Back to index of Nerve 18 - Summer 2011

In 2011 women are still pressured to conform to the ‘normalised pornographic’ view put out by the media. Val Walsh calls for an end to this:

Sub-Human Treatment

I contemplate the continuing vulnerability and exploitation of girls and young women in the UK, evidently ill-equipped to deal with the relentless and unforgiving onslaught of media pressure, to not just work on their image/ ’femininity’ (the post 1960s message), but to both ‘reconstruct’ their actual bodies, via a range of invasive (and dangerous) chemical and surgical techniques.

I grieve at the way girls and young women in our society are relentlessly pressurised to work on their heterosexual credentials/techniques in other exhaustive and exhausting, time-consuming and expensive ways, if they are to be deemed acceptable as ‘women’. The main message is that, as girls and women, we are all somehow ‘faulty’, and we need to work hard to prove our heterosexual ‘value’ (to straight men): to conform to all those images and messages directed at us by media, society and culture.

Magazines provide explicit ‘advice’, ranging from: ‘Explosive sex secrets: orgasmic tricks to make you brilliant in bed’; to ‘Climb your career ladder: from bottom rung to boardroom’; alongside pages and pages of adverts with equally compelling heterosexual messages.

I am reminded of the indifferent reaction to the NSPCC and University of Bristol survey of teenage girls and their appalling experiences in early heterosexual encounters (BBC News, 01 09 2009) by a spokesperson from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, who reassured us that personal, social, health and economic studies would include relationship education as statutory from September 2011.

At the time, his comment simply confirmed that there was no real understanding of these issues at the top. After all, that’s where the denial and resistance has persisted all these years, as evidence mounted of girls and (young) women’s vulnerability in the face of the massed industries and the media, and an unregulated sex industry, that together have normalised pornographic sensibility as routine and acceptable: inherent to both ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’.

This spokesperson’s talk of the importance of parents ‘providing information and advice on sex and relationships’; ‘instilling values in their children’; and about schools providing ’accurate information’ and ‘developing the skills they need to make safe and responsible choices’ is proof positive that these gatekeepers just do not get it. His words were paternalistic and authoritarian in tone, and frankly ignorant.

It was the usual ‘technical fix’ approach, because they (and it has been mainly men in authority) had not listened to years of feminist research and activism regarding the evidence of girls’ and women’s lives, and the prevalence of sexual coercion and violence.

In April 2011, a report published by the think tank Race on the Agenda (Rota), based on interviews with girls in Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester, identified how ‘verbal disrespect can escalate into horrific abuse and sexual assaults on girls as young as 13.’ Susie McDonald, director of Tender UK, which works in schools, points to the scale of the problem:

At one end there is this kind of behaviour and at the other end you have the horror of two women being killed a week by a partner or ex-partner in this country (cited Laville).

Keir Starmer, director of public prosecutions since 2008 (named human rights lawyer of the year in 2001 and QC of the Year in human rights in 2007) warns that:

Teenage girls between 16 and 19 are now the group most at risk of domestic violence, closely followed by girls (sic) aged 20-24 – all victims of a new generation of abusers who are themselves in their teens and twenties (ibid.).

In a subsequent interview, he stated:

I’m determined that the budget cuts will not affect our service to victims of sexual offences and domestic abuse.

Prevention and mitigation of such vulnerability and abuse should be paramount, and sex education and relationship education that is not gender-sensitive, neither informs nor protects girls and young women.

As is obvious from available statistics, media reports and Rota’s recent report, in 2011 we continue to see the consequences of this indifference and neglect, and the ensuing violations and violence. These derive not just from ignorance, but from deep-seated misogyny: despite ‘equality’ rhetoric, girls and women just do not count as equal citizens or human beings to those holding the reins of power and the purse strings. The concerted Tory-led and Lib Dem attack on women’s lives, livelihoods, health and wellbeing, bears this out, which makes Starmer’s awareness and stated commitment all the more welcome.

To redress this authorised wounding and damage to girls and young women in our society, can I suggest trying something different, such as Feminist-Inspired Learning and Empowerment (for boys as well as girls)? It is feminists and feminist-inspired men who have campaigned over the years, and produced the evidence and the knowledge which would make the difference, if only girls and boys could get their hands on it before they leave school.
FILE emphasises learning (not telling or teaching) and empowerment through combining knowledge and experience that raises consciousness about how we are shaped by society’s forces towards normative ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’. It provides a more holistic approach and critical tools of consciousness, which encompass social class issues and race issues. We need a new concept to open up debate and galvanise action.

If the ‘f’ word is still (in this country or this city) too scary, try GALE: Gender-Aware Learning and Empowerment, before it is too late and there is nothing to salvage, nobody to save.

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