On The Abuse of Women

from Jacqueline

Many years ago, when I was a young woman “professional” working in London, I went along to a discussion led by Australian author Dale Spender on a panel with two other female writers whose names now escape me.  Never heard of Dale Spender?  She is the author of the then best-selling “Man Made Language” – a groundbreaking book in its day, about the way in which language was created by men, and contributes to the disenfranchisement of women, mainly because it has not evolved to encompass women’s experiences and responses to the events of their lives.  The presentation was very interesting, bringing up aspects of language I had never considered. Then one of the women dropped a bomb, so to speak.  Here’s what she said:

“Most people will never appreciate how much men hate women.”

I almost fell off my seat. I mean, I’d had my problems – gropers on the Tube going to work; men who assumed I would be interested in them, then became nasty when it was clear I wasn’t, and I’d suffered put-downs from men.  But I also knew I was quite capable of coming back with my own stinging repartee, and I could look after myself.  Yet this was something different, and my shock came as a result of my own experience – I had a father who showed utter respect for his wife and daughter without compromising his self-worth, and a brother who was raised to be respectful to women in the manner of his father.   I’m still not sure how I feel about that statement, and perhaps it was spoken to start a conversation – certainly the conversation deserved a long hearing. 

Anyone paying attention to world affairs and current events could not fail to grasp how women are used in certain parts of the world. In Darfur, women leaving places of refuge to scavenge for food to feed their children were captured by “rebels,” then raped and left for dead.  ISIS in Iraq – deranged nutcases who wouldn’t know a Koran from a Krispy Kreme – have attacked communities via acts of terror against women first – again, rape, torture and murder.  Here in the USA, there have been horrific cases of abduction, rape and imprisonment – from Elizabeth Smart, to Jaycee Lee Dugard, to the three women kidnapped, raped and imprisoned by Ariel Castro in Cleveland, Ohio.  There have been cases of similar kidnap and violence in Austria, in France, and Germany – and I read that police had been dispatched to Fletcher Christian's Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific to investigate a deep culture of abuse against girls and women.  And it goes on.

When I left the UK earlier this week to fly home to California, a story was breaking about the sickening failure of authorities in Rotherham, Yorkshire – in the north of England – to stop the repeated sexual abuse of some 1400 young girls by a ring of mainly Pakistani men. The children were chiefly those in care situations, though not all – and it appears society failed those children, with police dismissing complaints, and a local authority so fearful of creating racial tension that it allowed the most terrible abuse to continue.  The story is still unfolding, but it seems police refused to intervene even when faced with young girls who were being beaten and repeatedly raped.  It is beyond a nightmare, and it has been going on for years.

I’ve been wondering about this hatred – does it come from men in societies threatened by women?  Or individuals threatened by women?  And why are girls and women so often not listened to when they complain?  Or scream?  With these thoughts on my mind today, I “Googled” Dale Spender – it was well over thirty years ago that I last thought about her, so I wanted to see if she was still writing and campaigning.  It appears she is.  Here’s what she says on the home page of her website:

“I am old enough to have lived in a world without sexism and sexual harassment. Not because they weren’t everyday occurrences in my life but because THESE WORDS DIDN’T EXIST … When women had no words to name offensive and unwelcome behavior they had to try and describe why they didn’t like comments on their appearance – such as ‘sex appeal’. They didn’t accept gropes and whistles as signs of endearment. THEY HAD TO COMPLAIN. This generally put them in the wrong! They were being difficult, too thin-skinned, were up themselves, couldn’t take a joke.”

That’s food for thought.  But here’s a personal story.  When I was a child we lived in a very rural area.  Kids ran free because everyone knew everyone else and there was always someone to look out for you.  Until I was eleven, my mother worked on the local farm, which was wonderful for my brother and I.  We never strayed that far, and we knew to watch out for farm equipment and vehicles, but there were woods to explore and trees to climb, and we were always within calling distance of my mother.  There was an old railway station nearby – the trains had stopped running in 1964, but there was still a coal supply yard, and the tracks remained; the best blackberries grew alongside them.  And because the trains had been steam trains, there were black huts along the tracks about a mile apart where coal was stored.  On this day I had gone for a short walk along the tracks with my brother – I was nine and he was five – and we were picking blackberries.  Suddenly a man leaped from one of those black huts and grabbed me – I can still feel his fingers wrapped around the top of my arm.  I was more worried about my brother, so I pulled free, picked him up and ran with him all the way back to my mother – one of those times when physical strength comes from a sheer adrenalin rush.  My chest was heaving with great sobs as I told her the story – but I hadn’t finished before she took off at a sprint to find the man.  She knew exactly who he was – a man who worked in the coal yards, and she'd never liked the look of him.  Had she found him, she would have killed him.

A policeman came to the house and interviewed me, then I was sent out of the room while he spoke to my parents.  They could do nothing about what had happened – I was a fast kid, and the man hadn’t managed to drag me off, plus I wasn’t hurt, physically, and there were no witnesses.  But above all, my parents were told it was the word of a little girl against the word of a man.  That man, as it happened, had not long been released from prison on charges of sexually assaulting a girl, and was still on probation.  Some time later, the women complained about him to police and his employer, for making a nuisance of himself – “exposing” I think it was called at the time.  Nothing was done about it.  They were only women complaining, plus they had the choice, they could look the other way.

I don’t have answers to the points I’ve raised. I know this post might seem inflammatory to some, and I’m sorry about that – personally, I have for the most part always been in the company of respectful men.  But when I look around the world, when I read the news of the way in which women in so many cultures have been abused physically, emotionally, and mentally, with their spirits crushed, I wonder what women ever did to inspire such hatred.  And I fear there will be no solutions.

And to close, though I don't want it to diminish the seriousness of this post - this is one of my favorite pieces of graffiti.  It happened in Britain about twenty-five, thirty years ago, and Fiat is still getting over it.  

Oh, and guess where the following photo was taken:

Answer:  Afghanistan in the 1950's, before the Taliban took power.  The women are in a library.