When and why did attacking women become normal?

[RHTawneyonabus]

www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/aug/11/tory-sleaze-once-caused-outrage-why-arent-we-up-in-arms-now Hadley nails it yet again. Why don’t we care about this stuff anymore? We used to. Is respecting women’s autonomy seen as some sort of boring historical family values thing now we are all so much more sophisticated and sexually liberated?

I agree it’s Become normal. Unfortunately it’s been a forever phenomenon
Women have been pilloried, demonised,seen as duplicitous & dangerous for thousands of years
The Torah has Lilith
The bible has Eve

Social media has made it easier on an industrial level to systematically attack women. Abuse that routinely uses sexual Language, rape as threat. Routinely inciting others to pile in too

The abuse Diane Abbott receives is appalling

@SentientAndCognisant Sat 15-Aug-20 22:11:29
I agree it’s Become normal. Unfortunately it’s been a forever phenomenon
Women have been pilloried, demonised,seen as duplicitous & dangerous for thousands of years
The Torah has Lilith
The bible has Eve

And don't forget Delilah

It has gotten worse or maybe it's more out in the open now. Acceptance of watching porn online, finding like minded people on online (intel's, MRAs, TRAs etc) and feeding each other's misogyny, pornification of popular culture etc, government agencies and charities inability to protect women, media bias against women. So, so many reasons.?

Yes,it’s gotten worse because everyone has the ability to reach a huge audience.quickly
Few taps on phone, type an angry profane post whoosh Its on twitter,FB,IG,multiple forums

Feels very odd to write this piece this week and make no reference to Eric Joyce at all.

Abuse of women and children is always in fashion.

I tend to think it's just out in the open more now.
Also, since women are getting more educated on the dynamics of abuse, and red flags to look out for in men, more men than ever are being rejected.

Rejected men are some of the angriest misogynists out there. Always have been.
Socially I'd say men are at least 50 years behind women. A lot of them still think single women are desperate to have a man in their life, and will put up with all kinds of sh*t just so they won't have to be alone.
These men go nuts when it doesn't work out that way for them.

Since prehistoric times
I don’t think it’s gotten worse.
Used to be you could slap your wife/gf/daughter in the street and that was considered just disciplining a wayward female.

There’s politically-correct disguises for it now.

Abusing “TERFs” or SWERFs”, is seen as a form of social activism, not old-fashioned misogyny.

“Karen” memes are characterised as calling out racism, not the usual despite for older women.

I’ve often thought the reason lefty men have embraced transactivism with such glee is because it allows them to openly express their hatred of women under the guise of being socially progressive.

But really, same shit, different century.

Yes, agree with all that.

For me, the pornification of ever younger girls is very concerning esp within the context of rape convictions etc

I see a number of adverts of fb for fast fashion outlets (one of my friends follows them all) - all overly photoshopped images depicting sexually available young women: flawless 'plastic' skin; unrealistic proportions; over inflated lips and vacant expressions. Women presented as sex dolls.

More shocking than that, is the efforts so many of my underage daughters friends make to recreate those images themselves - sexualised poses, revealing clothes, 'sex doll' pouts that they share over their public instagram accounts. And most shocking is that I'm only aware of them because their parents also share them on their fb pages.

My boyfriend refers to them as "pimping their daughters out for likes" and to it being the "modern day dowry."

I think there is a thing that isn't just about sex but about men's tendency to violence - that it is really unfashionable to see that as a problem.

Much as I love Freeman, I think that her parallel with the Tory affairs of the 90s isn't quite right. VAW - including sexual VAW - is more allied to violence in general than sex in general. And I think this confusion isn't helping.

Protecting vulnerable people - typically women and girls - from violent men has always been patchy but has received at least lip service, at least for the women and girls belonging to important men. nobody cares any more, partly because people are now so nervous about seeming to care about sexually continent behaviour - which is seen as oppressive - that they just don't know when they are allowed to stand up and give a shit.

I have definitely felt hung out to dry personally by this tendency recently. I haven't suffered any awful assaults but I have felt that it is seen as silly and whiny for women to expect not to be threatened and inconvenienced by men in public.

As somebody who's been around since forever, I'm going to differ from those who say it's just more in the open.

No, it has gotten worse. The thing is if there were exactly the same number of horrible men in the high and far off times, but you didn't have to hear about what was going on in their horrible minds, it was easier on women, and much easier on girls.

Plus, a lot of that garbage is subject to social contagion. When men couldn't spread it around, fewer men caught it.

And yet more plus, with a much smaller circle to feed their fantasies, possibly even just their own imaginations if they were too embarrassed to buy raunch at the "adult" store, the fantasies were a lot more pedestrian. The Ninth Circle of Hell stuff invented by professional sadists was much more limited in its reach when there was no web.

So, no. It's a lot worse now.

@quixote9
What time periods are you comparing to say it’s worse now? I remember before we had CCTV on the tube/metro that it was more commonplace to be physically attacked and raped as a woman out alone. So what are you talking about?
About keyboard warriors spouting vile verbal abuse? Well yes that is worse because social media is so widespread but words hurt far far less than actual violence towards women.

I think the sexual abuse of women in relationships is worse now, because what used to be considered very niche and extreme practices are now done by men to women without discussion as if they were entirely mainstream.

I agree with quixote9 that it's getting worse. When I was young (30+ years ago) I was heavily involved in left-wing politics. At that time left-wing men would at least pay lip service to the idea that you should avoid being sexist, and they respected women's right to organise as a separate political entity. Even men who weren't particularly left-wing didn't want to be seen as sexist any more than they wanted to be seen as racist, whatever they thought privately.

All that has gone. The internet has given men free rein to be as aggressive and hostile to women as they want. Terms like "Terf", "Swerf" and "Karen" have allowed them to do so under the guise of being progressive. A few years ago a man who wanted to be thought of as basically a decent bloke would never have dreamed of using a word like "bitch" to describe a woman.

And for the kind of man who was never that bothered about being thought sexist in the first place, then now the internet allows him to access the kind of pornography that shows women being beaten and choked, all for his delectation. I think the way the internet has normalised aggression against women is one of the reasons why it's transferred over into real life, so that young women don't just get wolf whistles and "hello, gorgeous" comments any more from strange men, it's shouted insults about being fat and ugly and so on.

@PearPickingPorky

I think the sexual abuse of women in relationships is worse now, because what used to be considered very niche and extreme practices are now done by men to women without discussion as if they were entirely mainstream.

And yet marital rape was not even considered to be rape until the 1990s. Not sure how you can say it’s worse now when in 1990 a man raping his wife was committing no crime, just getting his just desserts as sex with his wife was his right and consent from her was not even necessary.

@Mollscroll

Feels very odd to write this piece this week and make no reference to Eric Joyce at all.

Well yes.

And the reference to how many children Boris Johnston's has is a cheap and unnecessary shot.

Boris has four children with ex-wife Marina Wheeler - two sons Milo and Theodoreand two daughters Lara and Cassia and obviously the new baby.

He also has another daughter, Stephanie, born in 2009 whose mother is art consultant Helen Macintyre. Stephanie's existence was kept sub rosa at her mother's insistence. She went to court , and lost, over keeping the identity of the father secret.

[quote SodomyNonSapiens]@SentientAndCognisant Sat 15-Aug-20 22:11:29
I agree it’s Become normal. Unfortunately it’s been a forever phenomenon
Women have been pilloried, demonised,seen as duplicitous & dangerous for thousands of years
The Torah has Lilith
The bible has Eve

And don't forget Delilah[/quote]
That King Henry VIII. The wife murderer. They should dig him up from St.Georges Chapel and throw him in the Thames. Remove his statues as well.

@SheWhoMustNotBeHeard

It has gotten worse or maybe it's more out in the open now. Acceptance of watching porn online, finding like minded people on online (intel's, MRAs, TRAs etc) and feeding each other's misogyny, pornification of popular culture etc, government agencies and charities inability to protect women, media bias against women. So, so many reasons.?

What's an intel?

What's an intel?

A celibate microchip?

Marital rape might officially be a crime now - I wonder how often it's punished in the judicial system - is it effectively a crime? but the underlying assumptions behind marital rape have simply shape changed away from Biblically asserted rights into a culturally asserted demand for sex, including from partners who do not consent and/or feel unable to deny consent, including to practices they find degrading but are shamed into 'providing'.

I think what's worse is that there's a superficial understanding that things are 'better' without any accompanying shift in what actually happens behind too many closed doors.

A non-trivial percentage of teenage boys endorse sentiments like 'a girlfriend should provide sex' - if I can find the recent Australian study looking at teen attitudes such as these, I'll link it.

@ContentiousOne

Yes, part of the question once a law is passed, is making sure people know that it even exists. people have to know what is rape and what is not, a YouGov survey in the U.K. found that

“On the subject of marital rape, “more than a third of over-65s” do not consider forced marital sex rape,” compared to only “16% of people aged 16 to 24.”

So there is some improvement as evidenced by generational differences in the survey.

www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/major-new-survey-many-still-unclear-what-rape-is/

It doesn't matter if ppl know it's a crime if they also know it's an unpunished crime eg effectively not a crime at all.

Once had a client received 4 year sentence for raping his wife. He didn't seek to deny it. He was known in the community and so it reached the local papers. The conviction was reported but in order to protect the ID of the wife, it wasn't reported as rape within the marriage.

... And don't forget Delilah

She was a right Jezebel that one.