Acquiescence

[AgeingGrace]

Not sure whether this counts as a feminist discussion, but I'm giving it a try. I mentioned on another thread that, after seeing last year's TV programme about black-cab rapist John Worboys, I realised he 'had' me, too. I rang the helpline and the police were brilliant - they confirmed my story and discussed the case as much as I wanted to.

Bizarrely, the discovery was actually helpful to me. I'd been struggling with "denial of abuse" issues so, for me, this single episode (which I barely remember) represented all the other half-remembered and anxiously dismissed incidents of abuse that kept me questioning myself. I now accept that I have been more seriously abused, and more often, than I can consciously recognise. This denial is part of the issue I wish to discuss.

John Worboys sexually assaulted upwards of 400 women: probably hundreds more. His method was always the same - a little story, a little drinky that was drugged. Now this is what bothers me: up to 700 of us accepted that drink.

We trust London cabbies, sometimes literally with our lives. Worboys abused that position of trust. But - still! A cab driver gives you a drink, and you don't smell anything fishy? I bet none of us would have smiled and said "cheers" if an illegal minicab driver had done it. Not a single one of us rang the police, or the taxi office, to say "Driver number XXXX has just done something weird."

We trusted hansom cab drivers - rightly so. But why did we allow this trust to override our common sense? We all registered that this was "odd" behaviour, so why didn't we just get the hell out of there and press Dial? What happened to our natural alarm bells?

Answering for myself, I have to assume I was so deeply programmed to TRUST A MAN IN A POSITION OF HONOUR that I had no self-preservation instincts to go with that. In my case, this is the factor that led to my putting up with abuse in many situations. I was also, as mentioned, extremely willing to forget, deny, tell myself I'd got it wrong, etc, etc. I can trace this directly to my parental background. Did all 400 of Worboy's passengers come from families like mine?

How did Worboys know which women to trick?

I asked the cop how come so many women had bought his story. He said he wished he knew that - as more & more evidence came to light, they found it hard to believe he was getting to first base as easily as he did.

As some of you know, I'm committed to helping women in abusive relationships re/gain a sense of their own right to respect and safety. Most of you know at least something about the dynamics of abuse. Many people are conditioned to consider themselves less important than others; it's common for a woman to count herself less than a man. But 400 Londoners, each with enough independence to be getting a cab on her own at night ...? That's a lot!

If self-abandonment and self-denial are THAT prevalent amongst women, then feminism has a far bigger problem than I ever suspected.

I'm not sure if anybody's able or willing to pick this up - it's more of an emotional/psychological angle than this board's usual. It's both personally and politically interesting to me - what do you think?

Trefusis, that is terrible, have you reported the incident.

Right. After several deep breaths, I'm going to try and respond properly. This is an effort because I feel attacked by you, Dittany, and have to resist a strong urge to justify myself as you insist I should. In other circles, this feeling is known as being bullied.

To me, it looks unreasonable to say men should stop attacking women because it's blindingly obvious but still isn't happening. Yes, there is a serious issue of male entitlement. An associated issue, imo, centres around cultural values suggesting men should prove their strength at all opportunities - it doesn't take much extrapolation to build that into a directive towards violence.

However. The other side of the coin is female acquiescence. Other posters have rightly pointed out that men, too, fall prey to 'good manners' resulting in vulnerability but there's no doubt this is a bigger problem for women. It leads to weakness in work and social situations, as well as increased vulnerability to attack.

Not long ago, I gave a copy of "Why Does He Do That" to a friend's 21-year-old daughter. The girl's boss was routinely molesting her but she insisted on treating as the "joke" he said it was - even though she hated it and felt humilated. She didn't yell at him for fear of losing her job. The situation has now been resolved, but she never took strong action and she didn't read the book.

Her popularity / nice-girl image is more important to her than her dignity (or safety, by the sound of it).

You can say that men like him should stop it, but that won't happen while women think they should put up with it, will it?

Grace, what a shame that this girl did not take direct and swift action to stop this man.

IMO and it's only an opinion, I believe that women should feel justified in taking action and speaking out.

I was in a similar situation as a 15yr old working part time. The manager kept trying to corner me, asked smutty questions, too many compliments and one day followed me into a room. With no one present he tried to corner me so I couldn't leave the room. I could hear other staff in the corridor, so I shouted loud and clear, get off, you will never do this to me again and open the door. It worked, never tried it on again, but I do believe you have to think quickly, act quickly and be assertive, instinct is a huge factor though.

Other posters have misquoted me at times - I'm sure it happens a lot. I have apologised to you.

Oh WELL DONE, the 15-year-old Bathsheba! It's great that you had a strong enough sense of what's wrong - horrible to think of what could have happened.

trefusis, I'm glad you did report the flasher. Hopefully, some others of his 'audience' will have done as well. It is weird, isn't it, that you had some sense of needing to be polite because you'd nodded to him? I remember somebody doing it on a crowded morning Tube. Absolutely nobody said anything, including me :(

Thank you Grace but I do think with me it's down to the fact that I was lucky because I had a good role model with my mother and a lot of very strong older women around me.

May be it's fight or flight, women programmed to flee, men to fight! Like you mention social conditioning tells men they have to act tough and women that they must defuse and calm situations, it translates accross the divide as women have few rights to complain if they don't stand their ground but they still risk aggression if they do. Until society actually starts to accept that women do not have to subscribe to the gender stereotypical over emotional role then everytime we stand up for ourselves we run the risk of male aggression.

For me the issue comes down to educating men, changing the way we bring up young women and risk assessment. Although some people will disagree, again I won't apologise because I really am that stroppy

I really think that it needs a multifaceted approach

A change in society so that any sexual assault or sexual intimidation is seen as wrong

A change in the police etc so that all incidents are reported and treated properly

A change in the media so that rape myths are not propogated, sexual violence and intimidation is treated as the illegal behaviour that it it

A change amongst men so that this sort of behaviour is seen as unacceptable

All of this will lead automatically to women and girls feeling confident and able to speak out and report when something is done to them that is wrong.

I agree that it's important to treat our daughters to be able to say no and not to blame themselves and all the rest of it. But you need to draw a careful line so that it doesn't become the thing we see at the moment where if women don't act as they are "supposed" to then they must have wanted it or at least not minded that much.

On safety, I have always been quite cavalier. The bad things that have happened to me have been in "safe" situations, and the "unsafe" situations that I have been in have not resulted in any problems. So from my point of view it makes sense to avoid obvious risk (for any person - men women everyone) and to follow instincts. After that it's down to luck whether someone decides to target you. You can't live your life as if there is a rapist on every corner - as there isn't - and the rapist is more likely to be someone you know and trust. So all this "women be AFRAID" stuff gets on my tits frankly. All of the adverts and tv programs where the premise is that women are PREY and in mortal danger every time they leave the house creates a lifelong sense of fear and restriction of freedom and i refuse to live like that, with women under some kind of self-imposed taleban style regime, it's shocking when you think about it.

It is shocking, SQ. All the more so for being self-imposed or, at least, peer-imposed. Threads on here about wearing provocative clothes or asking a neighbour in for coffee being tantamount to 'asking for it', ffs!

No wonder we're (generically) prone to excessive self-doubt.

As you all probably know by my frequent mentions of it (!) I am reading Beauty and Misogyny and there is a part where it touches on how being feminine is a way of keeping women safe in a culture of male dominance. Deference is a survival tactic for women, the eagerness to please, the ability to read body signals (HerBex's earlier point) . Underlings always have to understand and decipher the emotional goings on of the people who have power over them, be that children (in any family, not just abusive ones) , victims of DV, or women (and gay men ) in general. This translates into a particular type of biddability.

BUt I've got to agree with Dittany that this is absolutely irrelevant when it comes down to it.
Deference can't "actually" save you from being attacked by a rapist. Looking beautiful and feminine can't "actually" stop you from being the target of misogyny. So all in all, the deference, the willingness to comply is a survival technique that only takes us so far.
There is nothing you can do to stop a man attacking you, if that is what he has decided he is going to do.

Also agree with claig that there is nothing wrong with trusting. The system would fall apart if people didn't trust one another.

to clarify: if deference and compliance are survival techniques in a male- dominated patriarchal society then what happens to women who don't comply? What happens if they are assertive? They face immediate hositlity and may possibly be attacked where they might not have been if they'd continued to be deferent, girly and compliant.
It's lose lose for women.

Very interesting thread though :( for all those who suffered abuse. I was 10 when I was touched by a hotel worker who then thanked me, apologized and I, as a polite and well mannered child told him it was fine with a reassuring smile on my face. I cried after and never told anyone in RL.

As a slight highjack how do we raise our daughters (and sons) to be nasty, crazy, rude frigid bitches? DD is a baby but I want her to be stronger than I am.

I think that part of the problem is what we are told to consider acceptable and how we are taught to behave.

I was sexually assaulted when I was about 12 (possibly younger) when a man called out to me with something approximating my name and having politely corrected him I found myself somehow tied to him with no strategies for getting away, increasingly scared and miserable but totally unable to do anything about it (it was a sunny weekend in the park, so plenty of people around). In the end having come out with a lot of rubbish about how I couldn't possibly be his girl friend because I was a Catholic, because I had strict parents etc I did manage to run away.

Because I was scared of him I ran to a friends house, not my parents and I am incredibly glad I did so because they took me totally seriously, rang the park police, told me it wasn't my fault, and talked to me about their experiences and tactics for difficult situations. In short they were fantastic. I never told my mother, and subsequently found out that both my sisters told her about being flashed at, to be told something along the lines of 'that's men for you'.

So more than one set of attitudes to be changed.

If someone offers you a drink when you're alone in a cab and you refuse, then they insist unless you're pg/religious/tee total I'm sure most people would accept, out of politeness.

I come back to the previous point I made that erosion of how we are treated leads us to miss certain cues.

I have been watching this thread and wondering if a conversation i had a while ago with friends is relevant.
A friend told us that she had met a guy in a club and they had spent the evening together.They shared a taxi home as he said he lived nearby,when she stopped at hers he jumped out to and made a huge joke out of "coming in for coffee" he was very insistent but in a grinning laughing way,she asked him to go repeatedly but he stayed and eventually began to try it on with her again whilst managing to keep the mood jokey.To cut a long story short after what seemed like hrs she had sex with him to get rid of him.There were lots of us women there during this conversation,mostly intelligent proffessionals but a lot of people sadly had a similar tale to tell including me.
Again we are afarid to get too nasty/forcefull,in case its turned back on us or he gets upset,after all we did accept drinks and maybe "wind him up a bit" made me feel very sad especially as a Mum of dds.

yes, the deference and compliance is subconscously a way of making sure they don't "get wound up a bit"
Assertiveness can be lethal for women in certain situations

I think parents should not just teach their daughters to be nice and polite, but also where to draw the line.

my parents were always telling me to be nicer (fair enough, I could be a moody teen).

I have been touched up both by Sunday school teacher when I was 12 (parents always told me: the poor man has lost his wife, the poor man we must be kind to him.). So when he started putting his hands of my thigh, moving it higher bit by bit, I was paralysed in thinking: "but he is nice, and I must be nice to him. I can't hurt his feelings". I tried to edge away, hoping he'd stop, but never saying: "What are you doing?!" This was in front of other kids, who were younger and did not register it at all apart from one boy (also 12) who would always shout at me in in the street that I was a sexbomb, which mortified me (I was prepubescent at that age! so very confused and felt "guilty" somehow).

I have also been touched up by men in swimming pools, by my piano teacher, who would let his hand slide from my shoulder downwards...I froze (again, my parents had told me to be nice to the poor man as he had recovered from cancer), and my blimming driving instructor! Oh, and my maths tutor. I thought there was something wrong with ME rather than them (and still wonder why it happened to me so OFTEN)

I have often been told I was "sexy" so therefore deducted it was my own fault. I was just a normal girl wearing baggy jeans (twas the 80s, sandals and a ponytail, you can picture it). I spent my late teens trying NOT to look sexy because that brought trouble.

By the time I was 20, I was confident enough to dress attractive and fend men off, but I think young women can be full of confused messages and it takes time to develop this kind of confidence.

like I knew that being attractive to men was a good thing (as women are taught), yet if they took it too far it was your fault for "leading them on".

I bet you I am not the only woman like this. I still find whistling builders, and leery men scary and it makes me feel bad, not good.

Sorry, that was just a personal story and maybe doesn't add much to this debate?

the subject just made me think, and I still wonder why it happened to me, on so many occasions.

I don't have daughters, but if I did, I would teach them self defence and a stronger attitude, and I'm afraid I'd be wary of many men.

Put them back in their place...

According to Greer, men's biggest fear (when it comes to women) is being laughed at,
women biggest fear when it comes to men is violence.

that surely must be at the root of things?

I think Greer's point was to show the power imbalance between men and women as it stands right now. To show men's privilege as men: that they never fear for their life when they pass a group of women.