Laura Bates

An Open Letter to Facebook

2013-05-21T09:09:56-04:00

We, the undersigned, are writing to demand swift, comprehensive and effective action addressing the representation of rape and domestic violence on Facebook. Specifically, we call on you, Facebook, to take three actions:

Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that you will not tolerate this content.

Effectively train moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.

Effectively train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

To this end, we are calling on Facebook users to contact advertisers whose ads on Facebook appear next to content that targets women for violence, to ask these companies to withdraw from advertising on Facebook until you take the above actions to ban gender-based hate speech on your site.

Specifically, we are referring to groups, pages and images that explicitly condone or encourage rape or domestic violence or suggest that they are something to laugh or boast about. Pages currently appearing on Facebook include Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus, Kicking your Girlfriend in the Fanny because she won't make you a Sandwich, Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs, Raping your Girlfriend and many, many more. Images appearing on Facebook include photographs of women beaten, bruised, tied up, drugged, and bleeding, with captions such as "This bitch didn't know when to shut up" and "Next time don't get pregnant."

These pages and images are approved by your moderators, while you regularly remove content such as pictures of women breastfeeding, women post-mastectomy and artistic representations of women's bodies. In addition, women's political speech, involving the use of their bodies in non-sexualized ways for protest, is regularly banned as pornographic, while pornographic content - prohibited by your own guidelines - remains. It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women's bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women's nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse. Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke.

The latest global estimate from the United Nations Say No UNITE campaign is that the percentage of women and girls who have experienced violence in their lifetimes is now up to an unbearable 70 percent. In a world in which this many girls and women will be raped or beaten in their lifetimes, allowing content about raping and beating women to be shared, boasted and joked about contributes to the normalisation of domestic and sexual violence, creates an atmosphere in which perpetrators are more likely to believe they will go unpunished, and communicates to victims that they will not be taken seriously if they report.

According to a UK Home Office Survey, one in five people think it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit or slap his wife or girlfriend in response to her being dressed in sexy or revealing clothes in public. And 36 percent think a woman should be held fully or partly responsible if she is sexually assaulted or raped whilst drunk. Such attitudes are shaped in part by enormously influential social platforms like Facebook, and contribute to victim blaming and the normalisation of violence against women.

Although Facebook claims, not to be involved in challenging norms or censoring people's speech, you have in place procedures, terms and community guidelines that you interpret and enforce. Facebook prohibits hate speech and your moderators deal with content that is violently racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic every day. Your refusal to similarly address gender-based hate speech marginalizes girls and women, sidelines our experiences and concerns, and contributes to violence against us. Facebook is an enormous social network with more than a billion users around the world, making your site extremely influential in shaping social and cultural norms and behaviors.

Facebook's response to the many thousands of complaints and calls to address these issues has been inadequate. You have failed to make a public statement addressing the issue, respond to concerned users, or implement policies that would improve the situation. You have also acted inconsistently with regards to your policy on banning images, in many cases refusing to remove offensive rape and domestic violence pictures when reported by members of the public, but deleting them as soon as journalists mention them in articles, which sends the strong message that you are more concerned with acting on a case-by-case basis to protect your reputation than effecting systemic change and taking a clear public stance against the dangerous tolerance of rape and domestic violence.

In a world in which hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted daily and where intimate partner violence remains one of the leading causes of death for women around the world, it is not possible to sit on the fence. We call on Facebook to make the only responsible decision and take swift, clear action on this issue, to bring your policy on rape and domestic violence into line with your own moderation goals and guidelines.

Sincerely,
Laura Bates, The Everyday Sexism Project
Soraya Chemaly, Writer and Activist
Jaclyn Friedman, Women, Action & the Media (WAM!)
Angel Band Project
Anne Munch Consulting, Inc.
Association for Progressive Communications Women's Rights Programme
Black Feminists
The Body is Not An Apology
Breakthrough
Catharsis Productions
Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation
Collective Action for Safe Spaces
Collective Administrators of Rapebook
CounterQuo
End Violence Against Women Coalition
The EQUALS Coalition
Fem 2.0
Feminist Peace Network
The Feminist Wire
FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture
A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World
Hollaback!
Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault
Jackson Katz, PhD., Co-Founder and Director, Mentors in Violence Prevention
Lauren Wolfe, Director of WMC's Women Under Siege
Media Equity Collaborative
MissRepresentation.org
No More Page 3
Object
The Pixel Project
Rape Victim Advocates
Social Media Week
SPARK Movement
Stop Street Harassment
Take Back the Tech!
Tech LadyMafia
Time To Tell
The Uprising of Women in the Arab World
V-Day
The Voices and Faces Project
The Women's Media Center
Women's Networking Hub
The Women's Room

The Rape of an 11-Year-Old Girl Highlights an Important Wider Issue

2012-12-02T19:00:00-05:00

A man appeared in court last week charged with the rape of an 11-year-old girl on her way home from school. The news has caused widespread shock and consternation, but stories submitted to the Everyday Sexism Project website this year suggest that the sexual harassment of young girls in school uniform is far less rare a phenomenon than we might like to think.

The huge number of entries we have received detailing the sexual objectification and harassment of schoolgirls comes from parents, from bystanders and from victims themselves. One girl told us:

"I was 13 when I experienced sexual harassment for the first time... I was stopped by a group of men (at least 17 or more years old) in a black pick-up truck. They were telling me that they liked school girls and that I probably "have a tight pussy." I didn't understand what they were talking about. I was 13... I barely had started growing pubic hair when this happened."

When the girl objected, she says one of the men shouted "you're feisty, I like that" before speeding off. She continues:

"For years I have been keeping the secret of all the attacks fellow school mates an [sic] strange young men have shown towards me. I very much considered myself a child at the time of these events."

Too often the reports we receive suggest that girls are too scared to speak up or shamed into feeling that what has happened was their own fault. Because this frequently silences victims, many people are unaware of how severe the problem is. A man wrote to us, shocked, after witnessing a similar event:

"The other day when I was sitting outside of my work two middle school girls walked out after getting ice cream on their way home from school... a jeep drove by and a man yelled "sluts" at them. It was a very upsetting thing to witness. I dont [sic] want to live in a world where men think its okay to treat any women, much less two girls who couldn't have been more than 14, like that. Something is very wrong."

Many of the stories we have received also suggest a worrying normalisation of sexual harassment within schools by students themselves, with one woman telling us:

"At my child's primary school is a playground corner difficult to see by supervisors - kids call it The Rape Corner".

Another woman described her own experiences of sexual assault in a school setting, and explained the normalisation that left her feeling unable to report them:

"Between the ages of about 12 and 14 I and many other girls were regularly pestered and groped by boys in the halls. I remember one boy in particular would run after a friend of mine and kind of tackle her grabbing her boobs. Thinking back it's really odd none of us felt we should/could tell teachers about this... It happened a lot... It felt like it was just something that happened when you got older. But it shouldn't be."

Another told us:

"In the first year of high school I was walking home with a friend and a group of boys (three or four I think) from my year pushed me against a wall trying and managing to put their hands up my skirt. My friend just watched and laughed".

One student even said:

"When I was 15 I was reading aloud in English. I asked what page to start from and was told Page 3, and the male laddish teacher added 'you should be on Page 3'. I was a geeky kid and already ashamed of my body. All the class laughed I never forgot it."

A theatre in education facilitator working on projects with young girls in schools told us about 13-year-old girls "telling me they get beeped at and catcalled on [the] way home from school" and a girl of the same age who was sent a text message from a boy at school "threatening to rape her".

It is deeply saddening that young girls are receiving the message, both as they walk to and from school and from within their own peer groups, that their bodies are fair game for catcalls and groping, and that sexual assault is something to be laughed at, played down and made into a joke. At the same time their male peers are also affected, as they form their ideas about what constitutes 'normal' treatment of the opposite sex. Of course these reports vary in their severity, but it is important to sit up and take notice of what is happening all the time, not just when a serious crime has been committed.

To give some idea of the frequency with which events like this are reported, every one of the accounts mentioned in this article was received in the past week alone, without any special request for particular submissions on this theme.

Just What Exactly IS the Argument FOR Page 3?

2012-10-05T19:00:00-04:00

I wasn't going to write about the Page 3 debate. Plenty of other brilliant female commentators have already dealt with the subject succinctly and thoroughly. Frankly to me the argument seems so overwhelmingly clear and simple that it only really needed to be explained once. But as I watched the articles on both sides of the debate pour in, read the hundreds of column inches and heard the question being contested on live radio and television, I was struck by something so extraordinary that I felt compelled to draw attention to it. I haven't heard a single argument for Page 3.

I have read the argument that the women protesting Page 3 have no right to do so because they are too educated, too "hysterical and shrill", too humourless, too bitter or rampant, even too clouded by their own jealousy to have a valid argument. All of these are examples of extreme misogyny and prejudice, (and it is worth a moment's pause to marvel at the fact that such an article, so full of outright prejudice and hatred should be published at all, when one imagines a similar piece with the issue of sex changed, say, to race) but none are actually arguments for Page 3.

I have heard the (similarly stereotypical and offensive) argument that the people who buy the Sun are from a 'different' demographic, concerned solely with basic needs like housing and putting food on the table; too busy with 'real' concerns to have the time to object to a little sexist sexual objectification with their breakfast. But this is not an argument for Page 3.

I watched with fascination as the former deputy editor of the Sun replied, stubbornly to almost every question on a Newsnight debate about the issue, that it wasn't worth arguing about at all, when there were far more important problems in the world to tackle. Even when host Emily Maitlis pointed out that this was a "cop out"; that he was avoiding the issue and that indeed, women like Harriet Harman, the MP opposite him do indeed campaign on those wider issues, he refused to be drawn. He stuck, rigidly, to the premise that the issue was simply not worthy of debate. But that is not an argument for Page 3.

I have listened to the suggestion that Page 3 is harmless, and those who don't like the idea should simply not buy the paper. I have read the similar argument that it has been there for so long that some people don't even notice it any more. I have seen the point made that most men have already seen pictures of naked women anyway and read the theories that women are objectified far worse elsewhere. But again, and sorry if this is starting to get repetitive, these are not arguments for Page 3.

I have heard several arguments about the rights of women to choose careers as glamour models, but even this, whilst a valid argument for the existence of top-shelf publications, does not begin to address the issue of whether these sexually objectifying images should appear in our most-read family newspaper. It is not an argument for Page 3.

What is interesting is that amongst the many pertinent and valid arguments that have been put forward against Page 3, some suffer from a lack of available scientific evidence to prove their direct relevance. This applies most notably to the connections drawn by MP and former equalities minister Lynne Featherstone between Page 3 and domestic violence, saying, "It's about the constant drip, drip of women being sexualised in the public space [which] has a great bearing on attitudes and domestic violence".

I have a similar problem solidly connecting the accounts collected by my Everyday Sexism Project to the debate. In the past six months alone, the project has received over 500 accounts (that's over 7% of all the experiences documented) pertaining to the groping, grabbing, touching, licking, ogling, or explicitly commenting on women's breasts. The reports strongly suggest a problem with accepted ideology in the public consciousness relating to women's breasts; who owns them, who has the right to touch them and who is entitled to judge and comment on them:

"I must've been about 14 when I was walking home from school one day and two young boys on bikes rode past me and one of them grabbed one of my breasts really hard as they cycled past. I was too shocked to do anything"

"My first experience of men commenting on my breasts was when I was 11-years-old...walking home from the corner shop after buying sweets"

"Everyday I'm walking down the street men stare at my breasts...one will yell: 'Look at the tits on that!'. That, like I'm not even a person but merely a display cabinet for large breasts."

"At my local pub a man thought it was okay to just walk up to me and grab hold of my breasts. On asking him what he thought he was doing he just replied 'they are huge'."

The accounts go on and on. No, I can't directly, scientifically link them to Page 3, any more than there is direct scientific evidence to link it to the two women a week killed in the UK as a result of intimate partner violence, the quarter of women who experience domestic violence, the hundreds of thousands of women sexually assaulted or raped each year. But if there is even a chance, a possibility, that a single ONE of these victims' attackers was influenced by the Page 3 mentality that women are objects, there for men's pleasure alone, then in the absence of a single argument for Page 3 I think we should all be signing that petition.

Everyday Sexism at Work

2012-09-21T19:00:00-04:00

We have not yet achieved gender equality in the UK workplace. We know this to be indisputably true thanks to statistics that reveal a stubbornly persistent wage gap between men and women and show that women continue to be underrepresented in top jobs. The Home Office website, citing data from the Office for National Statistics, states that "The pay gap between full-time men's and women's median earnings stands at 10.5%, whereas the overall gap when comparing the pay of all men and women in work is 20.2%." It goes on to acknowledge that "discrimination may still be an important factor" in explaining the disparity.

Meanwhile, a study by the Chartered Management Institute just last year revealed that the gender pay gap between male and female managers had more than doubled to £10,546 in a single year. According to BBC research, women hold less than a third of top jobs in the UK, making up a paltry 13.2% of the most senior judges and holding only 16% of directorships at the UK's 100 largest-listed companies. The Chartered Management Institute study predicted that it would take 98 years at current rates for the gender pay gap to close. Roll on 2109.

What we don't know for certain is the cause of these facts. Countless 'reasons' are flung around to try to explain the disparities, from unsupported theories about gender-based skill sets, to frustratingly simplistic claims that women are to blame for not being tenacious or ambitious enough, to over-generalised stereotypes about childbirth and family life. The latter frequently fail to take into account the enormous influence of provisions for maternity and paternity leave, support for working parents and more, thus conveniently blaming parents whose careers are adversely affected instead of critiquing the system that has created this result in the first place.

None of these theories alone is sufficient to explain the enormous disparity between men and women's professional achievements and earnings. It is likely that several of the more considered and balanced ideas may hold some merit and account for some part of the problem.

But there are other factors at play. While it may not be convenient or popular to acknowledge it, the huge number of women who have written to the Everyday Sexism Project to document their experiences of sexism in the workplace strongly suggests that this is another important influence.

Of course, like all the other theories, it is over-simplistic to suggest it is the sole cause of the problem. But the thousands of accounts we have collected which pertain specifically to gender prejudice at work strongly suggest that this is a large part of the problem and one that we need to acknowledge and tackle.

The reports we have gathered range across every career stage, starting from the job interview:
"Male bosses used to rate us waitresses out of 10 for looks at job interview," read one, whilst another described how it was "Recently 'suggested' at a job interview that if I had a second interview that I might like to wear more make-up". Another told how "The male recruiter preferred commenting on my CV picture than asking me questions on my experience", whilst countless more documented being asked about marital status, pregnancy and plans for future children, despite this being illegal in the UK.

One applicant for a post at an art gallery described how "the (male) owner asked how old I was and whether I had a boyfriend/husband as he "didn't want me to leave the job too soon to go off and have loads of children"". Many reports described behaviour ranging from sexual harassment to outright assault at interview stage: one related how "Boss during a part time job interview asks if it's a problem for him to "occasionally trip and touch" me" and several others even described enforced sexual activity such as kissing and demands for oral sex during interviews.

Next come descriptions of sexism suffered in the workplace, from the insidious (my managers would always put me in the drive-thru because "pretty faces make more money") to the outrageous ("I had [a boss] whose trick was to stand behind seated women staff and rest his groin on their shoulder!"). Countless entries testify to being ignored in meetings or having male colleagues' ideas more readily accepted: "continually had proposals rejected to find the same proposals offered later by male colleagues accepted and adopted". Others describe behaviour that can categorically be defined as sexual assault being endured by female employees on a regular basis: "I used to get my butt slapped by the male managers at work, once with a fly swot by the deputy manager - all a joke you know".

When we asked about this problem on Twitter, some women's experiences were so numerous they had to ask us to be more specific: "From colleagues & bosses, or clients & customers?" One teacher told how "A 17-year-old male student once told me my teaching didn't convince him because I'm a "girl." He would trust a man more." Countless female technicians, electricians and computer support staff have written to describe discrimination from customers: "on tech support desk; guy phones up 'can I speak to one of the technicians please, one of the guys'", or "at Curry's male customers always wanted to speak to a man about TVs even though I knew just as much."

Worryingly, we have received many reports from women describing sexual assault and even rape in the workplace being swept under the carpet or dealt with inappropriately by their employers: "once raped by a colleague on a night out. Guess who lost their job? (not him)," read one, while another describes how after she was sexually assaulted at work "This was brushed under the carpet, the police weren't called and I was moved 'off-site'."

And there is strong evidence that (partly due to the frequency and normalisation of these problems) the safeguards in place to protect female employees from such behaviour simply aren't working. One woman told us "Went to HR about sexist/flirty CEO. Was told to put up with it as I'm 'young and pretty and they're men, what do you expect?'" Another explained "Reporting things like this simply isn't done if you want to go far within the firm." She added "The firm does run a women's networking day annually - in fact the men in my office cheerfully waved me off when I went to it last year - saying "have fun burning your bras"."

So how might this evidence of sexism in the workplace contribute to gender disparity in professional pay and success? Apart from the obvious impact that dealing with such prejudice, harassment and assault on a regular basis might have on the professional performance of victims, many of the situations described could certainly have a clear effect on women's career trajectories.

From frequent descriptions of contempt for female staff and unwillingness to assign them to important tasks to tales of refusal to accept ideas and proposals from women in meetings and clients specifically requesting the service of male staff, all these issues would have a negative impact on the career success of the women in question.

Another clear indicator of the correlation between sexism suffered at work and female professional performance lies in the many sad reports we have received of women who have eventually chosen to leave jobs they loved when sexual discrimination became too much: "In my first post-college job, the owner of my company frequently invited me to "client dinners" only to inform me once there that the client had cancelled. He once texted me directly asking what dollar amount it would take. I finally had to leave the job, because I was unable to juggle the responsibilities of my position and the confusing manipulation from my boss."

Yes, of course there are workplaces with great equality records. Yes, there are instances where men are discriminated against too. Yes there are laws in place that should be working to prevent some of these problems, though in practice it appears that in many cases they do not. I don't suggest that sexism in the workplace is the sole reason for the gender pay gap or the hugely lopsided numbers of men and women in the very top jobs.

But I believe that these accounts are important. These are not a few isolated incidents. We have collected thousands of accounts of women suffering prejudice in workplaces from restaurants and bars to offices and newsrooms. Numerous accounts repeat and support evidence of the same problems, with a clear suggestion that the normalisation and acceptance of these attitudes and prejudices is making it extremely hard for women to tackle them without endangering their careers. As with the gender pay gap itself, excuses, explanations and victim-focus cannot disguise the fact that this problem is very real, and it isn't going to go away on its own.

Chris Brown's Tattoo Shows Exactly How Seriously We Take Domestic Violence

2012-09-12T19:00:00-04:00

In the UK, 45% of women have experienced some form of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. At least 80,000 women are raped every year. On average, two women per week are killed by a violent partner or ex-partner, making up an enormous 40% of all female homicides.

In the US in 2005, three women every day on average were murdered by an intimate partner. One third of all female homicides were perpetrated by an intimate partner. The National Crime Victimization Survey suggested that 232,960 women were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006.

Globally, at least one third of all women are beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in the course of their lifetime. And several global surveys suggest that half of all women who die in homicide cases are killed by their current or former partners.

Singer Chris Brown is famous for being charged with assault after he attacked his then-girlfriend, singer Rihanna, leaving her face battered and bruised and her lips split. This month, he unveiled a new tattoo extremely prominently located on his neck - visible to everybody in almost any outfit.

It is a tattoo of a woman's face. One eye is considerably blacker than the other, with a clear dark circle drawn widely around it and the lid squeezed shut. Black smudges and lines around the rest of the face are extremely reminiscent of bruises and wounds, though it is not clear whether this is what they are meant to represent. Across the lips of the face are three sharp, clearly drawn lines resembling splits, or animalistic claw marks.

After his conviction, Brown's lawyer spoke publicly in his defence. He said "He has always wanted to take responsibility... He wanted to put out the message that domestic violence is not acceptable."

Yet Brown's behaviour since the assault has sent anything but a message of contrition. First he posted a public video attacking those who had criticised him, saying "Everybody that's haters, they just been haters" and claiming "I ain't a monster". Then, in February this year, US Weekly published a report from a woman who claimed Brown approached her at an awards show using the pick-up line "Can I get your number? I promise I won't beat you." After he won two awards at this year's Grammys, he tweeted "HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY Now! That's the ultimate F**** OFF!" He swiftly followed this with ""IM BACK SO WATCH MY BaCK as I walk away from all this negativity".

With this tattoo, he has surely surpassed his self-proclaimed "ultimate F*** OFF" by unashamedly emerging in public with an enormous, clear brand of the crime he committed proudly splashed across his body for all to see. If ever there was a screaming message of utter disdain for the severity of his actions, the seriousness of his conviction or the impact of his influence, this is it.

It is almost impossible to believe that Brown could have failed to notice the obvious correlations when he chose the tattoo, though his rep (unsurprisingly) claims it is based on a "sugar skull" and a MAC cosmetics advert, not an abused woman or an image of Rihanna.

But whether or not Brown intended these implications when he chose the tattoo; whether it was 'supposed' to come out as such a close likeness to a bruised and battered female face is almost irrelevant. The important fact is that given its overwhelmingly clear resemblance to the picture of the woman he assaulted, Brown has felt confident enough flaunting utter disrespect in the face of the crime he was convicted of to appear in public with it blazoned across his body.

It is critical to note that no minder, manager, PR advisor or other member of Brown's entourage felt concerned enough about the public reaction to advise covering the tattoo or wearing concealing clothing. In a world in which celebrity dress, appearance and speech are policed and manipulated ad infinitum, nobody in Brown's publicity team was worried that this public glorification of a crime that affects hundreds of thousands of women globally; a crime of which Brown has actually been convicted, could cause sufficient public anger to damage his reputation.

But really, it is no surprise that Brown feels so confident. Why would he be concerned that reminders of the assault would harm his career, when it has gone from strength to strength in the wake of his conviction? Kristen Stewart has been forced 'into hiding' by the severity of the vitriolic public backlash after her brief liaison with a married director. Emma Watson sparked thousands of outraged and salacious reports across the web this week when a sliver of her (covered) nipple was visible for a moment at the edge of her red carpet dress. Britney Spears's career plummeted into a crash landing after she publically shaved her head. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan faced international outrage and claims she was "letting her fans down" when she chose to lose weight slowly after the birth of her daughter.

Yet whilst Stewart has reportedly been dropped from the sequel of the movie directed by the man with whom she had a liaison, actor Charlie Sheen, who has been convicted of assaulting his wife, has just started starring in a new TV show (the ironically named Anger Management). While Spears nosedived off the map after her public meltdown, Brown's album hit number one in the UK charts on Sunday.

Singers like Brown are entirely dependent on public opinion, the support of their fans and sales of their music to maintain their celebrity and popularity. If he feels confident appearing in public with an image of a woman's beaten face tattooed into his neck it is because all evidence has taught him that public concern about domestic violence simply isn't strong enough to outweigh celebrity adulation. That whilst female celebrities are endlessly scrutinised, criticised and made to pay over and over for their mistakes, male celebrities seem able to act with near impunity. That domestic violence and sexual assault just don't sit high enough on our list of priorities even to stop Radio 1 from starting to play his songs again just two years after his conviction.

And perhaps it is not only the general public that needs to take a tougher stance on domestic violence and assault:

The police report from Brown's attack on Rihanna describes how he "shoved her head against the passenger window... causing an approximate one inch raised circular contusion" and how "he punched her in the left eye with his right hand. He then... continued to punch her in the face with his right hand. The assault caused [her] mouth to fill with blood and blood to spatter all over her clothing and the interior of the vehicle." After he began to punch her for a third time, the report describes how she bent over in an "attempt to protect her face and head from the barrage of punches being levied upon her". Next, he "placed her in a head lock... and bit her on her left ear". After yet another bout of punching, he put pressure on her carotid arteries "causing her to be unable to breathe and she began to lose consciousness".

After Brown's hearing, the judge said "I want Mr. Brown to be treated the same as any other defendant who would come into this court. That means something like graffiti removal and a two-week domestic violence program."

Everyday Sexual Assault

2012-09-02T19:00:00-04:00

Once, I was walking down the street when a group of men came up behind me. I didn't turn around. There was plenty of room on the pavement for them to pass by. But they didn't. They stopped behind me and one, suddenly, roughly and completely out of the blue, grabbed my jeans-clad bottom from behind and squeezed, pushing his fingers forwards and upwards towards my crotch.

I'd like to say that I screamed; that I put him in his place there and then and articulately delivered a cutting speech that shamed him into apologising. I'd like to say that I said anything at all. But I didn't. I gasped, I froze, and I felt the blood rush to my face in mortification. Then I stood there, silently, as they walked away laughing.

The Everyday Sexism Project was designed to document instances of normalised, everyday sexism experienced by women worldwide to prove the enormous scale of the problem. But since it launched five months ago, we have received hundreds of reports of women being groped, grabbed, manhandled, slapped, tweaked, pinched, stroked and smacked in public, usually by complete strangers. The area of focus is almost always the breasts, the bottom or the thighs - sensitive, sexual, intimate regions of the body. And the tone of the reports usually mirrors my own experience almost exactly in that the victim describes an overwhelming sense of powerlessness, fear, shame and embarrassment:

"First job, first day. Age 18. Barmaid. Men lifted top up revealing my bra to pub. I walked out in tears. Never went back."

"Dancing in crowd at festival, guy slaps arse. Crowd had thinned out, conscious everyone saw, too embarrassed to even react."

"Younger sister and I were groped on a water slide by a man when about eight and nine years old. Too ashamed to tell mum and dad at the bottom."

"Twice in pubs in Newcastle. Full on arse grab while leaning against the bar. So upset both times I had to go home."

"Aged 14 had bum slapped by man in supermarket. Was too scared to enter said supermarket again until very recently (I'm 19)."

"Random grabbed my breasts in the street in broad daylight. Too shocked to even scream."

What is even more shocking is the overwhelming frequency of these incidents. When I asked on Twitter how often women experienced unwanted touching, groping or grabbing, the responses were alarming:

"At least once a week and often much more, regardless of what I wear, where I am, how I behave. Usually breasts, hips, ass."

"I've had a man put hand up my skirt while walking behind me up stairs out of tube station, boobs grabbed while on nights out. Also had bottom slapped by boss while working in HR (!) And flashed at several times over the years while out and about."

"It happened quite often, at least every month when I was a teen or in my twenties, but still too often nowadays that a guy would grab for my bottom, breasts or flash/masturbate in front of me."

This is not a single, horrible event women suffer once in their lifetime - it is becoming an epidemic - a normalised occupational hazard of being a woman. As one contributor wryly put it, "I committed the terrible crime of being female and out in public on my own."

But the real crime is being committed by the people who are touching these women against their will in a sexual way. UK legislation on sexual assault is very clear:

A person (A) commits an offence if--
(a) he intentionally touches another person (B),
(b) the touching is sexual,
(c) B does not consent to the touching, and
(d)A does not reasonably believe that B consents

Under this definition, every one of the hundreds of women who have reported such experiences to our project was the victim of sexual assault - a crime which, under UK law, carries a maximum ten year prison sentence.

Yet we are living in a society that not only downplays and accepts this crime, but deliberately normalises it, telling women not to overreact, not to make a fuss out of nothing, or even to be glad of the attention. It is only when you really spell out the definition of the crime that the realisation begins to dawn, even for many of the victims. One woman wrote to us today to say:

"Never thought about it before, but have now worked out that I've been sexually assaulted at least five times."

Others testified to the normalisation of a crime that is becoming so common and accepted that it is neither reported nor taken seriously:

"It seemed minor, scared the hell out of me though. I was crying by the time I got home."

"One of the blokes put his hand up my skirt and grabbed my crotch! Groping is too common on a night out! Never gets reported because it happens so often!"

"On tube man "fell" onto me, in clubs/pubs a lot... whilst pregnant was the most upsetting for some reason. Report to whom..?"

And of course this lack of report and convictions leads to a culture of impunity, with myriad stories sent in to our website painting a clear picture of a society in which many feel it is their right to sexually assault a woman in public without shame or fear of reprisal.

"At 17 years old and short, big bloke in group at pub grabbed my bum. Told him to get lost, he did it again..."

"Friend had man walk up to her in the street, tweak her nipple, then walk off."

"Man put his hand up my skirt when walking down the road. Shouted at him that he had no right to touch me. He seemed shocked."

"First day of work on packed tube, guy in suit put his hand between my legs, when I loudly complained he said 'stupid dyke'."

"On Tuesday, out for a run. A man (not a runner) ran towards directly me and literally landed with his hands on my breasts."

"On my street a man walking the other way reaches out & grabs my boob. I shout noise & try to slap him. He just GRINS at me."

"I was on my bike at the traffic lights and a man got out his car to grope me."

Indeed the overwhelming message being sent is not only one of impunity for perpetrators, but that the victims of sexual assault are not permitted to react - there is a strong sense of public complicity in the treatment of women as objects to be touched and grabbed at will - and a feeling of oppression of women who dare to speak up about it:

"A man put his hand up my skirt on a night bus home, I shouted he was a pervert, man behind me told me to be quiet."

"Was reporting from court when a man grabbed my bum. Clerk told me I had 'got off lightly' and not to bother reporting it."

"When I try to hit him or shout at him, [he] react[s] like I'm the one who's crazy."

"I got sexually assaulted at bus station, police involved, when I got home, Dad said 'What d'ya expect wearing a short skirt?'"

"Walking home, guy stopped me, grabbed my breasts and tried to kiss me. I yelled at him, he looked shocked and annoyed. I ran."

"Walking down the street with my dad age 12... got my bum slapped...reported it- to no avail."

"Police took my statement then said maybe I was catching attention because I was wearing a short summer frock."

"When I told three police officers... and pointed out harassment was illegal under the Harassment Act and Sexual Offences Act, one officer replied, 'Oh, you're getting technical on us are you?'"

What does it say to a woman if she is sexually assaulted in broad daylight or in a public place and the people around her avert their eyes, or tut at her for daring to make a noise about it, or accuse her of inviting the attention because of her clothing or her behaviour? The overwhelming message is that women should expect this treatment- that the fact it is a crime is irrelevant, they must come to expect it as a part of their lot. Crucially, it sends the message that both the responsibility for the crime itself and the responsibility for avoiding it is somehow theirs. And the language of the stories we receive reflects this sad normalisation:

"Worst was a whole crotch grab. Sad thing is I remember as it wasn't 'just' a bum pinch which would be more normal!"

"Had my ass slapped by some guy on a bike while walking down the street and talking on the phone. Now I avoid walking alone."

"At school I used to get my bum pinched on a regular basis. It's one of the worst ways to be groped because you can't see it coming and avoid it"

We live in a society where women are not only reporting being victims to a crime that carries a ten year prison sentence on a weekly basis, with no repercussions, but discussing it in such normalised terms that they casually differentiate between the various "ways to be groped".

The reason I didn't react when I was sexually assaulted in the street was because of the overwhelming awareness, gently, insidiously, gradually impressed upon us all, that this crime is not taken seriously. I knew with absolute certainty that to use the label, 'sexual assault', which is entirely the correct definition according to UK law, would brand me overreacting or attention seeking or worse. Even inside my own head the term felt like an exaggeration. Figures suggest that around 400,000 women are sexually assaulted every year in the UK. But of the hundreds who have testified to it on our project website, only a handful said they ever reported it, suggesting that the real figure is likely to be far, far higher. I have never, ever said that I was sexually assaulted. The words feel alien to me. It feels embarrassing, like trying to claim something more of a big deal happened. The hundreds of women who wrote to tell us about their own experiences of sexual assault have probably never said it either. We have created a social disconnect between the crime and its perception that is so strong that even its own victims deny it. Which is, of course, the ideal environment for such a crime to flourish?

So if we publicly normalise and downplay this crime to such an extent, what is the knock-on effect? Does every crime against women slip one rung further down the ladder, with rape also being taken less seriously, doubted and discussed and analysed in the public arena as if it were a matter of opinion rather than an indisputable crime? Recent events would certainly seem to suggest that that is precisely the case. And in such a paradigm, what happens to the offences of sexual harassment that over four thousand entries have reported to our website; that hundreds of women from all over the world are writing to tell us that they suffer daily? Well they slip off the bottom of the ladder altogether.