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#MeToo for Women and Men
Understanding Power through Sexual Harassment
Jane Meyrick
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eBook - ePub
#MeToo for Women and Men
Understanding Power through Sexual Harassment
Jane Meyrick
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About This Book
#MeToo for Women and Men provides an overview of sexual violence and an accessible guide to the #MeToo movement, presenting a timely look at the evidence from diverse fields. Its evidence-based approach builds upon public health and health psychology principles to increase the reader's understanding of sexual bullying and aims to help inform the building of safer communities.
The book identifies patterns of sexual harassment and considers how sexual bullying can be used to express power. Intended to widen readers' knowledge of the causes and impacts surrounding sexual harassment and abuse, the book encourages open discussion of these topics to enable society to move closer to combating it. Using first-person accounts alongside evidence of both individual behaviours and the ways the topic is dealt with in laws, institutions, cultures and organisations, the book ensures that voices of survivors and their experiences are emphasised throughout.
A wide audience of public, professional, academics and clinicians will benefit from the book's extensive look into the impact sexual harassment has on survivors and its insight into how connections across a range of fields help us to understand, but more importantly, prevent perpetration and victimisation. This guide is also for non-academics wanting to understand what #MeToo means, what it tells us about prevention and how to address the increasing problem of sexual harassment, violence and abuse.
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CHAPTER 1#MeToo is everywhere – scale
DOI: DOI: 10.4324/9781003168591-2
“It does happen a lot, but people don’t think much of it anymore.It’s just like ‘Oh, that’s happened again’. People just kind of accept it.”(8)
It feels like sexual harassment is everywhere; many women say that low-level harassment is such an everyday event that they barely register it anymore (9). I am writing about all sexual harassment wherever it takes place, in public spaces, in the workplace, in schools, in universities and online and I am talking about the full range of sexual bullying, from wolf whistle to rape. Much of the shock around the online collation of women’s experiences that is #MeToo, was the revelation (something most women knew from personal experience) that it was in fact common to so many. For many men, the shock was how many women they knew posted #MeToo (10). For others it was the silence from workplaces, educational providers, the police, friends and family where it takes place.
“I would not have reported any of the incidents that I experienced to the police because I did not think that I would be taken seriously or that there was anything that the police could do.”(11)
Most sexual violence is hidden and most victim/survivors remain silent (12). Let’s face it, in the wake of Dr Christine Blasey-Ford’s courageous testimony to the US Supreme Courts confirmation hearing (13),
“I am here today not because I want to be: I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school.”(14)
and the personal cost to her,
“The reality has been far worse than what I expected. My family and I have been the target of constant harassment and death threats and I’ve been called the most vile and hateful names imaginable.”(14)
Why would you report the abuse? It is hard to see any benefit to Dr Blasey-Ford beyond her own sense of duty. If even an articulate, white, privileged victim/survivor’s account is met with disbelief and death threats, keeping quiet seems the safer option.
Research survey data confirms that internationally around 80–90% of women report ever having experienced sexual harassment (9,15–19). This includes around 80% in the UK with 97% (almost all) of young women aged 18–24 reporting a range of sexual harassment in public (9). Statistics are based on different ways of framing the question so what is recorded varies (20). The often cited figure of one in three women victimised, originally published by the WHO (21), wraps up physical violence, non-partner and intimate partner sexual violence but does not include sexual harassment or stalking. More in-depth questions return levels reaching ‘almost all’ (9).
The most visible form, street sexual harassment, seems to be a statement, a loud, shouted statement, of how women are valued by their appearance and attractiveness. It is experienced at different levels in different places but forms part of what can be described as a ‘continuum of objectification’ (22). For many, it was only hearing or reading other women tell their stories through #MeToo that allowed them to recognise what had happened to them was not okay (23). Men do also experience sexual harassment, abuse and violence but perhaps not on the same scale or scope, nor is it supported by systemic inequality.
This continuum of objectification of women and the way it is experienced as an escalating scale of violence makes it hard to highlight individual acts from the background noise or cumulative effect of constant harassment (24). Importantly, it connects the ‘milder’ forms of sexual bullying such as cat calling or wolf whistling directly to the threat of sexual assault or violence (22). One is a direct reminder of the possibility of the other and that women are not safe and that they are a sexual object. ‘Nice arse’ shouted from a passing car could be translated as, ‘I own this space’.
“It’s also like, is sexualised street harassment a gateway? If you’re that type of person where you’re gonna say that, what would you do to me in a dark alley?”(8)
Let’s consider the scope of what that sexual violence means for women and girls. It is linked to the everyday experiences of sexual harassment in the street but also abuse at work and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in their relationships. Eleven years of UK homicide records show that on average 5.7% (296 total) of male homicide victims and 44.2% (1066) of female homicide victims are killed by a partner or ex-partner. From 2009 to 2018, at least 1,425 women were killed by men in the UK; every three days a woman is killed by a man and every four days by a man who was her partner or ex-partner.
“Women who are killed are most likely to have been killed by a man, men who are killed are most likely to have been killed by a man.”(25)
The problem with most of the work around prevalence, or how much sexual abuse/harassment goes on, is agreeing what it is we are measuring (20). At one end, crucial work of the Femicide Census collates easily recognisable data on how many women are killed by men (generally current or ex-partners) not collated elsewhere (26). Most people would be able to describe sexual assault or rape as doing something sexual to someone without their consent, but ‘just a hand on the knee’ has been used to excuse or minimise even high-profile incidents (27). Controversy often arises around the more ambiguous behaviours that make up ‘lower-level’ sexual harassment. This book covers the full spectrum with recognition that for most women and especially for those with previous experience of sexual abuse, even so-called ‘minor incidents’ speak directly to potential greater harm.
What does sexual harassment/bullying look like?
As soon as definitions come into the frame, views tend to polarise around what actions ‘mean’ (27); is ‘a hand on the knee’ a compliment or a threat? This in turn makes studying sexual bullying fraught with disagreement about what constitutes harassment or rape (28). The missing piece is how these acts were ‘meant/intended’ or ‘felt/experienced’. ‘Alright love’ can be expressed to mean ‘shut up’ or ‘how are you’.
“I shout back ‘Keep dreaming.’ He answers back, telling me to ‘steady on’ and he calls me ‘love’.”(29)
It is something that can range across; interruptions by male strangers; verbal intrusions; sexualised language (‘just a compliment’ but also abusive such as ‘slut’); non-verbal intrusion (staring/following, leering blocking) through to overt sexual behaviour (22). Often, it is the mundanity of the behaviour that causes women problems in working out what happened let alone reporting it or having it taken seriously (30). Why shouldn’t ‘give us a smile’ equal just being friendly? Because you are a stranger, this is public space and you would not say the same thing to another bloke, it is an intrusion (31).
“A few seconds later, he was standing next to me so he had run and followed me. He walked with me as I politely told him to ‘go away’. He asked where I was from and said I was being rude. He asked where I was going and I just said I was shopping and again told him to go away. He said he was going the same way as me so he decided to walk with me.”(32)
The majority (61% of men and 52% of women) of both sexes feel it is always/usually wrong for men to make unsolicited comments to women in public places and the younger or more educated you are, the more you hold that view (33). However, women and girls are taught to play down their own instincts and address their own behaviour when it happens (31).
Even small acts of intrusion are described by Dr Pam Lowe as ‘breaking the rule of civil inattention’ where you show you are aware of others (such as moving aside) but do not otherwise engage with them, unless they are a woman to whom even ‘polite intrusions’ manifest as harassment (34).
It follows that work to report and prosecute such behaviour is undermined by difficulties in definition. Recipients of such behaviour will talk about it feeling ‘creepy’ and it is important to recognise the role of non-verbal communication (35). It is often neglected in the field of sexual harassment and consent, dominated as it is by legal and therefore, concrete efforts to evidence an offence.
“The offence was deemed as suspicious circumstance as opposed to assault as the man brushed against me as opposed to pinching me (that apparently was the difference). I was terrified of going home that night – convinced that I was being followed. I lived alone and was frightened of being home and frightened of going out too. I changed my behaviours and began walking beside or behind other women or families so that I wouldn’t be alone.”(36)
Despite the problems with contested forms of evidence, the legal definition of sexual harassment focuses on how the targeted person feels and how the harassing behaviour was experienced (37). We will focus later on experiences of sexual violence/abuse and the harm of acts of perpetration for the victim/survivor, in Chapter 4, for now we need to understand the impact of widespread but mundane levels of sexual harassment.
What does sexual harassment/bullying feel like?
That nature ...