From porn to true crime stories, we must end the portrayal of violence against women
In the past week, there has been a wave of anger over the treatment of women, and a stronger feeling that things need to change. Individual actions make up the cultural scaffolding that supports violence against women. This means we have the power to disrupt these structures if we want to.
We can start by changing how we understand and talk about violence against women. It is not an “isolated incident”, nor is it rare despite current claims that it is. Violence against women exists on a continuum, different forms overlap and their impact is cumulative. This is true for victims of violence but also for the perpetrators.
Related to this is the need to accept women’s views of the world as they experience it. Telling women we’re hysterical for talking about our fears and the things we do to stay safe is deeply unhelpful. It feeds our doubts about our own experience, and tells us not to trust ourselves at the same time as expecting us to use our instincts to evaluate when we’re in danger.
What women are being asked to do is find the right amount of panic. Don’t panic enough and it’s your fault if something happens. Panic too much and you’re paranoid. It’s a catch-22 that means no matter what we do, women are doing it wrong. We need to start trusting women’s ability to accurately assess risk, and understand that the “safety work” they’re required to do limits their freedom.
More broadly, we are all complicit in structures that dehumanise women. Recent research on men’s sexual aggression has argued that dehumanisation, and in particular the denial of women’s “human uniqueness”, can be a driving factor for men who commit sexual offences. Put simply, some don’t see women as people.
We have to stop producing and consuming representations of women as nothing more than a conduit for the actions of men. Stop watching pornography that sees women as endlessly replaceable; that describes women only by their skin colour or hair colour; that sexualises coercion and women’s nonconsent. If you don’t watch it, stop just scrolling past it as though by ignoring it you’re not complicit. Demand this material is removed and stop using porn
until it is.
The argument here has gone way past causation. It is about recognising that pornography has a social function: it helps authorise “what counts” as sexual practice and sexual pleasure, and shapes how we see ourselves and each other. Recent research from myself and colleagues at Durham University found that one in every eight titles on the front pages of the UK’s most popular porn websites described sexual acts that fit the World Health Organization’s definition of sexual violence. This is not a problem of niche sites or the dark web, something only found by “bad men” actively searching for this content. This is mainstream pornography on mainstream sites with the mainstream message that sexual violence is sexy.
And it’s not just porn, “true crime” is too frequently a retelling of men’s violence against women. More often than not the opportunity to use these stories to raise awareness of the harms of violence against women and to communicate the humanity of its victims is rarely taken up.
Instead, perpetrators are sensationalised and celebrated. We saw this most recently when the families of the victims of Peter Sutcliffe asked Netflix to retitle their series on his crimes. They urged the producers to remember “that the word ‘ripper’ relates to ripping flesh” and to recognise that its use glorified violence and gave Sutcliffe celebrity status. Netflix claimed that the show was “a sensitive re-examination of the crimes” and the series went on to be a huge success. Nothing will change until we stop watching.
Men need to speak up when women are being treated or talked about in ways that don’t feel right or respectful. It’s going to feel uncomfortable, and you may be mocked, but men need to challenge other men about their attitudes and behaviours. As a society we need to raise children without the constraints of gender limiting who they are and who they can become. Simple actions such as altering pronouns in children’s books – so female characters have the rich lives and adventures that the male characters have – will help over time to build a world where it is harder and harder to not see women as people.
Finally, we need to ensure that our laws and policies recognise the humanity of all women. Migrant women, for example, were deliberately left unprotected by the current domestic abuse bill. Last night, the Lords passed an amendment to help rectify this, but we need to keep the pressure on. The government has reopened its violence against women consultation, let’s take the opportunity to tell it that every woman deserves protection.
For women to be free and safe we need to do more than increase street lighting and surveillance.This past year has shown us our actions are connected; individual decisions have consequences that ripple out and affect us all. We can apply that understanding to this situation and recognise our role in upholding a culture that endorses, excuses and eroticises violence against women. We need change and we need it now. Women can’t afford to wait a day longer.
Dr Fiona Vera-Gray is the author of The Right Amount of Panic: How women trade freedom, and an assistant professor in the department of sociology at Durham University
Francois, chair of the hardcore proBrexit European Research Group, this week calls not just for tearing up the “intolerable” Northern Ireland protocol, but for defaulting on the £20bn owed to the EU. Treaty-defaulters, debt-dodgers – these wreckers make us new enemies and no new friends.
There is no upside, so will all this damage ever outweigh the spiritual belief that Brexit saved our national sovereignty? What that trigger might be, no one knows. Labour will plug away, exposing myriad flaws in the dreadful trade deal. The shadow trade secretary, Emily Thornberry, scored a hit this week by forcing the government to reveal no economic impact assessment was ever made on the Brexit deal, despite one for every other trade treaty, even with Albania. No extra penny of advantage comes from Liz Truss’s trade deals, all identical to existing EU deals. Who but remainers notices?
Labour is increasingly aggressive in attacking Brexit fallouts, despite bombardment by Tories as “remoaners”. The question is when the sheer weight of evidence exposes how astonishingly bad the Brexit deal is. The remain ship sailed long ago, but the boat to Norway may eventually dock here. In the meantime, EU legal action reinforces our government’s reckless isolationism. There the ministers stand, as if reprising that wartime cartoon from the cliffs of Dover: “Very well, alone!”
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
cause it highlighted the mismatch in sex drives between him and his partner. “In lockdown, it got down to once a month and that was a problem for me,” he says. “Sex is really important and an expression of intimacy. It caused massive anxiety, because any time I made any attempt to be more like a couple it would lead to me being rejected.”
The couple had one session of counselling and he has continued therapy alone since they broke up, which he says has been helpful. It can be hard, he says, for men to talk to each other about sexual problems. “There is surface-level talking, but when you try something deeper it leads to the other friend opening up.”
If you are able to work from home and live with a partner, for much of the past year you will have been on top of each other – and not in the fun way. “We’re not used to spending all this time with our partners,” says Moyle. “We see all of the worst bits – the bits that we are irritated by, or that we feel are inconsiderate. We get this negative lens, because there’s no escape from each other.”
Moyle says lockdown – and the overfamiliarity it breeds – goes against desire, which is “triggered by a sense of novelty, or not knowing what to expect”. It is what the psychotherapist Esther Perel has described as cultivating “your secret garden” – maintaining some mystery or space. “If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by familiarity,” she wrote in Mating in Captivity, her book about maintaining a fulfilling sex life in a long-term relationship.
Even if they have only been out at work, we may miss our partners; seeing them in a different context – dressed up for the office, preparing to give a presentation, going to volunteer – can spark lust. “If we’re seeing each other all the time in our pyjamas, working at the computer, it’s not exactly a desireinducing scenario for most people,” says Laura Vowels, a sex and relationship therapist and the principal researcher at Blueheart, a sex therapy app. “It’s going to require a bit more effort.”
Even having more time together for, say, a quickie during a working-fromhome lunch break can become a source of pressure. “Some people will think: ‘We should use the time,’ and a lot of them experience disappointment that they haven’t,” says Vowels. People may have done that in the beginning, when it was more of a novelty, “but I would expect that to have worn off, given it’s not new and exciting.”
She is seeing a general lack of motivation. “Everything feels a little bit like a slog. I’m hearing a lot of that ‘just can’t be bothered’ kind of feeling.”
Many people will relate. We are tired. University College London’s Covid-19 Social Study has found that, compared with the first lockdown, about one in three of us are spending less time on hobbies or creative projects, while one in five are watching more TV and films or gaming more. One in three are working longer hours. Happiness levels are lower. Even though sex is good for us – it lowers stress, burns calories and boosts the immune system – it can feel like one more thing to add to the workload.
It does not help that we have had to accommodate shifting routines as restrictions change. “Couples may have developed a habit where sex happens on a Wednesday morning when the kids have gone to school, but then the kids were at home,” says Vowels. “Or if kids normally have stuff during the weekend, they don’t have that, because everything is closed, so the opportunities that people had before may not be there.”
For single people, the lack of opportunity to date or meet for sex has been stark – they have been “effectively mandated to a period of celibacy”, as the Kinsey Institute put it – on top of the anxiety and stress that may have annihilated libidos anyway.
Catherine, 23, who is single, says her sex drive has been up and down. She spent the first lockdown at her parents’ rural home. “It was just such a mood-killer and I had zero sex drive,” she says. During the second lockdown, which she spent in London, she went on a few dates and “broke some of the rules, which obviously wasn’t ideal. I ended up sleeping with one person a few times. I hadn’t hugged anyone in months and I think I was just clinging on to that relationship to get that kind of contact.”
When the opportunities to meet people were taken away, her sex drive increased: “It’s the classic ‘If you can’t have something, you want it even more’ thing.”
It has not helped, she says, that the TV she has binge-watched – Normal People, Bridgerton, It’s a Sin – has been packed with people at it. “You’re getting bombarded with all of this sexdriven content and you can’t do anything about it,” she says. She ended up buying her first vibrator: “I was reaching desperate times.” Ann Summers says sales of its premium sex toys went up 160% between November and February; sales of quieter sex toys rose, too, thought to have been bought by people with flatmates or who had moved in with their parents.
In this lockdown, Catherine is following the rules and not meeting new people. She says she is not missing it: using a dating app feels like one more piece of admin. She has had time to reflect on whether she really wants more bad dates and bad sex, too: “Nine times out of 10, it’s not worth it.”
For single people in particular, says Vowels, “this is a perfect time, in some ways, to be exploring your sexuality. It’s about discovering what you like and what you don’t like, so when you’re back and able to enjoy sex with another person – if that’s what you want – then you’ve learned something about yourself.”
If you are unconcerned about your lowered sex drive, and it is not causing relationship problems, “then it’s not a problem”, says Vowels. “Not having sex is a completely valid option, especially during a pandemic. But if someone enjoyed that part of themselves and would like to have it back, that’s a different story.”
There may be an underlying medical issue worth discussing with your GP, but if you suspect it is more a case of reigniting the passion with your partner or yourself, you can take things in hand, as it were. “You might need to use different stimuli,” says Vowels, who suggests trying erotica or sex toys.
Moyle suggests approaching it as a couple: look at a sex toy website together, or listen to a podcast about sex, and talk about it. The idea, she says, is to introduce novelty, “but together, rather than one partner springing it on the other. Treat it as an opportunity to learn something new about each other. I think lots of couples have stopped feeling curious about each other in lockdown. It happens typically in longterm relationships anyway: we assume we know everything about our partner.”
It doesn’t necessarily have to be something “sexy”; it could be something such as cooking together. “That is a shared experience. Talking and feeling closer to our partners can make us more open to sexual scenarios or responsive desire. It’s nice to remember we can have fun, play together.” We may be together all day, every day, but we should recognise that this is not necessarily “quality time”, Moyle says.
Tech can be a barrier – particularly as our working hours have become blurred – so having a phone-free evening, or banishing devices from the bedroom, can help. “Undivided attention is a big part of intimacy,” says Moyle, who adds that it is important to have time apart, too.
Although it sounds mechanical and unsexy, we should schedule intimate time. “We know that responsive desire is triggered, so what we often have to do is create the opportunity to trigger it, rather than just sitting and waiting for desire to spontaneously occur,” says Moyle. “We have this idea that relationships and sex lives just happen and that we shouldn’t have to intentionally nurture them, but that isn’t the case. We do it with everything else in our lives; why wouldn’t we do it with sex and relationships?”
Many sex and relationship therapists talk about the importance of “simmering” – gestures of light arousal without the expectation or possibility of sex. Think of embracing your partner as you pass by and inhaling their scent, rather than cuddling – which, says the sex therapist Stephen Snyder, “depletes erotic energy”. Vowels suggests taking the pressure off. “Say: ‘We can just do some kissing, or cuddling, or some touching.’ Obviously, if it goes further, it goes further, but there’s no pressure or expectation to achieve anything; it’s just time together,” she says.
Anthony and his wife have tried to carve out date-night time, once their children are in bed. (It “definitely was nice”, he says, but not an instant fix.) He thinks practical things – the children being back at school, their parents being vaccinated, life opening up a bit more – will help, “but I don’t expect our sex lives to come roaring back as soon as things are open. I think it is a longer process.”
Others are more positive of a bigbang effect. Catherine is not sure her dating app fatigue will last. “I know that, whenever lockdown ends, me and my friends are going to be straight back out there.”
Some names have been changed
pitch of such sublime pap. Maybe one day Nest of Vampires will get its own
Disaster Artist-style eulogy.
• Nest of Vampires is released on 16
ryone on the call to find you so irritating that they tell you to leave, or allowing you to bow out gracefully – for the benefit of everyone else, of course.
What a hero!