By gendering violence (by determining whether acts of violence are against one gender or another), you are dividing it and making it more than one issue. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it is hardly addressing the whole problem, especially since violence against women is either sympotmatic of a society in which violence is socially acceptable, or generally a result of intensive violence against men or against all (war, ethnic cleansing etc). So addressing the symptom rather than the cause – violence as a means of advancing status or wealth – you are not necessarily helping.

Watchmen,
the event was an exhibition of art and writing by women survivors of male violence. it was an event that gave women a voice and the councillors disrespected that.

the exhibition was women only because the art was created in workshops for women survivors who needed a woman only space to express what had happened to them.

if a male survivors group or a male victims of violence group created art in a series of male workshops then i would respect that, admire the work and think it was a good thing that men were speaking out against violence committed towards them. bristol city council refused to recognise or engage with the issue and this is the problem.

i don’t see what the problem is with gendering violence and dividing it in to different issues, when the causes and symptoms of gender based violence are different to other forms of violence by the way. the reasons behind sustained rape within marriage, or fgm for example, are different to one another, and are different to a mugging on the street.

I agree with Watchman that separating ‘violence against women’ into its own special category is not helpful in the attempt to end gender violence.

I dont know what the councillor’s problem with this issue was; maybe different from mine. But I think feminists often assume people will automatically support violence against women campaigns as they must be correct in their perspectives and approach.

I don’t support them but I still want to end gender violence. I am not a bad person because of my views on this.

QRG but one would hope that if you were invited to an exhibition by women survivors, and had your photo taken for the press so that it would be reported that you had attended, you would not:
a) be rude to the organiser (who wasn’t me btw)
b) not look at the art or any of the work
c) criticise women in bristol for an event that is organised by the UN
d) tell the local press the organiser was hysterical when they tried to explain the reason why the UN had designated a day

And yes, i would hope that everyone, feminist or not, would support the fight to end vawg, just as they would support initiatives to end knife crime, or dangerous driving.

domestic violence kills around 100 women a year. 100 million women are missing worldwide as a result of vawg (half the sky). whatever your views on feminism or feminists, any initiative to raise awareness of vawg should be supported.

and if someone can’t do that, then the experiences and voices of survivors and victims should be respected, which is something the councillors spectacularly failed to do.

sianushka,

Sorry – should have made it clear I was not addressing the issue of the councillors’ behaviour, which seems on the evidence above a bit ungracious at least. As to my points, I think you may need to stop seeing violence as a thing and understand it as part of a social process (albeit a destructive one).

My concern was that by gendering violence, for example you make rape exclusively a crime by males on females (statistically it mostly is, but there is a key point there in mostly…). But even accepting this to be a useful summary, there is still a problem. Because what sort of man feels he has the right to use violence to take sex from a woman – quite simply one who feels violence is generally acceptable. Someone who genuinely abhors the use of violence other than as a last resort (I’m talking me I guess…) is not going to engage in rape. So the issue is that someone is prepared to use violence full stop, not that they are prepared to use violence against women.

Violence is a non-consensual way of imposing an order on society. It is the antithesis of consensual power, when society develops and evolves its own order. It is used by those who cannot gain consent (or to be fair, by those who are oppressed by the violence of others – but note this violence might seem more just but is still violence) for their exercise of power (note that power here is best seen as the french cognate pouvoir ‘ability to do something’ rather than the German walt ‘force’ which seems to be our normal linguistic understanding). And if someone finds that by exercising violence to achieve power they can overcome the constraints of consent, they will have incentive to continue to do so.

So, in short, if you get what you want through violence, you are more likely to use violence more widely and ignore social constraints (including those limiting violence to women, children, the elderly etc) more. The history of the Taliban is a classical example of this – and the ultimate failure of an Islamic state in Somalia may be partially because as violence allowed more extreme Islamic teaching to take hold, more and more groups found that the violence was beginning to challenge their socially acceptable boundaries and began to oppose the development of the state.

Violence against women may in some cases be the first violence practiced. But it is still the practice of violence that is the overall problem – you have to tackle this. Otherwise, you just make one manifestation of violence socially unacceptable in a society, but then the next manifestion of successful violence will just lead the practioners to start to challenge that social more once again.

Hope this explains my position a bit better – I am firmly opposed to violence against women (I originally wrote ‘non-consensual violence’ there, and I’m still mystified as to whether that would be a worse sentence), but my understanding of the nature of violence is such that I do not think a piecemeal solution is possible. And I suppose I do see the causes of a mugging on the street to be likely to be the same as those of rape – the fact that violence works for the people in question.

well Watchman, the research on rape of men is terribly lacking.

Male rape only became a crime in the UK in 1994 example.

I accept @sianushka that councillor sounded particularly rude. But you are still assuming your viewpoint is the only morally acceptable one.

Both watchman and I have shown we have other viewpoints about gendered violence which mean we’d be unlikely to support vaw campaigns.

I know all the stats its not enough to just regurgitate them; I don’t agree with your perspective or your approach to the issues.

i see what you mean in that violence is universal in that it is a way to gain power without consent.

but i maintain that some of the reasons that vawg happens are quite specific, and do not always relate specifically to other forms of violence, other than being a way to gain power over an individual or group. for example, vawg is often committed because of institutionalised sexism or the belief that women are lesser than men in a range of cultures and personal situations. a mugging in the street is using violence to get something you want without permission but it isn’t a result of a belief that the victim deserves it because they are lesser.

i’m talking in generalisations here as well btw.

similarly, a mugging is condemned by society, rightly so. but one of the unique problems of vawg is that it is the only violence i can think of where the victim is routinely blamed or held responsible and that this lessens the defendant’s credibility or results in her being denied justice.

in terms of other forms of violence, such as FGM, again this is a way of gaining control over someone without their consent, but the nature and outcome of that violence is unique to women, and needs to be approached in a way that places women at its centre.

so although i agree with the general premise that violence is violence is violence (to paraphrase!), i also sincerely believe that one strategy to combat all violence will not always be effective, when the violence takes on so many different forms and, although formed by a desire for power, has many different causes and effects within that.

There is a reason why there needs to be a separate discussion of violence towards men and violence towards women. And that is the structural differences between men’s experiences and women’s experiences.

Of course, all violence is wrong, and there’s no doubt that women are sometimes violent to men, but the structure of society is such that this is a much, much bigger issue for women – there are an estimated 47,000 rapes and attempted rapes each year, two women a week die as a result of domestic violence, and structural pressures (the pay gap, childcare responsibilities) mean that it’s often much more difficult for a woman to leave a violent man than vice versa.

Efforts to end violence against women are efforts to address the pressing issue at hand, but also to change this social structure, and therefore hopefully to move towards greater equality between the sexes – and that shift is something that would ultimately benefit men as well as women.

QRG – i don’t see campaigns to end vawg as a moral issue or standpoint, i see vawg as a societal problem that needs to be tackled in order. women dying every week in the uk as a result of DV is not about arguing whether it is morally acceptable to support a campaign to raise awareness. it is about trying to find ways to end vawg so that our sons and daughters can live in a better world.

@sianushka yes and you are insinuating if people dont support those campaigns they are contributing to the world not getting better/safer. You speak/write in moralistic terms.

I want to end gender violence too but I dont think vaw campaigns are moving in the right direction.

The event was about violence against females, so there’s a certain logic to only featuring female artists. It’s rather more of an issue whether it was right to make the event gender-centric in the first place.

I’m kinda on the fence there. On the one hand it does seem to ignore male victims by default, whatever you say, and if I was a male victim I think it would make me feel excluded by a group I would have hoped would accept me. On the other hand, undermining the overall positive message of helping women who face violence purely because of this does seem a bit like whataboutery.

@ 2

“the event was an exhibition of art and writing by women survivors of male violence.”

If that’s the case you’re also excluding women who are victims of female violence, which does start to sound as if the event could be seen as a gender wars thing even if that was neither the intent or the reality.

As I said, I don’t think the event should be shouted down for that, but why exclude two groups that don’t get much attention in the media anyway?

@12 i think it was only women survivors of male violence because no women survivors of female violence attended the workshops, not because they were deliberately excluded in any way.

of course same sex violence happens but it is also not as common as male violence against women.

@11

The reason the exhibition happened was because it was the Un day of elimination of violence against women and girls. The UN decided to designate this day because the problem of vawg is, according to amnesty, th greatest human rights violation of our times. it is not about ignoring or excluding men or male survivors, but about recognising the problem, the huge problem, of vawg.

one of the issues was that the councillors did not understand what the day was, and seemed to think it was something the organiser had set up herself.

@ 8 Isobel

“Of course, all violence is wrong, and there’s no doubt that women are sometimes violent to men, but the structure of society is such that this is a much, much bigger issue for women ”

But aren’t men far more likely to get mugged or just randomly attacked? These aren’t equivalent actions, and I don’t want to go down some GIGA garden path where we try to work out how many muggings adds up to one rape, but in saying that violence is more a problem for women you seem to only be counting violence that more often happens to women than men.

And these things do have permanent effects on people too. I know many people who have been mugged: most seemed to get over the experience after a short time, but others took seemingly permanent knocks to their self-confidence. And these are minor examples (compare someone who is permanently injured or disabled by an attack, or someone who lives in fear because a local gang hates them and will beat them up if they get the chance).

@ 13 and 14

The setup of the event makes more sense in that context.

Well done for standing your ground Sian. These people sound like the type who complain about Black History Month – as if normal history lessons even bother to cover the struggles and genocides black peoples have faced.

Shockingly rude behaviour from these cllrs

Reading the comments here, it seems a bit baffling that some people can’t understand why female survivors of violence (whether from men or women – that seems an extraordinary point to nit pick over) would prefer their work to be created and viewed separately from work by male survivors of violence (from whatever gender). I helped run some of the workshops, which were attended by women of all ages who had survived rape, abuse as children, mental abuse from former (or current) partners, and sometimes a combination of these.

These were women who, in several cases, felt extremely anxious and nervous about attending the workshops initially, but grew to feel comfortable and safe in the environment – largely because it was an all-female environment, and their horrendous experiences had been perpetrated by men.

One aim of the workshops was to help the survivors use their traumatic experiences creatively to help them find something (however small) that was positive from their experience. And over the course of the month that these sessions ran, it was gratifying to see how much most people got from the sessions. But I honestly do not imagine any of these women would have even attended the sessions if they had felt there would be men there – not because they hate men, but because they are feeling so raw and vulnerable about their experiences.

thanks Phil! i agree!

@Chaise

I think the key difference is that violence against women is institutionalised in a way that violence against men isn’t, particularly in other parts of the world (this is United Nations day, after all). Even in our gloriously civilised western society rape in marriage wasn’t outlawed until 1992.

And yes, this councillor sounds especially rude and callous, is there an opportunity for locals to vote her out next May I wonder?

Hi Isobel

I am not knocking the exhibition specifically though it is in the context of campaigns around violence against women that I just don’t support.

I know this makes me sound like a bad person but it is a genuine problem I have with how gender violence is framed. The whole ‘biggest violation of human rights worldwide’ discourse doesn’t help matters in my view.

I think all violence is gendered and to treat rape and domestic violence against women as special and separate doesnt help us change the world.

While I tend to be very much against dividing up people into groups there is no real excuse for the councillor’s behaviour which was rude and boorish.

If the councillors felt strongly that there were faults with the event then why not have a quiet word with the organisers rather than needlessly upsetting some obviously vunerable people?

@ 15 Chaise Guevara

Well, the cynic in me wants to suggest that you’re just trying to pick holes in anyone’s arguments here for your own sport. Which is somewhat sad. However, I wonder what evidence you have to suggest that men are far more likely to get mugged or randomly attacked?

If you want to go down the nit picky route – are you suggesting (as it reads you are) that women rarely get attacked or assaulted, and therefore mugging of men is a worse crime than rape of women because – according to the known-to-be-incorrect crime rate statistics – more muggers are convicted than rapists? (It’s a known fact that the figures for reported rapes are inaccurate as so many women have no confidence in the police, or the current system for handling victims of rape, which often makes them feel like the perpetrators).

Yes, it’s an absolutely nonsense and stupid argument, isn’t it? Now read your argument again in point 15 and see how nonsensical yours also is.

PS – I’m well aware that people of any gender who are mugged can suffer PSD, anxiety etc etc. However, mugging is a different type of assault to that being addressed at the UN’s EVAW Day. If the EVAW Day addressed every single type of assault (sexual or otherwise) against people, it would need a lot longer than one day a year to do so.

i have to go offline for a bit so won’t be able to answer any comments just in case anyone addresses one to me and thinks i am being rude.
bye!

sianushka,

I have no problem with targetting certain sorts of violence, but as violence, not as vawg (God, that is a horrible acronym – it sounds like some sort of Star Trek alien or something).

But there is a gender issue in violence against women – but it is mainly in the fact that in some (most) societies men’s role is linked to the ability to use violence, and that there is therefore an expectation of violent behaviour on men’s parts. To try and differntiate between violence done because you want to take something (a mugging) and violence done because you believe you have the right to take something (rape) seems a bit artificial to me – at heart they are both crimes committed because violence is a way to get something, and there are no social constraints powerful enough to make the perpertrator reconsider their actions. Violence will of course be targetted more at the weaker and the ‘lesser’, since it is safer – but muggers do not target whole rugby teams walking down the street on exactly the same logic.

As to the issue of blame, well that is a part of the problem of violence within society – violence unresolved breaks society, so something needs to be done to resolve it. The classical case here is the wergild – the money paid to a victim or their family for violence done which stops the chance of retribution (more violence). Blame is another way of negating violence perpetrated – if someone has successfully exercised violence in such a way that there is no pressure on them to make amends, but the action is socially acknowledged (known about) then it needs to be explained away and justified – and the victim is blamed. This is not exclusive to violence against women etc though: try the mugging victim walking home alone through the park when drunk – there will be little sympathy for them and a lot of blame. Otherwise the anger and seeking of justice will be left hanging – distrust will spread and violence will be more likely again. Blame is not good, but it has evolved as a coping mechanism for violence, and is most likely to be used in situations where sexual violence takes place and where those in the particular society have to reconstitute their social networks as a result.

Where blame is not accepted, but is imputed by others, that is society negotiating its settlement. Note that this sort of tense situation often leads to more violence as it becomes clear that the violence has not been resolved by establishing a new social reality.

Historically women are also more likely to receive blame – which probably reflects not automatic misogyny but rather the lower liklihood of violence being undertaken by a woman due to existing social pressures (and yes, I will accept that such a society is misogynistic…), and also the fact that a crime against a woman was less likely to lead to violence from male relatives.

So, statistically speaking (and I note QRG’s caution about male rape above, which is probably well-founded: if rape is under-reported, male rape (by men or women) is probably particularly so) you may well be right to say women are more likely to face violence of a certain nature or outcome. But that is not actually because they are women, although it may be because they occupy a feminine role in particular societites.

To clarify what may seem a strange last point, my central contention here is that the nature and outcome of violence towards a victim is pretty well governed by the soceity in question’s attitude towards violence rather than the gender (or other characteristic) of the victim. If violence is consider something for which blame can be apportioned then that society accepts violence is OK – and any attempt to eradicate certain types of violence will just produce more social norms to be renegotiated by those who are using violence in other spheres. It is only by making violence itself an unacceptable option (and this presumably includes smashing windows as much as anything else…) that we can produce a social norm that violence cannot overcome – because if violence is ab initio unacceptable, then you have put yourself outside society by using it, rather than just renegotiated your place within society.

I cannot condemn attempts to campaign against violence against women and children, but I think that any limited campaign such as that is bound to fail. And wierdly, there is a historical example of just this: around 693 AD Adomnán, Abbot of Iona (in Scotland for those who don’t know) somehow got almost everyone of importance in Ireland and western Scotland to sign up to the Caín Adomnáin, a law pronounced in all kingdoms that forbade violence against women, children and clerics (in war, rather than at home, but it is still something quite unexpected in the first millenia). It is a pity that violence against all of these was to resume in the next century really, but it did – and the logical structual explanation is that this was because the boundaries of what was socially acceptable were being continually tested by those using violence within socially acceptable spheres – which were numerous in early medieval Ireland.

The only way to defeat violence is to make it socially unacceptable as a whole. You may, like Adomnán, win your temporary (and beneficial) victories, but whilst violence elsewhere allows boundaries to be renegotiated, then your victories remain temporary.

Isobel,

Well, the cynic in me wants to suggest that you’re just trying to pick holes in anyone’s arguments here for your own sport.

I hope you resist the cynic, because it is heading for the road of declaring that only those who agree with you can debate!

I’ve set out at length the logical underpinning to an argument that you cannot differentiate types of violence and hope to solve the problem (and should probably thank sianushka for making me think so hard…). But this is perhaps for my own sport – I comment on issues like this not because they affect me directly (they may one day but I hope not and will not live as if they will – I manage to live a pleasantly violence-free life, which is my good fortune (and hopefully is not tempting fate)) but because they are interesting and need consideration and thought. Chaise I have observed has similiar tendencies (from a very different perspective normally). Ultimately though, if someone can pick holes in your argument, should not your concern be mending the holes/building a new argument, not questioning their motives. If a BNP member proves me wrong on something, I do not dismiss them (although I am seriously embarassed – if it had actually happened) but go away and work out what is wrong and build on it.

I guess from the rest of your post, you did that too. But I am not sure.

@ 23 Isobel

Ah. An insult and a straw man. Ta.

“I wonder what evidence you have to suggest that men are far more likely to get mugged or randomly attacked? ”

I’m repeating what I’ve heard, which is precisely why I presented the figure as something I wasn’t certain of. As far as mugging goes, i’m having troubling getting national/world stats that seperate it from robbery (at work, so can’t spend hours on it right now). However, 81% of stab victims are male, at least according to the Beeb: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/studentlife/debate/2008/30_knives.shtml

“Yes, it’s an absolutely nonsense and stupid argument, isn’t it?”

It is indeed. It is also a non-sequiter. What on earth does it have to do with what I’m saying? I’m not saying that violence against one sex is “worse”.

“Now read your argument again in point 15 and see how nonsensical yours also is.”

No. I’m not going to reread my post and then suddenly reverse my opinion because you tell me to. If my post is nonsensical, you explain why.

“I’m well aware that people of any gender who are mugged can suffer PSD, anxiety etc etc. However, mugging is a different type of assault to that being addressed at the UN’s EVAW Day. If the EVAW Day addressed every single type of assault (sexual or otherwise) against people, it would need a lot longer than one day a year to do so.”

I take no issue with the event above, Sian’s cleared that all up (by answering people’s points instead of just insulting them). I take issue with people bending stats to try to create a gender war.

@ 20 S. Pill

“I think the key difference is that violence against women is institutionalised in a way that violence against men isn’t, particularly in other parts of the world (this is United Nations day, after all). Even in our gloriously civilised western society rape in marriage wasn’t outlawed until 1992.”

This is true (and I was talking from a UK context, I admit). Estimates on domestic violence prevalence by gender wander all over the shop, but I suspect male victims are more likely to see it as minor bad behaviour (because it’s far more psychologically harmful if the attacker is bigger and stronger than you are). I wouldn’t say rape was institutionalised these days (depend what you mean by the word, really), but some bad attitudes around it are.

“And yes, this councillor sounds especially rude and callous, is there an opportunity for locals to vote her out next May I wonder?”

Could be. Would probably be a better reason that usual, too.

@ 26

Cheers, Watchman

Watchman
You are oversimplifying the nature of violence. VAW exists in every level and thread of a woman’s life, and is sustained by her innate knowledge that, as often as not, if she complains about it she will quite possibly be ignored, vilified, ridiculed, abused – maybe killed. It takes many forms from the obvious physical and sexual acts, to the feeling of threat that seeing a shelf full of lad mags in a shop can give us – and down to being misrepresented as ‘hysterical’ by the powers that be. It is the restriction of our freedom by the maintaining of the myth that if we stay in and be good we will avoid being raped; it is the valuing of our sexuality over our humanity, or the knowledge that if we are raped the rapist will almost certainly go free; it’s the fact that thousands of women worldwide are raped each day, are murdered if they try and go to school, are stoned, enslaved – simply because they are women – and because they have no power or status within society the crimes against them are not considered crimes.
And then there’s the knowledge that these things are as likely to be done to us by the police, or our war allies, or our friends, husbands, fathers and brothers, as they are to be done by monsters, enemies or madmen. And that they will receive society’s tacit approval, by the lack of action against them. VAW doesn’t come from a set of dysfunctional situations or personalities, it comes from everywhere, at every level of the social and political spectrum, even if it sometimes only takes the form of ridicule or dismissal, as these are subtle assertions of power.
Some men know what that feels like – but all women know it (even the ones who would argue otherwise IMHO, as it is so much a part of the way we live we stop noticing, or get shouted down by everybody if we speak up – Sian’s post case in point). VAWAG is a unique phenomenon which is rooted in patriarchy, and patriarchy underlies all other violence too, but violence against women is patriarchy’s raison detre’ (spelling?), and as such must be treated uniquely. When we challenge it we challenge the very foundation of what makes our world so disturbed. All other violence would be reduced as a result.

@28 but like I said male rape was not a crime until 1994 in the UK, and homosexuality was illegal till 1967 and a ‘disease’ officially much longer than that in the UK

It really depends which laws/institutions you look at for making gender distinctions about sexuality and violence and gender.

…and rape of men wasn’t made illegal until 1994, and homosexuality was illegal till 1967…

It really does depend which laws and which institutions you choose to refer to as to how you end up deciding who bears the brunt of gender violence/inequality

OOPs repeated myself there, sorry. It is worth repeating!!

P.s. jan martin illustrates exactly why I disassociate from vaw campaigns and rhetoric. what a load of hand-wringing, overblown nonsense.

And I have suffered domestic violence and been through the courts. But I put that in perspective. I dont turn it into my identity.

jan,

I am afraid I cannot realistically debate with you on this, although I can perhaps explain why.

If you are equating violence – a deliberate act using force or threat of force with a shelful of magazines (which are often no worse than the women’s interest covers a few magazines along), then I cannot establish a level of understanding.

A picture of violence is not violent in itself – it may reinforce the social role of violence, but it is the existence of the violence that it is the problem, not the picture.

A picture of non-violence, even it is also non-clothed, is therefore clearly not violent. You may feel threatened by such images, and that is a seperate issue, but the threat is not one of violence. I cannot see how such an image implies a threat of violence. The best I can do is that implies a threat of being forced to comply to a social norm that sees women as sex objects. I might be able to relate to this, although it would be a difficult debate because the key concept, violence, would be so differently interpreted.

But you choose to speak for all women about how they feel, and ignore the possibility that I might know many women well and have never found any that express your feelings (indeed this is the case – more than half my close friends are female), which I suggest might therefore be transferring your own internal thought process to others with no evidence (I cannot believe that you will assert on no evidential basis that your anecdotal evidence is better than mine – unless you are going to suggest all women lie to men about these feelings…). I cannot debate with a representation of a fictional unified female experience, for just as I am certain all men do not have the same feelings and experiences, so I am certain all women do not.

Interestingly I would agree patriarchy (what I describe as the rule of old men with beards (and reinforced by the gossip of old women)) is at the root of much violence – but not because it exists, but because patriarchial societies tend to have plentiful roles for violence, as there is a strong correlation with honour which needs to be defended (nowadays you’ll see it called ‘respect’). It is however very odd to assume patriarchy in any form is focussed on violence against women – violence is there to ensure compliance not as a raison d’etre (spelling was correct incidentally). In effect you are making the patriarchy sound nothing more than a particularly nasty BDSM society. Patriarchy, by any rational definition, is about ensuring the success of your offspring, particularly the male ones (note most stornly patriarchial societies recognise sister’s sons as very close relations however). You are also simplifying social relations to having only two actors, men and women – which ignores the fact there are more gender roles than that in most societies for a start. I simply cannot see a way of finding middle ground over these differences, although if you are prepared to move from the extreme and unprovable feminist positions, I’ll see if I can move from my maybe extreme and difficult to define (a combination of Foucault, libertarian views and years pondering strange socities) position (if anyone wants to buttonhole my views, please do – would make my life easier).

For those who are interested, ‘stornly’ in my last comment is a newly invented word (about the point I posted the last comment…) with a meaning quite similiar to ‘strongly’.

Alternatively, I can’t type very well…

Did Janke feel aggrieved with the event organisers because of an undercurrent relating to a previous decision by Poultney to grant a license to “Hooters”, a restaurant staffed by “waitresses wearing tight T-shirts and shorts”?
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/FEMINISTS-LASH-CITY-LEADER/article-2967454-detail/article.html

According to local media reports Mrs Janke claimed: “Jan Martin refused to appear in a publicity photograph with my colleague, Councillor Guy Poultney, apparently because of his involvement in the recent licensing decision.
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Undefined-Headline/article-2597752-detail/article.html

For the x2 politicos involved it seems loyalty to a comrade trumps the broader aspirations of the exhibition – at any rate it seems unlikely that the spat arose in a vacuum?

@ 26 Watchman, and @ 27 Chaise Guevara

It’s frustrating how you’ve both leaped to the conclusion that “only those who agree with you can debate!” I’m well aware that there are many people who disagree with my views on all sorts of issues and I welcome debate and discussion, so long as it’s reasoned. (Before you get touchy and presume I’m accusing you both of being unreasoned, that’s not what I’m saying – this debate isn’t about either of you personally, it’s about women who are victims of violence carried out against them).

“I comment on issues like this not because they affect me directly … but because they are interesting and need consideration and thought.”

Couldn’t agree more.

“If someone can pick holes in your argument, should not your concern be mending the holes/building a new argument, not questioning their motives.”

Not quite sure when all this turned into ‘my’ argument, since I’m commenting on someone else’s news story posted on this site, and adding information (see @18) based on my experiences in helping to run some of the workshops mentioned in the story. My argument, if you want to call it that – I’d prefer the word ‘frustration’, is with some of the people who have also commented. NOT because they disagree (that’s up to them), but because – like the councillors at Bristol – they seem unable to recognise why rape and violence against women needs to be handled in a sensitive manner, and cannot be lumped in with all violence towards any person.

“I take issue with people bending stats to try to create a gender war.”

I’m neither bending stats nor creating a gender war. As a feminist, quite the opposite – I campaign for a world where men and women can be treated equally. (Before you leap in to be clever, and say ‘well, why not have an End Violence Against Women event with artwork by men?’, I’ve already said twice why I – and the participants I met – did not consider that appropriate considering the extremely sensitive nature of their experiences.)

@ Chaise – not sure why you thought you were being insulted by that I said (no need to explain), but think you’re being a bit touchy.

PS – Am logging off for the evening now, so am not insulting either of you should you post a reply and I don’t respond until tomorrow.

“victims and survivors”

Both male and female

sexism works both ways.

why else would a highy percentage of woman perpatraters get cusody of thier kids
when i guy who did it wouldn’t even see them.

It takes many forms from the obvious physical and sexual acts, to the feeling of threat that seeing a shelf full of lad mags in a shop can give us……violence against women is patriarchy’s raison detre’

You’re tone is …….hysterical.

“I’m neither bending stats nor creating a gender war. As a feminist, quite the opposite – I campaign for a world where men and women can be treated equally.”

Good. Gender war was too strong a term, because you weren’t following the far more offensive “men are evil” trope. Apologies for that. It’s more to do with ignoring the fact that men suffer violence too. I’m not saying that you do think like that, btw, but all I have to go on is your words, and when you say “but the structure of society is such that this is a much, much bigger issue for women” it does sound as if you think that violence against men is either very rare or somehow trivial.

There are good tactical reasons for inclusiveness here, too. People being people, they’re more supportive of public resources going towards things that affect them too. Many of the measures that could at least reduce the threat of rape (from having more coppers on the beat to working to create a society that is less likely to breed violent tendencies) work equally as well for mugging, drunken assault and the like.

And there’s absolutely no reason you couldn’t then siphon off some of that funding to help deal with some of the things that do disproportionately harm women (domestic violence, for example; I don’t know whether more victims of domestic violence are women, but I do suspect that female victims are generally harmed more by it). I can’t see someone mounting a campaign on the basis that money set aside for public safety is being “wasted” on domestic assaults.

“Before you leap in to be clever, and say ‘well, why not have an End Violence Against Women event with artwork by men?’, I’ve already said twice why I – and the participants I met – did not consider that appropriate considering the extremely sensitive nature of their experiences.”

I’m cool with your position on that: agree with your post at 18. If being inclusive as a point of principle is going to prevent the people who want support from seeking it, that obviously needs to be thought over.

“Chaise – not sure why you thought you were being insulted by that I said (no need to explain), but think you’re being a bit touchy. ”

Ah, maybe. My issue was that I’d posted what from my POV was a reasonable and non-aggressive comment, and in response I got accusations and was called “stupid” (ok, you were saying my argument was stupid, not me, but it’s not far off). As you no doubt know, one of the defining points of online debate is that aggression tends to escalate quickly.

@31 QRG

@28 but like I said male rape was not a crime until 1994 in the UK, and homosexuality was illegal till 1967 and a ‘disease’ officially much longer than that in the UK

It really depends which laws/institutions you look at for making gender distinctions about sexuality and violence and gender.

Re:male rape. Nowhere have I said that it is unimportant or that it not being outlawed until 1994 is morally abhorrent. My point is that violence against men is not culturally and socially institutionalised the same way that violence against women is/was (depending on where you’re lucky enough to live). If you want evidence then simply look at the FGM statistics, or the amount of women murdered in Iran by the State for made-up morality crimes, or, y’know, the rape statistics in this country of ours. Violence against men happens, of course it does, but it’s disingenous to say that it’s analogous with violence against women.
Re:homosexuality. Again, nowhere have I said that the laws against homosexuality were in any way a good thing and I am constantly arguing against them in other countries as well. If there was a UN day highlighting violence against LGBT people* would you argue that straight or cis people should be included too? Would you say it was pointless?
It was recently transgender day of remembrance [for victims of violence], to the outrage of the morality police and the tabloid press, are you suggesting we should have a cisgender day of remembrance as well? I really fail to see why you think a UN day highlighting violence against women is such a terrible thing. Knowledge is power and the more people know about the dreadful things that happen to women across the globe the better chance there is of stopping it from happening in the first place.

*For all I know there could be but I’m merely using it as an example here.

@ 41, Chiase Guevara

(Despite what I said, I couldn’t stop myself logging back on!)

No, I definitely don’t want to see any kind of gender war, and I definitely don’t think that all men are evil!!

“It does sound as if you think that violence against men is either very rare or somehow trivial.”

I’m not ignoring that men are victims of violence – and am certainly not thinking it is rare or trivial, have no idea where you got this idea from. Am very aware that violence against men is as true a fact as violence against women. However, as Sian has said above, this particular UN EVAW day was focused on violence against women (whether perpetrated by men or women). Other campaigns exist to support men who are victims of violence, and I do not belittle their experiences.

If you feel the UN should establish just one day in the calendar to support End Violence Against All People, you should probably take this up with them rather than us! But, for reasons stated above, there are many valid reasons why many women (and doubtless men, too) would prefer to seek support for their experiences in a same sex environment.

pagar

I totality agree with your points.
Top-shelf mags ect

But my point is that any form of Abuse in a relationship is wrong !
My point was maybe they should call it survivors day or something

Having been in a subject to many forms of abuse in my life time .
i am a guy does that mean that i am not a survivor ?

Lets get to the point in hand any form of sexism is wrong any form of abuse is wrong,be it man woman,woman man.woman woman ,man man,or sibling parents
my point is that a cross section of humans that are subject to it is wrong.

“Barbara Janke, questioned why the art on display was only by women, before arguing the UN day ignored male survivors. And now she’s attacking us through local media”

And that was her point.
Same as mine

I see nothing wrong with her making a point that all domestic Abuse is wrong

I was pointing out this is a sexist article .

Ah, yet again Jan gets called ‘hysterical’ for putting forward her views! Jan Martin is one of the most reasoned and articulate people I have ever met. Funny how ‘hysterical’ gets wheeled out to describe women who put forward a challenging opinion (see Barbara Janke’s attempts in the local paper to discredit Jan).

I’d like to add the following points:

- Jan Martin did a fantastic job in setting up the workshops and encouraging survivors of abuse to open up in a creative setting. It’s such a shame that the good work that she’s done has been ignored by so many people in this debate, not least the councillors mentioned above.

- Bristol City Council hosted the event on the 25th November. If they didn’t agree with it, or felt it was discriminatory, they should either not have hosted it or sent alternative representation.

– Cllr Poultney clearly has ideological beliefs which clash with the ethos of the UN designated End Violence Against Women day and for him to turn up for the photo opportunity was an insult to all those involved. It’s all very well to say that you’ll do everything to prevent violence against women & girls but he has a history of making decisions which are detrimental to the women of Bristol. Jan showed integrity in refusing to have her photograph taken with him.

As for Cllr Janke, she showed great disrespect by refusing to look at the artwork that was on display at the Council House. It was hosted by the Council which employs her as a councillor and therefore someone more senior than her had deemed it a suitable event for the council to be hosting. If she disagreed, she should have spoken to them beforehand instead of being so disrespectful on the day and she and Poultney should have stayed away rather than trying to undermine the event.

To then ignore all of Jan’s (and others’) attempts to discuss the matter further, and accuse Jan via the local paper of being ‘hysterical’ (yes, not very original), which was not the case either at the event or in the following correspondence, is more evidence of some Lib Dem councillors’ refusal to engage with local people on these issues. It was also cowardly to make these comments via the paper when Jan had made repeated attempts to discuss the matter in person with Janke.

Several councillors at Bristol City Council have shown that there is a worrying gap in knowledge on the issues surrounding violence against women.

Well done again to Jan and to all those who helped make the day a success, despite the best efforts of some local Lib Dem councillors to undermine it.

@44 Gnome

I disagree that this is a sexist article – though of course you’re entitled to read it any way you wish.

No one is doubting that all form of abuse to anyone, by anyone is wrong. But I know you, and some other people here, feel that by the UN having one day a year to promote the EVAW campaign that this is somehow sexist because this one day does not focus on violence against men.

If you Google the words “support male victims violence”, a lot of links come up to other campaigns and organisations that support male victims of violence. But I feel some empathy needs to be shown to the women who have survived violence and often wish to recover in a same-sex environment – just as I’m sure some male victims of violence do, depending on the type of violence suffered.

@ 43 Isobel

I agree, which was why my original response to this was “I’m on the fence”. My instincts are towards inclusiveness, but pragmatism is important. Does anyone else find they tend to be less pragmatic and more idealistic in internet discussions that in face-to-face discussions, btw? It’s probably down to polarisation.

I support the idea that it’s valid to criticise things like the event above, but also think it’s stupid to blindly attack it. Divide and rule and all that. I’m glad we’ve got around to friendly terms here as well – too many online rows with people who should be allies.

@ 45 Katherine

To be fair, Jan’s assertation that the existence of nudey pictures = violence can be fairly described as hysterical, although in the context I also think pagar’s use of the word was deliberately chosen to provoke. Drastically redefining words mid-debate isn’t helpful (in fact, it’s moving the goalposts).

@42 Mr S Pill

I am arguing generally against the approach to violence against women. I am not really into any special days for special groups of people really, because of how they are attached to divisive models of gender.

Yes more women are raped across the globe than men, and more men commit suicide than women and die as soldiers. I just think separating everyone into gender binary groups is harmful to making real change.

My point is a philosophical one. I don’t believe in dividing ‘men’ and ‘women’ into separate groups at all.

@48 – I think Jan is making the point that things like lads mags do perpetuate negative attitudes towards women which can manifest themselves in violence.

I don’t think this is hysterical at all – quite the opposite. Those who understand violence against women and its causes are concerned about the damaging effect that things like lads mags can have on men’s attitudes. This is why many people in Bristol are concerned about Guy Poultney’s attitude and lack of understanding towards the causes of violence against women. He votes in a lap dancing club and a Hooters breastaurant without compunction and then turns up to an EVAW event vowing to do all he can to end violence against women and girls.

It doesn’t quite compute.

I can assure anyone reading that Jan Martin is not in the least hysterical and it would be helpful if different vocabulary could be used than a word which is commonly used to silence women (that includes you, if you’re reading, Barbara Janke).

This was not Bristol City Council’s finest hour.

For me, what I find most insulting about the day’s events was that we’re talking about still vulnerable women who were given the opportunity and the space to share their experiences in a ‘safe environment’ and their very personal work was snubbed by two members of the council.

These women were encouraged to be creative and the idea behind the artwork was to have something to show others whilst offering a therapeutic activity for these women.

Whether you agree with the United Nations designated EVAW day or not, I hope that most people would agree that the actions of these two councillors was completely unacceptable. Jan Martin gave up her time and energy to help out and, in return, has been treated appallingly by these councillors in the local media whilst they benefitted from a staged photo opportunity. She deserves an apology and thanks, not the criticism she actually received by Barbara Janke. Jan has shown herself to have integrity and Barbara Janke showed herself to have very little.

Knowing the ideological stance that Guy Poultney has on sex establishments and violence against women, I think this is a case of him loading the gun and Barbara Janke firing the bullets. If they believed the day was unnecessary, they should have stayed away or sent someone else who would have been supportive of the hard work and emotional energy that had gone into the day’s preparations.

If the exhibition had been about violence against men, e.g. knife crime, as someone mentioned above, I would have thought it completely unacceptable for any councillor to come in and sound off in front of those who had contributed that the exhibition was too exclusive.

@ 50 Katherine

” I think Jan is making the point that things like lads mags do perpetuate negative attitudes towards women which can manifest themselves in violence.

I don’t think this is hysterical at all – quite the opposite.”

Sure, but that wasn’t what she said. She didn’t say “lads mags perpetuate negative attitudes that, if certain unsubstantiated assumptions are true, promote violence”. She said, in effect, “photographed nudity is violence”. It’s a different kettle of fish, and you can’t defend an argument by changing that argument entirely. She’s using the word “violence” to mean “softcore porn”. She might as well use it to mean “fish” or “the square root of 572″.

“Those who understand violence against women and its causes are concerned about the damaging effect that things like lads mags can have on men’s attitudes. This is why many people in Bristol are concerned about Guy Poultney’s attitude and lack of understanding towards the causes of violence against women. He votes in a lap dancing club and a Hooters breastaurant without compunction and then turns up to an EVAW event vowing to do all he can to end violence against women and girls.

It doesn’t quite compute.”

I’m afraid it does. He’s ok with stripping. He’s against violence. Where’s the lack of reason there? What you’re saying is the equivalent of “he likes cats, but claims to hate the colour blue. It doesn’t compute”. You can tie any issue to any other issue, but to assume that a liberal attitude to sex = support of misogynstic violence is irrational and, frankly, offensive.

Interesting debate.

quiet riot girl,

“My point is a philosophical one. I don’t believe in dividing ‘men’ and ‘women’ into separate groups at all.”

This seems like a truly bizarre point of view. Are you against all gender sensitive policies? Do you really not believe that men and women’s experiences of the world differ at all? Do you not think that institutions tend to be structured in a way that ignore the experiences of women? Just look at something as innocuous as human rights – supposedly the epitome of universality – to see how things quickly go wrong for women if a gender sensitive approach is not adopted. The state-centric nature of human rights treaties which, up until CEDAW, did not address the reality of the human rights abuses which women continue to face across the globe.

Nobody is denying that violence occurs to both men and women, or that violence against women is qualitatively better or worse. What days like this highlight is the specificity of the experiences of women who have endured gendered violence. As someone pointed out earlier, if there was a day also highlighting the specificity of gendered violence against men, then great. But I fail to see why people have reacted strongly against this.

52. Chiase Guevara
“She said, in effect, “photographed nudity is violence”. It’s a different kettle of fish…”

Are you inferring that from her post in this thread? Because if that’s the case you’re totally mischaracterising what she said. The lad’s mag comment is further illustrating the specifity of the female experience – the sexualisation and objectification which is commonplace and so ingrained, that it leads to, like Jan says, “the valuing of [women's] sexuality over [their] humanity”.

I really don’t see it as the non-sequiter that you’ve presented it as.

I just read the OP writer’s rules for her blog.

This is my blog, with my rules. If you don’t like them, well, you can set up your own blog.

1. No sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, ablist or hate language allowed.

2. If you write a comment that tells me a) what i’m writing about isn’t important, b) i need to get my priorities right, c) there are bigger fish to fry than the subject i am writing about, then please don’t be surprised if your comment is not published.
Firstly, i decide what is important to me. Secondly, why are you reading it if it isn’t important?

3. If you are patronising, spiteful, snide or telling me I’m wrong for no discernible reasons then again, i won’t publish. If you have a valid question or criticism that is constructive it will be published. I get to decide what i consider to fall under this category.

4. If your comment isn’t published, don’t cry censorship or free speech at me. Not having free speech is being denied the right to vote, or write your own blog, etc etc. Free speech is not the right to have a go at me because you think what i’m writing is dull/unimportant/stupid/wrong. i don’t go on your blog and write aggressive/patronising/confusing nonsense.

5. No anonymous posters.

6. You’d have thought it would be obvious, but swearing goes straight in to the spam folder. So if you call me a f***** idiot or bitch, that won’t get published either. Nice work guys. I’m a human being remember.

Thank you and good night.

Sounds like a tough environment.

@15 Chaise Guervara: But aren’t men far more likely to get mugged or just randomly attacked?

In the UK, yes. Worldwide, I’m not so sure.

I suspect that you and Sian may be talking at cross purposes to some extent in that you’re considering the UK whereas she’s considering the world.

@52Chaise
You cannot vow to do everything you can do to prevent violence against women and then vote in a strip club or a Hooters breastaurant.

Do I really need to explain why this does not compute? (don’t have time now but am hoping I don’t have to explain the link). These are not two random things that I just threw together. The women in the clubs experience a high rate of sexual assault alone (Holsopple report).

Check out http://www.hootersbristol.com for more info and research docs which give the background. This has all been sent to Guy Poultney.

This debate keeps coming back to things Jan did or didn’t say when the focus of the story is the behaviour of the councillors involved.

@Chaise: Was reflecting on the point that Jan was making about lads mags. Have you read one recently? The kind of language used to talk about women is hostile and aggressive. We are not talking about images. I know what Jan means on this point & I agree with her.

Danny Dyer’s recent advice to a heartbroken reader -to cut her after “smashing” (having sex with?) everything that moves- was passed for publication by an editor.

The magazine only got rid of Dyer because there was an outcry in the media. And the promised apology and donation to Rape Crisis didn’t appear to materialise.

Violence does not have to be physical.

[57] “You cannot vow to do everything you can do to prevent violence against women and then vote in a strip club or a Hooters breastaurant” – I think the OP would have made much more sense if this assertion had been highlighted as the reason for the dispute between the organisers and Janke?

It sounds like animosity toward Poultney had been simmering amongst the organisers for some time, following his involvement in the decision to license the restaurant in question.

The two local politicians presumably found it difficult to object to a legal enterprise (irrespective of their personal views) that would lead to jobs and generate revenue against a backdrop of gloomy economic conditions?

Surely the first rule of politics is that you can’t please all the people all the time?
Should Poultney have taken the risk of angering the local business community and job seekers by denying the license, or risk offending the local women’s group seeking to promote their own laudable aims?

Presumably after choosing as he did Poultney became the enemy and was simply no longer welcome at any event hosted by the group in question?

@55
damon ufortunately after someone wrote on my blog that ‘you have gone too far you f****** b****’ i felt the need to put a strict moderation policy on my blog. i don’t think asking people not to threaten me or use hate language is too unreasonable!

this has been a really interesting debate.

in response to chaise, i would recommend reading the american psychological association’s work on the links between sexual objectification of women, and violence against women. to quote:

The research evidence is clear on these points:

• Pressure on women and girls to look and behave in certain ways negatively affects their self-esteem and their mental health.
• Gender inequality is reinforced, and hopes for a level playing field are dashed, when women are valued for their supposed sex appeal at the expense of their other attributes and qualities.
• After being exposed to images that sexually objectify women, men are significantly more accepting of sexual harassment, interpersonal violence, rape myths, and sex role stereotypes.

What this suggests is that there are links between the portrayal of women in lad’s mags and strip clubs to encouraging a view that women are objects that have things done to them, not fully human.

i don’t find any of the arguments against having a day dedicated to ending vawg convincing i’m afraid. i think we need to stop thinking in terms of either/or. you can care about vawg and still give a damn about other types forms victims and survivors of violence. having one day to focus on women does not negate or make you unable to think about anything else.

I think he should be forced to go and gobble up a plate of the intensively-farmed, greasy chicken, while some chilly, half naked girls shiver as they bring yet more food to his masterly table and giggle at his every word. Obviously, he should pay the extrortionate bill from his own pocket. Then he’d realise exactly what kind of retro-sexist, misogynist hell he has inflicted on the unwilling victims, sorry, citizens of Bristol.

I don’t think you need to worry about Hooters. If the experience is as bad as you describe, it will not attract many customers and should not be open for long. On the other hand if people like their experience in the “retro sexist misogynist hell” they will go back, exercising their freedom of choice in the process. Presumably you would agree freedom of choice is a good thing?

Incidentally, if the Hooters vote was the real cause of the antipathy towards the councillors (and of their antipathy towards the Bristol Feminist Network) it was somewhat disingenuous to dress this story up as an alleged snub to your victim art.

53 Felix

you misunderstand me. refusing to split people into ‘men’ and ‘women’ doesnt mean not being ‘gender-sensitive’ or ‘universal’ it means looking at divisions and inequality in a whole different way.

e.g. how does power play itself out in relationships?
why do we live in such a heteronormative society and how does this affect violence in sexual relationships?
why do some young people find violence a way of life in their upbringing?
how do families treat their kids growing up according to gender norms of masculinity and femininity?

etc etc
I am totally gender sensitive!

@sianushka if people challenge your view you always recommend them some reading as if their view is due to lack of understanding/knowledge.

I have read SO MUCH feminist literature and I make my judgements partly on the fact that I do not agree with its assumptions, methodolgies or conclusions.

I dont agree with the conclusions of that american psychology report either.

I do not think that lads mags and stripping and Hooters cause violence against women. There was violence against women and men long before those phenomena came into existence.

I would suggest some reading for you but I don’t think you will take my suggestions as you only seem to read what supports your own world view.

But if you want to read from another perspective I can give you some references.

Verbal, emotional, and psychological violence is as bad as physical abuse. It can cause long term physical and emotional health problems and even death – sometimes by suicide, sometimes by the illnesses that being in chronic long-term distress/fear can cause. It is endured by huge numbers of women. (I don’t deny men suffer it too, but it’s for different reasons, and men, being in a more privileged position socially are less likely to suffer long term damage) Financial abuse is also now acknowledged to exist in a society where men have overall financial control over most situations, be they domestic, political or business – whereby a woman’s freedom is restricted by restricting her financial autonomy. State violence consists in the systemic punishment that often ensues when a woman reports rape or domestic abuse, whereby her experiences can be treated as a joke, disbelieved, or ignored and in extreme cases can cause her to be punished herself – ref, the recent case of a woman prosecuted and found guilty because fear of her abusive partner caused her to retract her accusations; also see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11787895 for another example; or talk to rape survivors who have been to court and gone through the ‘second rape’ that constitutes cross examination in court – these aren’t rare exceptions, but something women must expect if they report abuse against them. If you’ve experienced the process and got a good result, then good for you, you are one of the very lucky ones.
The chattering classes often refuse to acknowledge these things, thinking everyone is like them – ie rather privileged – or because they find it difficult to face the fact that their status within our system may rest on such injustice. It’s a truism that society’s ills are suffered disproportionately by the less privileged .
Publications which encourage misogyny have become acceptable and are considered harmless fun by most people (that’s what I mean about abuse being so ubiquitous it’s accepted as normal). Lad mags are not about nudity – you can go to art galleries for that – they’re about a space where men can experience women simultaneously as objects of hatred, ridicule and sex. A great woman I know will take photos of such shelves, informing the retailer that she considers that in a more enlightened future they will be outlawed for what they are – examples of hate crime. I’m with her on that.
BTW, my actions were nothing to do with Hooters. FYI, Janke and Poulteny turned up arguing that the event shouldn’t be happening, and questioning the validity of UN EVAWG day. I refused to then join in with their publicity photo because: 1) it was in conflict with what they were saying to us face to face; 2) GP had proved himself anti-women on several counts (Hooters is just one), and apparently turned up deliberately to disrupt the event; 3) I object to the manipulative language and means used to belittle what we were doing – as if we are, by calling attention to women, somehow trying to deny that men suffer from violence at all. It’s a classic abusive tactic used by the powerful over the less powerful – extracting an extreme and oversimplified interpretation from a subtle argument, the easier to deny the validity of that argument.
Seems to be happening on this blog too.

@ 54. Felix Stanwood

This is what she said:

“You are oversimplifying the nature of violence. VAW exists in every level and thread of a woman’s life, and is sustained by her innate knowledge that, as often as not, if she complains about it she will quite possibly be ignored, vilified, ridiculed, abused – maybe killed. It takes many forms from the obvious physical and sexual acts, to the feeling of threat that seeing a shelf full of lad mags in a shop can give us.”

So she’s telling Watchman that he’s wrong because he doesn’t understand violence, then defines violence as “looking at something I don’t like”. If you really can’t tell the difference between a half-naked photo and a punch in the face, I’m not really sure what I can say. But it is absolutely disengenous, in a thread that discusses actual violence, to suddenly insist that we’re talking about metaphorical/made-up violence, especially if you use your new private definition to tell other, more sensible posters that they’re wrong.

Since a Hooters opened and then folded in Birmingham a few years back, I wouldn’t necessarily expect the Bristol one to do well. It may be that the British public vote with their feet (and wierdly, tend not to equate a good meal with sexual titilation – which might explain our twentieth century cusisine…).

Anyway, there is a frightening amount of oversimplified modernist thinking on display in this thread, whereby factor a has a correlation with factor b, so by removing factor a we expect factor b to be reduced. In this case Jan’s apparent assertion (she didn’t say this, but I am prepared to believe she meant it for the purpose of debate) that images of scantily (sorry – scantily and titilation in one comment – this is becoming very Carry On Camping…) clad women cause violence towards women. This may be the case, although even if there is correlation between the two (and I can think of societies where there is a very negative correlation – most traditional tribal societies for example) it does not imply causation.

To have causation, you have to have a mechanism. I assume that the mechanism envisaged by Jan which allows her to assume an inert image is an act of violence would be something more complex than ‘man sees image of naked woman; man is aroused; man can only satisfy arousal by taking sexual pleasure with real woman even if through violence’, as otherwise this would be the easiest argument in the world to end through proving the existence of masturbation (now there’s a sentence I never thought to write…). But whatever mechanism is envisaged, it needs to address my core point above that for violence to become involved, it has to be socially acceptable or productive (in renegotiating relationships) – it has to be an option people will use. If violence is just assumed to happen because (or because men are violent, a justifiable point but one which simply reinforces my point about social norms) then you are not digging deeply enough into the question of how society permits/reacts to violence. As with all feminist arguments setting violence against women on a special plane, whatever mechanism is put forward (and I await with interest to see what is put forward) will be insufficient if it does not consider wider social implications – perhaps a use for the patriarchy concept?

Please note I am not commenting on the seperate argument that such imagery causes social pressure to conform on women and girls – which it clearly does (as does all imagery). This is partially because I believe the answer is education – the more educated you are the more you are likely to understand what conformity is and how you can feel free not to do so, whilst education also encourages the realisation that there are many forms of beauty, amongst humans as amongst other things – but mainly because the only solution to the problem would be censorship, which would in effect impose a more limited number of acceptable social models on us which would increase the pressure to conform to these further (with less available counter rolemodels to call on, and these also subject to approval, the range of socially acceptable behaviours will be limited). In effect the solution would simply exacerbate the cure. But apart from as a device for the enforcement of censorship (or just social norms) violence is not an issue here.

@ 64 Jan

“Lad mags are not about nudity – you can go to art galleries for that – they’re about a space where men can experience women simultaneously as objects of hatred, ridicule and sex. ”

Seriously, you can’t write stuff like this then be surprised when people call you “hystrerical”. Why can’t they be a space that allow men to enjoy the sexual appeal of women? Occam’s razor and all that. Why go around imposing hateful motives on the entire world?

@ 57 and 58 Katherine

“You cannot vow to do everything you can do to prevent violence against women and then vote in a strip club or a Hooters breastaurant.

Do I really need to explain why this does not compute? (don’t have time now but am hoping I don’t have to explain the link). These are not two random things that I just threw together. The women in the clubs experience a high rate of sexual assault alone (Holsopple report).”

Well, that at least follows logically. In your last post you seemed to be saying (like Jan) that violence can be redefined as “everything I don’t like”. If that’s an attitude you don’t share, more power to you.

However, I do think you’re taking the guy over-literally: when he promised to do anything he could, he probably meant “within reason”. Maybe he should have said that, but it still doesn’t seem reasonable to attack him just for not being an authoritarian. He has to consider the damage to liberty done by banning stip clubs and the like.

If you’re planning the response that safety is more important than liberty, let me point out that you could SERIOUSLY reduce violence against women by putting every male in jail.

“This debate keeps coming back to things Jan did or didn’t say when the focus of the story is the behaviour of the councillors involved.”

Yes, but it seems a lot of background was left out of the OP. I can see why the councillors may have been pissed off to suffer an illiberal anti-sex campaign from feminists and then discover apparent sexism from the same feminists. Even if that’s not an accurate reading of the situation.

“Was reflecting on the point that Jan was making about lads mags. Have you read one recently? The kind of language used to talk about women is hostile and aggressive. We are not talking about images. I know what Jan means on this point & I agree with her.”

Language about men in women’s magazines is also hostile and aggressive sometimes, especially if, like Jan, you seek to see monsters everywhere you look. And so what; ultimately, what can you do about this that isn’t worse than the disease? Do you agree that it’s unreasonable to tell someone they don’t understand what violence is if to do so you have to change the definition of the word?

Jan,

If you think a hate crime is printing or displaying pictures (which are value neutral – we impart our own meaning onto them, although they can be leading) then I am beginning to question your sense of balance.

A hate crime against women is throwing acid into their face for walking around unveiled (or more normally, for spurning your advances). A crime against a woman is something whereby the woman is illegally harmed. A picture taken of another woman (from which she has gained benefit – she will have been paid) may be unjustifiable social pressure but it is not a crime.

The problem here is that even reasonable people like Chaise, QRG or myself (all of whom would subscribe to the label feminist I suspect) cannot accept such a wierdly polemical position. Which means when you put on what appears to be a comendable if challenging event about the art of survivors of violence, there is far too much chance you will be seen as investing it with your extreme interpretations, which means that those who you have clearly had dealings with in the past such as the local counsillors will be wary of you. Because your views are so far from the mainstream (where most people seem to think of men and women as equal and the same) it is going to be difficult to consider how a conflict between yourself and a mainstream politican can be viewed in neutral terms – if even your definitions of violence and equality (this second to be fair is a presumption) are so far apart, how do you expect others to be able to deal with you.

I respect your right to your views, although as you can presumably tell I think they are too strongly held and extreme. But I doubt whether seeing the world through the prism of these views is productive – what seemed from the original post to be rank bad manners by councillors is looking more and more like the problem of trying to deal with a particularly militant and uncompromising viewpoint and the inevitable social conflicts this will arouse.

I will not be condenscending and suggest compromise – I suspect that would be pointless, and to be honest I respect your strength of belief. But it is worth asking what you want to achieve through such extreme and almost alien views, and whether you will manage it. Which is a pity – as this thread is also about violence, and I would happily see violence against women (and everyone) eliminated, as would you and I suspect all other commentators.

I’m totally with the education argument . Another thing I tried to talk to the cllrs about that day was the way they are blocking and hindering the introduction of the new prevention policy for schools, which addresses mutual respect regardless of sex, but which is not being developed in Bristol because it’s been identified as a women’s issue.

We live in a society now where violence in all forms is seen as the norm, and common sense and the desire to stop it is seen as extreme; where people say regularly ‘it’s always happened and always will’ whether they’re talking about rape, or knife crime or one country invading another, or or or. Why am I labelled extreme, unbalanced, hysterical, polemical just because I believe that when something’s wrong we should try and stop it? Is it because I make people feel uncomfortable about violence that they could actually change but are reluctant to confront because they have an interest in maintaining the status quo?

‘Jan’s apparent assertion … that images of scantily … clad women cause violence towards women

So she’s telling Watchman that he’s wrong because he doesn’t understand violence, then defines violence as “looking at something I don’t like”

Why go around imposing hateful motives on the entire world?’

These are all examples of what I mean when I say.. ‘extracting an extreme and oversimplified interpretation from a subtle argument, the easier to deny the validity of that argument’. Once you start doing this with words it becomes impossible to argue back because every attempt to counter will be met with more distortion of what I’m saying.
I therefore decline to comment further on this blog.

Jan,

Sorry if you are not commenting further – it kind of proves my point about you adoping only your position though (admittedly, most of us don’t change our position as a result of commenting on here, but the engagement at least strengthens our arguments). It is also a pity, as this thread is interesting and needs different voices.

Mind you, if you are insisting on your own definition of violence, as opposed to that commonly held by other commentators (and happily engaged with by Sian for example), it will indeed be difficult to have construct debate. But to criticise others for this seems a bit odd.

I would say you quote me (the ‘Jan’s apparent assertion…’) totally out of the spirit I intended – it was a reference not to you directly but to the explanation of your comment provided by Katherine, which may well be accurate but went beyond what I could directly read into what you said. I did ask if someone could explain the mechanisms behind the argument, which would hopefully make my explicitly silly defence of the simple charicture of an argument I presented invalid and let me know what I was really debating about. The problem is here that you seem to assume I have prior knowledge of the subtle and complex argument you mention, when in fact all I have ever encountered is the headline you present without justification. It is difficult to appreciate the subtly of an argument if you can’t see it made.

I notice you say ‘We now live in a society…’. This kind of implies we did not previously (it could just as easily be rhetorical emphasis I suppose). I would say that in historical terms we now live in a society where violence is less common and more shocking than at any time in the past, which is presumably just a different interpretation of the evidence. Perhaps though, we have very different narratives, with very different ideals of where we will end up, and this may explain your difficulty with directly engaging with my challenges.

@70

To fisk this post properly would take all day so let’s just pick out a few gems.

We live in a society now where violence in all forms is seen as the norm, and common sense and the desire to stop it is seen as extreme

We live in the least violent society we have ever had. The desire to stop violence is not seen by anyone as “extreme”. That statement is the antithesis of the truth.

Why am I labelled extreme, unbalanced, hysterical, polemical just because I believe that when something’s wrong we should try and stop it?

You’re not. You’re labelled so because you make extreme, unbalanced, hysterical, polemical statements.

Why go around imposing hateful motives on the entire world?

No idea why you do that. Watchman wrote a far more restrained and respectful post that you deserved.

I therefore decline to comment further on this blog.

Sighs gratefully.

Poultney allowed Hooters to open despite it being in s cumulative impact zone. This means that the council and the police have deemed that there is enough crime and disorder in the area already and the default position is to refuse any further licence applications in the area. The police strongly objected to the application. Poultney allowed it to open claiming ‘his hands were tied’. Several of his own colleagues disagreed with him and he told me himself that had a different panel met that day, they could have refused the application because these decisions are subjective. There were several elements of this application that did not stack up (all listed on the blog).

He voted in favour of a lap dancing club last December that was refused and was again refused on appeal by the Planning Inspectorate.

There have been other instances of this councillor making decisions which go against his own avowal to do everything he can (including presumably within his licensing committee chair) to prevent violence against women.

There are also other instances of him expressing his own stance on violence against women and its causes which I won’t list here.

So yes, the organisers were hoping that this man would stay away from an event which was focused on violence against women.

However, as I said above, those present were prepared to tolerate his presence. It was the undermining of the event by both councillors and their refusal to look at the artwork which had caused offence. This is despite Jan trying to engage with Cllr Janke and giving her more information (as Jan mentioned above). The hysterical
comments are therefore directed at the wrong person. Jan was ignored and Janke swept off, having made a fuss about the apparent exclusivity of the event.

Further attempts to engage weren’t even acknowledged by these two councillors. Jan has been ignored and the
only response has been the criticism via the local media.

These events did not happen because Guy Poultney was there. They happened because the councillors involved tried to undermine the event and handled
it all with very bad grace.

Pagar-it’s really disappointing that you are being ungracious to Jan’s responses.

All this came about because:
-a member of the public gave up her time to run workshops for female survivors of abuse, following discussions with the dv coordinator at the council

-the same member of the public spent time displaying the artwork and creative writing in the Council House, following discussions with the council.

-this person was at the council led event to publicise EVAW day and to support the women whose very personal work was on display.

-two councillors undermined the event and behaved rudely. Jan had the integrity not to want to appear in the photo op with them.

A complaint and request for further discussion was sent to the leader of the council.

She criticised Jan publicly.

Now Jan is getting further slated for outlining the day’s
events and for expressing her views.

Thanks Jan for getting off your backside, helping many women, putting up with the idiots at the council who
tried to undermine the event, trying to engage with them further and then being prepared to put up with further criticism by defending your position on here.

At least you have the satisfaction of knowing that the women you helped were extremely grateful for the work you did with them and that other members of the public who viewed the exhibition were moved by what they saw.

pagar:

I therefore decline to comment further on this blog.

Sighs gratefully.

Pagar I’d rather than jan martin commenting on this blog than you – who seems to deliberately miss the point just to cast doubt on their intentions.

Let’s pick knife crime.

So an outside agency decides to hold a day to promote ending knife crime against young men.

The council hold meetings asking for support and ideas from members of the public.

A member of the public volunteers to give up his time to work with knife crime victims, helping them to produce artwork and creative writing which talks about their experiences.

It is displayed at the council house on the day itself after much hard work and time given by the member of the public.

There’s a photo op. Two councillors come
in and refuse to look at the artwork because it is too exclusive. Why do we need to look at knife crime anyway? What a waste of time! It has been designated as a soecial day by an international agency but what do they know?

The councillors, let’s call them Poultney and Janke, smile for the photo op, are rude to the members of the public, refuse to look at the very personal artwork and leave. Following requests to discuss knife crime further, they criticise the organiser in the local paper, calling him ‘hysterical’.

Would people here agree with behaviour (I know many people like to play devil’s advocate but I hope that most people would agree that this behaviour from two councillors is completely unacceptable).

@ 70

“We live in a society now where violence in all forms is seen as the norm, and common sense and the desire to stop it is seen as extreme; where people say regularly ‘it’s always happened and always will’ whether they’re talking about rape, or knife crime or one country invading another, or or or. Why am I labelled extreme, unbalanced, hysterical, polemical just because I believe that when something’s wrong we should try and stop it? Is it because I make people feel uncomfortable about violence that they could actually change but are reluctant to confront because they have an interest in maintaining the status quo?”

No. It’s because you make statements like this, claiming the “desire to stop violence is seen as extreme”, then specifically cite rape and knife crime as examples. So most people are not anti-rape and anti-stabbing? Give me a break. You are called extreme and hysterical because these are good descriptions of your arguments.

“These are all examples of what I mean when I say.. ‘extracting an extreme and oversimplified interpretation from a subtle argument, the easier to deny the validity of that argument’.”

I didn’t oversimplify it. These are your exact words: ““Lad mags are not about nudity – you can go to art galleries for that – they’re about a space where men can experience women simultaneously as objects of hatred, ridicule and sex. ” If you think your own argument is extreme and oversimplistic (it is), that’s hardly my fault – in fact, it rather proves my point.

“Once you start doing this with words it becomes impossible to argue back because every attempt to counter will be met with more distortion of what I’m saying.”

Ha ha ha. How do we define violence again?

“I therefore decline to comment further on this blog.”

Classic: had my parting shot, now I’m not going to listen to any response. kthxbye.

@ 75 Sunny

“Pagar I’d rather than jan martin commenting on this blog than you – who seems to deliberately miss the point just to cast doubt on their intentions.”

Hang on. You just wrote a very good article about counterproductive attitudes on this topic, and now you’re attack pagar for fighting against those very attitudes?

Jan is arguing from a position that can only exist in a paranoid fantasy world: the male sex drive is violence in itself, society as a whole is cool with rape and murder, that sort of thing. Pagar is absoutely right to criticise her. Are you actively against sensible people commenting on this blog?

@ 76 Katherine

I would want to know why it was specifically aimed at protecting young men. If a good reason was given, I’d probably criticise the councillors. But I don’t think anyone’s defending them at this point, are they?

Your defence of Jan based on her past actions, while totally reasonable in terms of defending her as a person, is in this context a kind of friendly ad hom. Jan could be the kindest and bravest person on the planet, and for all I know she is, but that doesn’t mean that pagar, Watchman and I can’t take issue with her bizarre statements. And given that they’re the sort of statements used to justify illiberality, it’s important to point out any fallacious reasoning.

Katherine,

Has anyone on this thread actually supported the councillors (although having tried to debate with Jan, I have developed sympathy for them, as it must be tough having to live up to her standards without being explained why – which does not mean their behaviour was also not bad)?

The thread has actually developed as a consideration of violence against women and how this is treated, with some (Sian, certainly Jan) arguing that it was seperate and different from normal violence and others (me, QRG, Chaise) arguing that it was a part of a whole and in the most extreme case (me again sorry) arguing that it could only be eliminated by dealing with violence as a whole, or that any victories would be fleeting.

So I would condemn the counsillor’s behaviour on the basis of the evidence we have (allowing no-one has set out their side of the story, but this may well be because they have no defence for their behaviour), as I would in the hypothetical scenario above also. Which makes no difference to the rest of the thread, and the issue on which Jan was briefly debating and which caused Pagar’s characteristic and undiplomatic comments (if you play with politics you have to accept such things happen – perhaps if we could eliminate violence we could deal with aggresive responses also…). In effect, Pagar was not attacking Jan over a meeting in Bristol but rather over a response to earlier posts in which she set out a particularly developed feminist argument without supporting evidence, and in a tone that suggested soceity was collapsing around us. If you set such views out without actually showing the subtle arguments involved (and subtle is an interesting word – the best arguments are clear and strong surely?) then you are likely to get such reactions.

Phew – getting nasty, time I said my piece.

If you deny that women are oppressed disproportionately by a world order that is patriarchal, then you’re not a feminist.

Men posting on here can’t claim to be feminists then gang up on one woman, because she happens to define her beliefs based on women’s experience rather than men’s. Feminism is (at least partly) about listening to women and giving their experiences value, not by insulting us and telling us the way we interpret our experience is wrong.

@ 81

Thanks for telling us what we can and can’t do!

You seem to be claiming that simply by disagreeing with her we disqualify ourselves as feminists. As far as I’m concered “feminism” doesn’t mean “always agreeing with anything a woman says”. This is not a very rational position.

tati,

I’m glad I can be a feminist then (which incidentally means you believe in female equality last time I checked the definition, but hey, we could go down the disagreing about words route all day at this rate…) since I do agree that women are oppressed by a world order that is patriarchical. However, I dispute that the world order is partiarchial to any particular extent, although much of the world is ordered patriarchially if you want. So women are generally oppressed, I agree. Although not so much in the western world where society is much less patriarchal. I’d suggest the first step to reducing oppression is a properly functioning universal democracy myself.

As to referring to women’s experience rather than men’s as a justification (I assume this refers to Jan, but I am not sure – she made a generalisation about female experiences rather than referring to any particular evidence, which was disputed by the equally female QRG if you check), if anyone presented that evidence I would listen and consider it. But I would not privilege it in this debate – if violence against women is an act committed by men (please correct me if this is wrong, as it is another impression from the discussion), how do you hope to understand it only from the point of view of the victim? It is surely more important to understand what motivates the perpertrator of a violent act than the victim if you want to stop such acts?

In general (as opposed to the specific case above) the experiences of women have equal value to the experiences of men (or transgendered individuals who do not seem to fit into this debate). That is equality, and that is what I work for – if you want feminism to mean more than that, then we will have to disagree. But I would suggest not alienating the people like me with that strong belief in equality, as they are your natural allies. Explain your position and stop assuming we are all part of the patriarchy or whatever.

BTW, Watchman, I wouldn’t mind access to the vast draughts of patience and calm you seem to be able to summon up.

Hee he Chaise – you are on fire today – I would throw my usual two-penneth but you keep beating me to the punch.

Isn’t there something rather suspect whenever a commentator resorts to the ‘I’m taking my ball home because you won’t play by my rules’ card?

If men fail to understand certain feminist arguments how is it helped by either refusing to engage in debate or ostracising they don’t like at a public event?

sunny- pagar is obv a familiar face with ‘previous’ here but in this specific instance I think his comments were totally justified.

Jan’s comments were ridiculously dramatic.

Chaise,

I tend to be patient and calm when dealing with ideas – there is a time for anger and passion, but that is over issues and policies.

Since no-one on this thread is defending violence against women (no that would be an unpopular comment…) there is no heated issue here. Some people seem to get heated against me because I will not play what they consider to be their game by their rules (appologies if that is not what is happening – but again, I would like to know what is then), but that is up to them. I’ll just engage with what they put forward and if they misinterpret me, it’s probably due to my equally deep well of unclear English and needlessly complicated use of paranthesis (not that I regret it of course (and it is never confusing)) – Jan managed to sort out one particularly horrible example into a tidy quote particularly well.

Cheers, a&e.

Watchman: I guess we all have our red flag issues. Irrational arguments annoy me (especially if they’re used as a club to beat over someone else’s head), as do underhand debatorial tactics generally, while sexist nonsense like that spouted at 81 makes steam blow out of my ears. If someone was advocating violence (exceptions for self-defense of course, and occasionally war) I’d be angry but at least it’d be tempered with hilarity; I’d find them too ridiculous to really engage with on any level.

However (and speaking of someone who shares your addiction to paranthesis), keeping a level head is normally preferable, and I salute you for it.

86 QRG

Exactly; the voice of reason at last.

A&E is also on the money @85 about the lame-ness of someone pulling the “no fair, I’m not playing” trick.

Pagar, Chaise and others were being quite reasonable in the face of ridiculously hyperbolic statements.

Why is it that in these type of discussions we always end up (pace tati @81, and Sunny’s “right on” interjection earlier) with someone telling us that the default feminist position is that we have to refrain from debating a point for fear of “insulting us and telling us the way we interpret our experience is wrong.”?

Perhaps you’d like to reflect that you are too easily offended, and don’t have a monopoly on the truth?

I read an article in New Internationalist recently in which it was claimed that Iraqi war widows bore the brunt of the consequences of the US invasion. I couldn’t help but feel that the dead husbands had born some of the brunt too. This sort of well-intentioned sympathy for women in very difficult situations was in effect blinkered to the human consequences of the invasion because it wanted to take a feminist perspective. Therefore I have to agree with Watchman, Chaise et al who argue that making such specific claims about certain types of violence being somehow special is likely to fail.

I should look up the UN VAWG-day but as I have to dash to collect the kids soon I’ll make a quick point: It is recognised that in some countries rape is being used as a terror tactic and is having apalling consequences for the survivors. I cannot see how decent people could do anything but support efforts to highlight and combat these crimes. However this is not the same as domestic violence in the UK. DV is not as systematic and extensive.

I cannot see why decent people would not want to help the survivors of violence of whatever sex, and if they have made some recovery in single-sex groups by self-expression and want to raise awareness then they deserve support too.

Whether the exhibition in question was to some extent hijacked by a single-interest group with ulterior motives deserves further examination.

This is actually a really interesting debate.

I’m going to send this link around to some womens networks I’m involved with that look at the problem too much in the ‘either’ ‘or’ sphere.

An ideal strategy/process-which I agree with Watchman but you’ve made it so much more eloquently that it will be quoted-is starting with

1) Background & Outreach-why is this happening? why is there violence? etc etc
2) Creating workshops using this information to engage with abused women.
3) Creating Outcomes-looking to the future.

I caught this late but Katherine, Jan-I will get in touch personally-the cycle will continue unless these women are not educated about the deeper route of violence in order to gain strength and empower themselves.

Sigh, I’ve worked with girls and women in all sorts of dire situations. The problem is your ignoring the beginning part of what Watchman is talking about and that is these men are also victims.

Anyway, thanks all..very interesting!

@ 43 Isobel:

It probably comes from how you framed the issue. Your position that there are structural differences between men’s experiences and women’s experiences essentially argues that what men experience is not as bad as what women experience. However, that is a feminist position that is not based on any actual evidence. That position stems from pure assumption and from research that only looked at violence against women. That is an extremely one-sided perspective, and there is no way that any male survivor or advocate for male survivors could view that position as anything other than marginalizing and trivializing violence against men.

I do not know what the rate of violence is in the UK, however, in the States males make up two-thirds of the victims of all violent crimes, with the exception rape,the latter of which is probably just the result of male victims not coming forward. The current rate of sexual violence against males is 1 in 6, and that number only includes males who considered themselves to have been victimized, and only acts that were committed when the victim was under 18-years-old. According to a 2007 study, 40% of those who rape boys are women. As there is little outreach for male victims, little research being conducted, and minimal prosecution for intimate and sexual violence against boys and men, the likelihood that such violence is more pervasive than people think is extremely high. It is very easy to frame a problem as a rarity if one deliberately ignores it.

That said, I do not think there is anything wrong with creating same-sex only spaces for survivors. Male survivors want similar spaces for the same reasons women do. There is, however, a problem with days like Violence Against Women and Girls Day because there are no counterparts for male victims. And even though the UN may have created the Day, that has no impact on whether individual organizations wish to include male survivors. Not including them is a willful choice, either by deliberately excluding or by rendering them so invisible so as to never even think that there could be male survivors.

So while I disagree with how Janke handled the situation, as a male survivor and advocate I agree with her sentiments. If someone dared to have a remembrance day for soldiers and excluded women, despite that the vast majority of soldiers are male (especially those who died in combat), people would rightly cry foul. I think of violence in the same way. To exclude groups of people based on political attitudes is deeply immoral. It is no better than spitting in their faces, particularly when people argue why those groups deserve to be excluded.

@Toysoldier:

‘As there is little outreach for male victims, little research being conducted, and minimal prosecution for intimate and sexual violence against boys and men, the likelihood that such violence is more pervasive than people think is extremely high. It is very easy to frame a problem as a rarity if one deliberately ignores it’

absofuckinglutely right.

It’s 1983 again!

Katherine @58

Danny Dyer’s recent advice to a heartbroken reader -to cut her after “smashing” (having sex with?) everything that moves- was passed for publication by an editor.

I have always presumed that Dyer’s comments were so outrageous that they were said as some kind of sick joke.

94 captain swing: Yes, feminism is stuck in the early 1980s. the fact some of us are still arguing with its outdated dogma is not our love of 1980s identity politics but our realisation that feminism is still a powerful force, globally.

QRG,

Shouldn’t it just be claimed that feminism is an undeniable aspiration – that as long as we need feminists we have not created an ideal society?

@ 97 Watchman

“Shouldn’t it just be claimed that feminism is an undeniable aspiration – that as long as we need feminists we have not created an ideal society?”

Depends what you mean by the term (and bear in mind that QRG, who exemplifies what I feel the term should mean, rejects it because of the other meanings ascribed to it).

If by ‘feminists’ you mean “those seeking equality and fairness between the sexes” then yes. If instead you mean “obsessives who distort reality whenever possible to paint themselves as eternal victims” or, indeed, “New Age types who bang on about the mystical power of the womb” then no (yes, this is a bugbear of mine).

In other words, the existence of people who describe themselves as feminists does not mean by itself that there’s anything wrong with society. You could argue that the PERFECT society wouldn’t contain such people in the first place, I suppose, but that’s way too far over the “creepy Utopia” line for me…

@97 @98 Haha that made me smile Chaise G!

And Chaise was bang on too in terms of how I see feminism these days.

Gender inequality does need to be addressed in a society riddled with gender inequalities. Do feminists address those inequalities? I think they exacerbate them. Look at the recent activities of mainstream UK feminism:

- lobbying to increase regulations on strip clubs
- bringing in a law criminalising clients of sex workers
- encouraging ‘feminist’ men to run campaigns calling for the ‘end of demand’ for commercial sex
- highlighting ‘violence against women’ as opposed to all other forms of gender violence.
- campaigning to emphasise how cuts impact on ‘women’ more than ‘men’ so reinforcing the gender binary that oppresses us all

None of these triumphs represent a move towards gender equality in my view but a step in the wrong direction.

@ 99

In fairness, “lobbying to increase regulations on strip clubs” COULD be a good thing if it focused on workers’ rights. If it’s just a NIMBY stalking horse for trying to push them out of the local area then not, obviously.

Since I tend to assume feminism has the nicest possible meaning (my polite and patient nature again I suppose…), and that those who describe themselves as feminists but who are actually determined to make women second-class citizens (I suppose they might consider themselves to be making them equal, but by singling them out for special treatment and protection they are reducing their ability to function as full members of society – exactly the same as a patriarchal society passing laws for the protection of women as far as I can see) are like those people who describe themselves as right-wing then support nationalisation, I plead guilty to assuming feminism means campaigning for equality.

I long for a day when all feminists have gone – because they are no longer needed. I suppose the problem is that some feminists seem to want to create a self-sustaining role – as if the suffragettes had continued on after 1929 (I think that was when the voting age was equalised?) to demand votes for women only at 16, then 14 etc.

Incidentally, I’d assume one of the signs that feminism had succeeded was that people were so liberal and comfortable with their own identities that they were tolerant of strip-clubs (or just didn’t need them – I haven’t really though much on how strip-clubs would fit in my ideal utopia. Jokes on a postcard please…). The value and prohibitions placed on display of the female body seem to be one of the most outstanding examples of constraints that are unfairly biased towards one gender in society – and it is a division that almost every left-wing government seems to approve.

I always find with these discussions where a feminist starts on a topic in an emotive and lecturing way, that she/they don’t really want to debate. It is left to those of us who are prepared to look at issues in a complex, nuanced way who are left talking amongst ourselves. I enjoy these conversations and they inform my thinking, but they aren’t dealing with ‘feminism’ because the ‘feminists’ have given up and gone onto their next polemical campaign…

That’s my main problem with feminism. It can’t cope with engaged debate.

@ 102

I agree with you there, with the caveat that I’m talking about extreme feminists (which is not to say there aren’t lots of them around). That’s why they play those ridiculous and illogical word games: they know what they want to believe, so they unconsciously derail any serious point that challenges their favourite paranoid fantasy by making incoherent attacks.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times that my use of a swear-word that happens to refer to a part of the female body has been taken as “proof” that I see femininity, whatever that may be, to be evil and disgusting. Of course, if I’d said “dick” instead no doubt that would have been “proof” that I was invoking masculinity (don’t know what that is either) as some kind of talismanic and oppressive power.

I despair.

Guys, you have to be like this man or else you might be deemed as chauvanistic and neanderthal.
Personally I think it’s a bit BS …… but there you go.
Take Back the Night are pretty mainstream and central to feminism I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gZzqnFeca8

damon -exactly. that is an example of how feminists encourage men to be ‘acceptable’ by kind of sanitsing themselves.

You can’t be a good man unless you take some kind of blame for and atone for the sins of men. Really annoys me!

@ quiet riot girl:

in your post (no.63) you offered to give sianushka some references, I don’t know whether these are about why you don’t believe that lads mags etc. cause violence against women or whether they are sources which inform your view on feminism in general, either way, I’d be interested in reading these sources if you’re willing to tell me what they are.

Also, I have a question regarding post 99: how, in your opinion, should one go about ridding society of gender inequality and why does addressing gender inequality harm this cause (or is it just the manner in which feminists address them harmful?)?

Hi eltiqu I meant in general about representation of gender, objectification and violence. Here is a link to a blog that shows how men are objectified in society just as much as if not more than women these days:

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2010/04/17/sporno/

why don’t you drop me an email and I will send you a list of links/refs

quietriotgirltwitter@gmail.com

as for gender equality, I think feminists present it as women suffering oppression at the hands of men which is wrong.

the way I see it is we are all oppressed by the binary oppositions of ‘men and women’ and need to challenge them at every turn. How to do this is a bit more complex but do email me !