Reading of the appalling violence against women in the last few days I have been struck by the number of female journalists and commentators who have spoken of the ordinary, everyday abuse experienced in their own lives. I was hesitant to jump on this bandwagon, I really was. What possible place can my own events have alongside the brutal gang rapes and murder that have occupied the media recently? I don’t think my experiences of abuse have seriously affected me. None of them were exceptional or newsworthy.
And yet, I am moved to write of my own experience, because it speaks of the routine and universal nature of abuse. And because I think my own reactions to these events speak more about the misogyny and patriarchy that underlie them than the events themselves.
I kind of like being older. I have been much happier in my third age than in my earlier life. There are all sorts of reasons for that – the deep satisfaction of being in a loving relationship with my wonderful husband, the joy of grandchildren, the luxury of choosing the work I do and the delight in an ever increasing network of friends, family and contacts. But I also like being an older woman. Sexually I seem to have become comfortably invisible at last. One of the results is that I have gone back to cycling. For years, much as I liked the freedom of cycling, I felt uncomfortable going for a ride on my own. I’m puzzled by the reaction that cycling women seem to create in men, but they seems to see us as fair game. I am not sure if Betjeman ever acted on these impulses, but he certainly recognised them…
To see the golden hiking girl
With wind about her hair,
The tennis-playing, biking girl,
The wholly-to-my-liking girl,
To see and not to care…
Get down from me! I thunder there,
You spaniels! Shut your jaws!
Your teeth are stuffed with underwear,
Suspenders torn asunder there
And buttocks in your paws…
Whatever causes the reaction, in my experience the outcomes include yelled comments – cruder versions of ‘Hey, your back wheel is going round,’ - from groups of young men and boys standing around on corners. I won’t nauseate you with the details, but there is a lot about saddles and fannies. (I use the most polite term here, for the sake of my sensitive readers). I used to think that although this was not very pleasant, it was only rather silly and harmless. These lads, after all, were much like the young people I worked with – I understood their vulnerability and thought that their bark that was so much less than their bite. I also understood their need to egg each other on, to impress each other with going just a little more over the score.
More offensive were my fellow cyclists. Now, although I have always enjoyed cycling, I’m not a particularly energetic cyclist, so lean, fit men in Lycra are always overtaking me. There is a camaraderie about cycling – it’s normal to smile, nod and wave as someone faster shoots by. So I was always taken aback when the return greeting was offensive. It seemed much worse than being shouted at by kids. On one occasion, a cyclist drew level, smiling calmly. Thinking he was going to make a friendly remark about the weather, the scenery or the gradient of the next hill, I beamed back and was astonished when he casually leaned out and grabbed my breast. He gave it a tight and painful squeeze before letting go and accelerating past with a nonchalant wave. I'm not sure how I kept pedalling, but I did, carrying on in a daze for several miles, wondering what to do but finally doing nothing.
And then there was the overnight ferry to Norway. My pal and I had a cabin – no en-suite in those days, but it was only a short walk along a narrow gangway to the toilets and shower. Coming back to the cabin, I stopped to let a respectable looking middle-aged man pass. I was in my twenties. He could have been my father; he probably was some girl’s father. Our eyes did not meet, but as he passed me he his hand shot up my skirt in a well practiced manoevre and grabbed my genitals. Again, I was frozen with astonishment, but once the initial shock and disgust had worn off I didn’t consider reporting his behaviour. It would have been easy for the officals to track him down on the ferry, but I imagine I thought I would not be believed.
Is it worth even mentioning the casual breast brushing, the innuendo intended to intimidate? This behaviour happened most often in the workplace and was usually so mild that to complain about it seemed to be making a fuss about nothing, being unable to ‘take a joke’ or ‘man up’. If we protested, we were often told that this was what being equal meant, being able to 'take it.'
I’ll pass briefly over the my earliest experience, a full-on case of sexual assault by a strange man in a park. It was a confusing and terrifying experience for a ten year old – and one that I never spoke of until many years later, partly because I had no vocabulary to describe it, but mostly because I believed I was to blame – just for being there. Just as I felt to blame when I witnessed an uncle stroking his daughter’s leg in a manner that was far from fatherly. I reasoned I must be to blame for spying on him and for making the wrong assumptions about what I had seen.
I can’t pass by so swiftly the exploitation within the church, which took a peculiarly twisted form. As a single parent, it seems I was fair game for men who felt ‘called by God’ to ‘cover’ me as I was not ‘covered’ by a husband. (The Covering Doctrine is one of the more extreme forms of patriarchy). While this was never overtly sexual, the strange experience of finding two church elders uninvited and unexpected on my doorstep at midnight, wanting to pray for me and ‘lay hands’ on me certainly made me wonder about their motivation. I was seriously uneasy when one of them chose to recount to my teenage son how he had been led by God to lay hands on a woman with breast cancer and how when he laid hands on her breast it had become warm ‘with the Spirit’. The regular pre communion visit of another church elder became such a trial that I used to find excuses to be out of the house every evening for a fortnight to avoid him.
Why on earth did I not yell at these men, tell them to stop, refuse to have them in my house, report the abuse? I’m no longer a shrinking violet; how come I stayed so silent then?
I think the answer lies in me being a child of my time and of my culture, particularly the patriarchal culture in my church. Born in the early fifties, I grew up in a world where men were in charge – at home, at school, in church, at Sunday school, at work. This is not to say that all these men were brutal, domineering or abusive, although some were. It was simply the calm acceptance that they were in authority, that men were naturally the leaders. This was so much of the fabric of my life I accepted it for years.
I am puzzled by something. For years I laid the blame for my experiences of abuse at my own door. I must have been disobedient to my parents. I must not have been insufficiently submissive. I must have dressed too provocatively. I must be too naive. I should not have gone out on my own. Thankfully, I gradually widened my reading, met and talked with other women who had a broader perspective and became convinced over time that the roots of misogynistic abuse lay within patriarchy. Gradually I realised that these events were not motivated by simple desire or attraction, rather they were a product of some deep-seated anger and hatred of women. They were essentially issues of power. and of power driven by fear - fear of any threat to their masculinity. My puzzle is this – given the progress sexual equality has made in our country over those past fifty years, why are misogyny and its close cousin homophobia still so prevalent? I can only surmise that as men (and I do not, of course, include all men) find sexual equality increasing they are even more determined to exert what power they have to continue to dominate. Are we going to collude with it? Or are we male and female, going to stand up and name it wherever we find it? More importantly, do we dare get alongside the perpetrators, engage with them and support them out of their fear and ignorance? For they aren’t they also victims?
And yet, I am moved to write of my own experience, because it speaks of the routine and universal nature of abuse. And because I think my own reactions to these events speak more about the misogyny and patriarchy that underlie them than the events themselves.
I kind of like being older. I have been much happier in my third age than in my earlier life. There are all sorts of reasons for that – the deep satisfaction of being in a loving relationship with my wonderful husband, the joy of grandchildren, the luxury of choosing the work I do and the delight in an ever increasing network of friends, family and contacts. But I also like being an older woman. Sexually I seem to have become comfortably invisible at last. One of the results is that I have gone back to cycling. For years, much as I liked the freedom of cycling, I felt uncomfortable going for a ride on my own. I’m puzzled by the reaction that cycling women seem to create in men, but they seems to see us as fair game. I am not sure if Betjeman ever acted on these impulses, but he certainly recognised them…
To see the golden hiking girl
With wind about her hair,
The tennis-playing, biking girl,
The wholly-to-my-liking girl,
To see and not to care…
Get down from me! I thunder there,
You spaniels! Shut your jaws!
Your teeth are stuffed with underwear,
Suspenders torn asunder there
And buttocks in your paws…
Whatever causes the reaction, in my experience the outcomes include yelled comments – cruder versions of ‘Hey, your back wheel is going round,’ - from groups of young men and boys standing around on corners. I won’t nauseate you with the details, but there is a lot about saddles and fannies. (I use the most polite term here, for the sake of my sensitive readers). I used to think that although this was not very pleasant, it was only rather silly and harmless. These lads, after all, were much like the young people I worked with – I understood their vulnerability and thought that their bark that was so much less than their bite. I also understood their need to egg each other on, to impress each other with going just a little more over the score.
More offensive were my fellow cyclists. Now, although I have always enjoyed cycling, I’m not a particularly energetic cyclist, so lean, fit men in Lycra are always overtaking me. There is a camaraderie about cycling – it’s normal to smile, nod and wave as someone faster shoots by. So I was always taken aback when the return greeting was offensive. It seemed much worse than being shouted at by kids. On one occasion, a cyclist drew level, smiling calmly. Thinking he was going to make a friendly remark about the weather, the scenery or the gradient of the next hill, I beamed back and was astonished when he casually leaned out and grabbed my breast. He gave it a tight and painful squeeze before letting go and accelerating past with a nonchalant wave. I'm not sure how I kept pedalling, but I did, carrying on in a daze for several miles, wondering what to do but finally doing nothing.
And then there was the overnight ferry to Norway. My pal and I had a cabin – no en-suite in those days, but it was only a short walk along a narrow gangway to the toilets and shower. Coming back to the cabin, I stopped to let a respectable looking middle-aged man pass. I was in my twenties. He could have been my father; he probably was some girl’s father. Our eyes did not meet, but as he passed me he his hand shot up my skirt in a well practiced manoevre and grabbed my genitals. Again, I was frozen with astonishment, but once the initial shock and disgust had worn off I didn’t consider reporting his behaviour. It would have been easy for the officals to track him down on the ferry, but I imagine I thought I would not be believed.
Is it worth even mentioning the casual breast brushing, the innuendo intended to intimidate? This behaviour happened most often in the workplace and was usually so mild that to complain about it seemed to be making a fuss about nothing, being unable to ‘take a joke’ or ‘man up’. If we protested, we were often told that this was what being equal meant, being able to 'take it.'
I’ll pass briefly over the my earliest experience, a full-on case of sexual assault by a strange man in a park. It was a confusing and terrifying experience for a ten year old – and one that I never spoke of until many years later, partly because I had no vocabulary to describe it, but mostly because I believed I was to blame – just for being there. Just as I felt to blame when I witnessed an uncle stroking his daughter’s leg in a manner that was far from fatherly. I reasoned I must be to blame for spying on him and for making the wrong assumptions about what I had seen.
I can’t pass by so swiftly the exploitation within the church, which took a peculiarly twisted form. As a single parent, it seems I was fair game for men who felt ‘called by God’ to ‘cover’ me as I was not ‘covered’ by a husband. (The Covering Doctrine is one of the more extreme forms of patriarchy). While this was never overtly sexual, the strange experience of finding two church elders uninvited and unexpected on my doorstep at midnight, wanting to pray for me and ‘lay hands’ on me certainly made me wonder about their motivation. I was seriously uneasy when one of them chose to recount to my teenage son how he had been led by God to lay hands on a woman with breast cancer and how when he laid hands on her breast it had become warm ‘with the Spirit’. The regular pre communion visit of another church elder became such a trial that I used to find excuses to be out of the house every evening for a fortnight to avoid him.
Why on earth did I not yell at these men, tell them to stop, refuse to have them in my house, report the abuse? I’m no longer a shrinking violet; how come I stayed so silent then?
I think the answer lies in me being a child of my time and of my culture, particularly the patriarchal culture in my church. Born in the early fifties, I grew up in a world where men were in charge – at home, at school, in church, at Sunday school, at work. This is not to say that all these men were brutal, domineering or abusive, although some were. It was simply the calm acceptance that they were in authority, that men were naturally the leaders. This was so much of the fabric of my life I accepted it for years.
I am puzzled by something. For years I laid the blame for my experiences of abuse at my own door. I must have been disobedient to my parents. I must not have been insufficiently submissive. I must have dressed too provocatively. I must be too naive. I should not have gone out on my own. Thankfully, I gradually widened my reading, met and talked with other women who had a broader perspective and became convinced over time that the roots of misogynistic abuse lay within patriarchy. Gradually I realised that these events were not motivated by simple desire or attraction, rather they were a product of some deep-seated anger and hatred of women. They were essentially issues of power. and of power driven by fear - fear of any threat to their masculinity. My puzzle is this – given the progress sexual equality has made in our country over those past fifty years, why are misogyny and its close cousin homophobia still so prevalent? I can only surmise that as men (and I do not, of course, include all men) find sexual equality increasing they are even more determined to exert what power they have to continue to dominate. Are we going to collude with it? Or are we male and female, going to stand up and name it wherever we find it? More importantly, do we dare get alongside the perpetrators, engage with them and support them out of their fear and ignorance? For they aren’t they also victims?