruding into the lives of seemingly innocent young people who become his prey. There is something incredibly unsettling to explore the semiology of an immortal that is made through a blood ritual. A reverse Peter Pan who consumes the youth of his victims. The popularity of this Victorian literary character, originally conceived in the era of industrial advancement,at a time when modernity challenged tradition, resurfaces with other monsters at times of great uncertainty. The era of the picture has not made everyday life easier, and modernity did not improve quality of life to the degree it proclaimed. Instead, whilst people are becoming captivated by ephemera they are focused on the appearance and missing substance. An old experience man, dark, mysterious with white skin may be an appealing character in literature but in real life a someone who feeds on young people’s blood is hardly an exciting proposition.
The blood sacrifice demanded by a vampire is a metaphor of what our society requires for those who wish to retain youth and save their image into the ether of the cyberworld as a permanent Portrait of Dorian Gray. In this context, the vampire is not only a man in power, using his privilege to dominate, but a social representation of what a consumer society places as the highest value. It is life’s greatest irony that the devouring power of a vampire is becoming a representation of how little value we place on both youth and life! A society focused on appearance, ignoring the substance. Youth looking but not youth caring!
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Calling All Dads: Girls Girls Girls wanted. #SpokenWord
Calling all dads.
Reward for the first hundred daughters!
Calling all dads, Magic City Club is recruiting!
Magic city is the most elite strip joint in the world,
Any dad should be proud to have his daughter work for us!
We value our customers and want to give YOU the chance to shape Magic City Club’s future.
So we’re recruiting.
PLEASE send your daughters in right away.
We need your girls, girls, girls.
The most beautiful daughters in the world, we ask all dads to send them now.
You’re our valued-customers so you know MCC is about quality!
Send them in to Magic City Club, by express, in a rush, by plane or by bus!
Hurry, hurry, hurry we need girls – quick – these polls aren’t going to oil them selves.
We don’t care how you get these girls here we need strippers now!
Now we know this is a difficult task,
So we are offering a reward for the first hundred daughters!
The first hundred days to send in their daughters will get a lifetime ticket!
A lifetime supply of girls swinging on poles, every dad’s dream.
So send in your daughters, and the first hundred new donors receive a lifetime supply of free entry to any of our prestigious establishments around the world for you and a party of 10 men.
Imagine how your career will explore when you bring your colleagues on an annual, all-expense-paid trip to Magic city, and enjoy some other men’s daughters swinging from the polls. Swish. Slide. Spin, Twirl. And flap, flat on the ground, she’s in a split!
Dads, you will not be missed on any neighbor’s Christmas list when you invite the dads from your hood right on down to Magic City.
Don’t miss Father’s Day. Each year, Luxury Life Liquors sponsors our special Father’s Day event and fills pool on stage with whiskey. Watch these girls swim like mermaids. After the show, you know MC doesn’t waste good liquor.
Magic City.
It’s magic.
And somebody’s daughter has got to do it, has got to swing from these polls!
Act now, send in yours! Send in your daughters right away.
As our valued customer, you know Magic City Club has a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy for the backrooms, so: Employer shall be not liable for sexual harassment, STD’s, or in any way held responsible for unwanted pregnancies.
We provide the costumes; daughters must provide their own contraception.
Yours truly,
The management
*P.S. Magic City Club is not affiliated with that MC strip joint all the rappers rap about.
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Kisses from Granny Don’t Count! #BlackenAsiaWithLove #ShortStory
In America, and most certainly in the land of Dixie and cotillions, at the end of junior high school year we have a tradition of getting our senior class rings. By “getting,” I mean individually buying a ring from the same one or two companies in our city who cash in on this ritual annually. We knew that many of us had to foot the bill with our own after-school jobs, while others’ parents could virtually write a blank check! (Hopefully, at least, or perhaps most assuredly, somebody in the school system gets a kickback from all this cash flow.)
While class rings appeared personalized, the rings – and the ritual – were effectively mass manufactured, complete with standardized shapes and design features: school’s name and mascot – in our case a bear – class year (1993!), and maybe our initials inscribed inside. Oh, and a heteronormative adolescent sexualized ritual to which I shall return shortly.
Rings are generally presented at a school ceremony. Until graduation, class rings are worn facing the wearer as motivation towards the ultimate achievement, after which it is worn outward as a badge of pride and honor. A graduating class could all agree to the same design – usually the school colors – which I believe the majority of my class did. While I prefer the look of silver against my dark skin, our school colors were royal blue and gold, so classes at our school often got blue sapphire set in the lowest Karat gold available that didn’t look cheap. For such a notoriously liberal school (i.e., gender and racially/geographically* integrated by design), this was one of the few explicit acts of conformity.
‘You Wear it Well’ – DeBarge, 1985
The next part of the tradition is having 100 different people turn the ring, as sort of an acknowledgement of becoming a senior. The first 99 turn it in one direction, while the final person reverses the order. This clockwise/counter-clockwise turn seals the deal. Yet get this, you’re supposed to kiss the hundredth person who turns the ring. You say the word “kiss” in front of most any group of adolescents and they’ll giggle. We knew what kind of kiss was meant. FRENCH like fries! Somehow becoming a senior in high school had been coopted by this hetero-ritual, a hetero-rite of passage (het-or-no-rites!).
I am troubled that this academic milestone is linked to gender. Worse, the ritual is predictably a performance act that fixes gender to normative sexual roles; yes, heteropatriarchy. Worse still, this binary gender performance is discrete, couched in achieving a basic education.
The ring dealer comes to school and makes a sales pitch to the class, and sets up a booth in the lobby after school. In his pitch, he promises a ‘free’ glossy little form to collect all the signatures. It was a bait and switch. These dealers sold us the rings but gave us the forms, the evidence we needed to prove we’d passed another stage towards adulthood. And what were we supposed to do with the blank glossy forms? Come back to school and boast?
The first 50 or so signatures were just us. Our own schoolmates turning each other’s rings, filling in each other’s forms on the very day the rings arrived. Family filled in a lot, too. I distinctly remember a teacher or two requesting to be excluded from the tradition, or take part in the ring ritual of becoming a senior, else we whittle their fingers away.
We all know everybody only wanted to see who signed the final line – a prompt to incite heteronormalizing speech-acts. Well, a few folks weren’t single and already had that 100th spot reserved and filled by sundown. Needless to say, kisses from granny don’t count! I’m pretty sure this wasn’t written on the dealer’s well-crafted sheet. Our market dominated, heteronormative introduction to adulthood for all to see.
I’d attended the same school since second grade so I’d seen people celebrate this class ring ritual for years, and even attended several graduations. I’d watched the “Senior run” year after year – a day at the end of school, when the graduating class runs through all the halls, cheering, banging on lockers as all the kids in all the classes rush out to line the hallways and egg them on. I loved school, adored our school, adored my classmates, and even looked forward to our turn, though parting so bittersweet.
At 16, I was only starting to be able to fully disidentify with the barrage of heterosexualized norms that engulfed me. I had to disentangle heterosexuality from virtually every facet of life – even finishing high school, a normal step we’re all expected to take. It’s as if to gain access to what bell hooks calls ‘the good life’ one had to signify alignment with compulsory heterosexuality.
I knew that I could not even turn my ring 100 times without kissing a girl. No way I’d risk putting a guy’s name at the end of that glossy list – someone I’d actually dreamt of French-kissing. Not like I knew any guy who’d be game. Damn. This was a lot of pressure. This junior prom was forcing me to make all kinds of adult decisions.
“The more I get of you, the stranger it feels…”
I was 16, and wasn’t out yet. Unlike at twelve when these feelings first bubbled over, by 16 I was on the cusp of self-acceptance, and preparing to face this possibility that I was gay. Perhaps it was pure timing. By the 11thgrade I knew for sure I’d be leaving home months after graduation, which was suddenly within reach. I could chart my own homo path. But still, at that age, I had doubts. I tried seriously dating a young woman as my last-ditch effort to see if I was straight or (at least) bisexual.
Kaye wasn’t a classmate, which wouldn’t have worked anyway because in retrospect all my classmates already knew, and had decided to accept me without question. Kaye attended an all-girls’ school, so we’d met through an extracurricular, Black youth empowerment program. Kaye was clearly college bound. She had her own dreams and ambitions, and pursued them – an ideal mate for me. She was the most attractive woman I knew, both inside and out, both to me and others. Yes, THAT sister who is not invulnerable, but has it all together. If she didn’t do, then dammit I was gay!
Fortunately, my girl was smart. And by smart, I mean that she was intelligent, real smart as in NOT clueless at all. We agreed to a kiss on the cheek, and she’d sign the last line on my glossy form. And by ‘agreed to’, I mean that this is what Kaye put on the table as her firm and final offer. She also had the good sense to let me turn her ring, too, but she reserved the 100th signature for someone special. I respected that. This clarified our plutonic status – no Facebook updates needed: I’m gay.
“Gotta find out what I meant to you…You were sweet as cheery pie/ Wild as Friday night”
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Do we have to care?
In recently published The end-to-end rape review report on findings and actions the responsible minister admitted that “victims of rape [are] being failed”. This stark admission is based on data that indicates that the current situation on dealing with rape is far worst than 5 years ago. The ministers are “ashamed” of the data but luckily in their report they offer some suggestions on how to improve things; what to do to bring the conviction rates to the 2016 level and to move more cases forward for trial, leading to successful convictions. At that point, the report presents the Criminal Justice System [CJS] as a singular entity that needs to address the issue collectively. This, in part, is a fair assessment although it ignores the cultural differences of the constituent parts of the system. Nonetheless, the government has identified a problem, commissioned a report and has a clear “ambitious” plan of how to address it.
The report indeed presents some interesting findings and I urge people to review it whenever they can (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/end-to-end-rape-review-report-on-findings-and-actions). We know for example already that the number of cases that went into prosecution were low; in the last years this has become even lower. That despite the prevalence rate remaining more or less the same. Victims report that they are treated poorly, not believed arguing that the investigative model needs changing. No wonder the ministers appear apologetic of the situation. A headline crime category that is likely to cause an uproar and whilst thinking of the political fallout they come out in support of the victims! Who wouldn’t? Supporting a victim of crime, any crime is one of the main objectives of the CJS; once they have handed out retribution and prioritised on making an example of specific crimes and focusing on particular criminals, then their focus is on the victims! The findings were expected, but even so when reading about the higher vulnerability of disabled women to rape and sexual abuse, underscores the systemic failure to deal with this crime. It does not read like care!
If I was an agitator, I would say that a criminal committing rape has less chance (statistically) to be convicted than someone who commits theft; but then I will be making a criminological cardinal sin; conflating criminalities and confusing the data. In our profession we deal with data all the time. Many of them come in the form of metrics looking at the way different crimes are reported, recorded etc. We also know that context gives a perspective to these data. Numbers may look the same, but that is arguably part of the problem. It does not take into account the source of the data and their circumstances. Not all numbers are the same and most importantly they do not measure similar trends. The way the success rates are to be measured is not dissimilar from before and without owning a magic ball, it can be foreseen that rape will remain as is. Of course, the metrics may change colour to signal improvement, but that will not alter the fundamental issues.
On the day, one may have their car broken into, to report the incident can be a requirement from their insurance if they are to cover the cost. On the day, the said person got raped by a current/former partner the matter is not about insurance. These acts are not similar and to treat criminality as a singularity draws up uneven comparisons. In this case we have a list of recommendations trying to ameliorate the bad metrics. What are the recommendations? The focus is again on the police and the Crime Prosecution Service [CPS] and the court experience the victims will have. Again, indicates that these institutions have been criticised before for similar failings. The change of practices in the police does not go as far as exploring the institutional culture. The CPS’s requirement to do more is tied with the successful cases they will prosecute. The need for the two organisations to work together more closely has been a discussion point for the last 20 years; as for the better experience in courts, it is definitely welcomed but in recent years, Victim Support as an organisation was stripped bare, the additional services cut and the domestic violence shelters disappearing. The call for more services was continuously met with the offer of voluntary organisations stepping in, into such a complex area to provide help and support. One may think that if we are to prioritise on victim experience these services may need to become professional and even expand the current ones.
Lastly in this document the tone is clear; the focus yet again is reactionary. We have some bad data that we need to change somehow; we have got some clear action plans and we can measure them (as the report intimates) at regular times. This approach is the main problem on dealing with rape! It does not offer any interventions prior to the crime. There is nothing to deal say with rape culture, the degradation of women, the inequality and the rape myths that women are still subjected to. Interestingly there are mention of empathy toward the rape victim but there is not a plan to instil empathy for people more widely. No plan to engage the educational system with respect for the other (whoever the other is; a woman, a person of colour, disability, different origin) regarding sexual behaviours. The report tenuously mentions consent (or lack of understanding it) instead of making plans how it can be understood across. Unfortunately, this crime reveals the challenges we face in the discipline but also the challenges we face as a society that has traded care for metrics and the tyranny of managerialism.
Thoughts from the criminology team 