This is a hate crime:

I know some mansplainers' going to come along and tell me I'm over-reacting and I'm too stupid to understand the law on this issue. I've been blocking dudes all day who think sharing images of a 17 year old, who is legally too young to consent to an image of her engaged in fellatio, is a 'slut' who deserves all the abuse directed at her.

I'm sure they will agree with the Crown Attorney of Ontario that sending death threats to an autistic child is rude but not a hate crime.

Here's the thing: I don't actually give a shit what the law actually states in either case. Recording images of other people engaged in sexual acts, even if both are adults, without consent is sexual violence. Telling the family of a child with autism to "move away or euthanise him" is a hate crime. The fact that the law is on the side of violent, abusive arseholes is disgusting.

The law has been created by men to protect male interests. 

We need to rewrite our legal codes to protect victims of crimes and vulnerable people. 

Anyone who sends a letter like the above to a the family of a child with autism deserves to prosecuted to the full extent of the law as a hate crime.

Anything else is simply not good enough.

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#slanegirl and why this isn't about female sexual desire

The #slanegirl hashtag refers to photographs of a teenage girl performing oral sex on at least two men in the audience of the Eminem concert at Slane Castle in Ireland. I do not know the exact details since it's hard to shift through the rumours, of which there are many, and I do not want to accidentally come across the images. I do believe that photographing anyone without their consent is wrong: I don't care if this is a child skipping in puddles, a celebrity picking their nose or Prince Harry naked. Taking photos without consent and then distributing them is unacceptable and feeds into bullying culture, particularly since most of the images shared without consent are of people in embarrassing situations.

This situation isn't just the sharing of embarrassing photos: it's sexual violence. Sharing photos of people engaged in sex, even if they are in public venue, is sexual violence. I don't care if that isn't the position of the law. It's what the law should be.  The distribution of images of sex without the full consent of all participants is sexual violence.

The fact that the photos are of a teenage girl makes this crime child sexual abuse since a teenager cannot legally consent to sex with an adult nor can they consent to their images being shared publicly. If it were images of an adult woman performing a sex act, it would still be a case of sexual violence. This is without investigating the issue of consent due to substance misuse or the fact that these images have been shared online.

Every single person who has shared or retweeted these images has committed sexual violence. The people who first put the images online deserve to be prosecuted, as does every single  person who has shared them including the people who claimed to be sharing them to demonstrate their "moral outrage" at the images being placed online. 

I hope every single person who has helped to repeatedly sexually violate this young girl gets prosecuted and ends up with a criminal record. 

That said, I am equally concerned about the positive discussions of the article #Slanegirl and the shaming of female desire on Twitter.* The article claims to be a challenge to the shaming of female sexuality but that's not quite what is happening in the piece. Ignoring the deliberate misrepresentation of radical feminist discourse of female sexuality**, which is disgraceful, the piece assumes that the young girl was an active participant in the act. As yet, we have no confirmation of this 'fact'. In fact current media reports put the young girl below the age of consent which would make this a story of child sexual abuse. It doesn't matter if the young girl was an active participant, the fact that adult men were involved makes this a crime. The Irish Independent is also suggesting that the young girl was sexually assaulted at the concert in an attack separate to that which is seen in the photos uploaded. This is a story of the sexual violation of a young girl. It is not the time to 'celebrate' female sexual desire.

Shaming women for enjoying sex is misogyny. It is about reinforcing patriarchal control of women's bodies and creating a dichotomy of good and bad women. However, whether or not individual women enjoy specific sexual acts cannot be separated from a political analysis of the treatment of women as a class. The bodies of women and children are objectified and pornified daily. Suggesting that adult men using the body of a teenage girl for their sexual gratification is something we should celebrate as an example of female sexual desire completely decontextualises sexual violence. It ignores the reality of women's lives and it belittles the pain this young girl is experiencing due to the abuse. It is rape culture.

Teenagers exploring their sexuality together is a different situation to adult men preying on young teenage girls. It is a constant in our culture and it occurs daily. The only difference now is that the authorities seem to be taking the abuse seriously. This is not to say that teenagers engaged in public sexual acts aren't problematic but that this situation involving a young child is not a celebration of female sexual desire. It's just another story of the abuse of a young girl by men and those who seek to minimise the responsibility of sexually abusive men.

This is rape culture.

A child has been sexually violated. Repeatedly. 

It is not a story of female sexual desire. This is a story of sexual violence.

* The comments underneath the article are a disgusting display of male violence, misogyny and the shaming of women. 

*This particular blogger has an obsession with radical feminism and has been caught on numerous occasions making outright lies about radical feminist theory. 

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At least, there are no Pandas: BBC's Women Faces of the Year

The BBC has recovered slightly from last year's gaffe in which they nominated a Giant Panda and Pippa Middleton's ass as their 'Faces of the Year in 2011'. Frankly, I'm not sure which one I find less convincing as a 'Face of the year'. Or, more misogynistic. The inclusion of Sweetie the Panda at the expense of  Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Lehmay Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman was, simply, unforgivable; you know, the three women who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year because of their achievements and not because a deeply misogynistic press decided to objectify the body of a woman whose only 'crime' was that her sister married The Patriarchal Prince. Obviously, the BBC came back with the excuse that they chose 12 'women' who made the most headlines, which is a pile of nincompoopery of epic proportions. A Giant Panda did not choose to be moved half way across the planet and end up on the cover of every newspaper. Pippa Middleton did not chose to be the victim of global sexual harassment.  The BBC chose to run such asinine 'stories' as real news at the expense of covering actual news.

I wouldn't get over-excited by this year's 'Women Faces of the Year', as ever a number of the women included are because of their relationship to men; others because they were made into public spectacles. 

These are the BBC 'Women Faces of the Year' for 2012:

Maria Colvin: An award-winning war correspondent killed in the Syrian Uprising.
Malala Yousafzai: A young girl shot by the Taliban as a punishment for her campaign for girls' education.
Nicola Adams: The first woman to win gold in Olympic Boxing.
Claire Squires: A runner whose death during the London Marathon lead to people donating £1m to charity.
Laina Walker: A fangirl who made a creepy Youtube video of Justin Bieber to win a contest.
Samantha Brick: A journalist made an object of derision by the Daily Mail.
Marissa Mayer: A businesswoman who became CEO of Yahoo whilst 6 months pregnant.
Rachel Onasanwo: The Olympics "Happiest Volunteer".
Pussy Riot: Russian punk feminists.
Gina Rinhart: The World's 'richest' woman.
Lydia Callis: The New York mayor's sign language interpreter.
Paula Broadwell: A woman who had sex with the head of the CIA.

Some of these women belong on this list and some are only on it because of patriarchal hypocrisy within the BBC. But, really, including Samantha Brick who was the target of a very successful smear campaign by the Daily Mail? Are we now including women whose claim to fame is their status as the quintessential Circus Freak Show? Paula Broadwell was included because she had sex with a man? And, why are we including a woman who made a creepy video about Justin Bieber? Are these really the best examples that the BBC could come up with? How are their 'accomplishments' on par with Malala Yousafzai and Maria Colvin?

Where's Hillary Clinton? 

Or, Lauren Wolfe and Gloria Steinem who founded Women Under Siege?

Or, any number of the millions of women across the world who have incredible and inspiring things this year?

On the other hand, the BBC's list of 'Male Faces of the Year' includes a dog. 

Maybe, the BBC just gets confused and runs it's April Fools joke on the wrong day. 

I can't tell anymore.

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Circus Freak Shows: Bullying Culture, Mass Media and Personal Responsibility

This past Halloween, I watched the film Monster House with my children. It is one of the unnecessary DVDs that we own but one that I had not actively watched before. It is a children’s film about a haunted house. I expected puerile jokes and unnecessary references to films that no one cares about anymore. I was wrong.

The basic plot of Monster House is that a house is possessed by the spirit of a dead woman, Constance, who steals children's toys, which land on the grass around it. Before being “rescued” by the man she marries, Constance had spent her life as an unwilling freak show act in a circus where children paid money to laugh, belittle and humiliate her. Constance dies falling into the foundations of the house she was building with her rescuer-husband, after, once again, being belittled by a group of small children, and the house thus becomes both Constance’s grave and her avenger.

Possessed by the spirit of the abused Constance, the house is portrayed as insane, evil and violent. There is no discussion of whether or not she was justified in her paranoia following years of intense bullying. The house is angry and frightened because Constance was angry and frightened. But, no one listened when Constance was alive and no one listened when she died. Instead, the climax of the film is the complete destruction of Constance.

It is easy to dismiss Monster House as just another poorly executed children’s movie but this film is simply a reflection of our culture. We may no longer have circus freak shows designed to bully and humiliate those who do not fit our gendered dichotomy of human bodies, but our bullying culture still exists in the form of reality television, shock-jock radio programs, the ubiquity of  “lifestyle” and celebrity magazines, and mass media coverage of “news”. Much of our “entertainment”now rests on the same constructions as the circus freak show, we are simply unwilling to acknowledge our own personal responsibility in consuming these forms of “entertainment” and the harm that they cause.

Just as we now blame Mel Greig and Michael Christian for the death of Jacintha Saldanha, we blame Constance for her actions without looking at the context. I do not want to minimize what Greig and Christian did, since anyone who is no longer 15 should know the potential consequences of ‘pranks’, but they are not the only ones who are guilty in the death of Saldanha. Focusing our blame on Greig and Christian is a convenient way to minimize our collective guilt as a society that actively encourages the same bullying experienced by Constance.

Greig and Christian would not have made the prank call if there was not an audience for it. We cannot simply blame the two, although their culpability is without doubt, we also need to examine our own behaviour. We need to take personal responsibility for perpetuating and perpetrating bullying culture. Without an audience of consumers buying magazines like Heat and Grazia or newspapers like the Sun and the Daily Mail or watching/listening to shock jocks like Howard Stern and Matthew Wright, there would be no financial incentive for these people to behave in a crass and offensive manner. Before we start blaming others, we need to check our own behaviour, examine our own privilege, and stop financially supporting an industry based on the abject humiliation of others. The harm caused to vulnerable people who participate in reality television is obvious, yet millions of people watch shows like Big Brother and X-Factor and laugh at the judges’ vile comments. Millions of people take to Twitter to insult the physical appearance of contestants.

We shouldn’t need the Leveson Inquiry to regulate the media. We should be holding the media accountable through our financial power. We can change print media simply by refusing to consume misogynistic, racist, disablist and homophobic stories. We can change talk radio by switching off Greig, Christian and Stern. We can change the culture of bullying traumatised families by refusing to purchase newspapers or watch television newscasts that show images of traumatised parents mourning the loss of their children. We can stop buying newspapers that doorstop grieving parents. We can stop consuming media that suggest that women and children are somehow responsible for their own deaths at the hands of violent men for just exisiting.

Monster House is a film, which uses the emotional and physical abuse experienced by a vulnerable woman and then blames the woman for her behavior, whilst excusing the children, and their parents, who bullied her during her life. In fact, the film never makes the direct correlation between the long-term abuse experienced by Constance and her quite justified paranoia. The blame is entirely Constance’s despite the fact that society had conspired against her for cheap entertainment.

Contemporary mass media from reality television to celebrity culture, from talk shows to shock jocks, together form a 21st century freak show, only now the phenomenon is 24/7 and shows no respect for private boundaries or personal space. We are invited to laugh and jeer at vulnerable people, like Constance, and we pay to financially support their exploitation. We continue to exploit the most vulnerable members of our communities for our entertainment: in reality television, in “traditional” and online media, in the music industry and in pornography.

Life isn't a circus freak show. Lets just stop acting like it is.

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