A request for anecdotes and resources on Feminism in the 90's tackling sexual abuse

[BlessedKali]

This is a request for any anecdotal stories, resources, books or anything else that I could look at to understand how the feminist movement of the 80's tackled sexual abuse and brought it to mainstream attention.

I feel there is some wisdom within this that might be helpful for this moment we currently share in feminism.

I'm interested to know, where did the pushback come from, how did women organise, what was the response.... etc, etc.....

Thanks x

[Title edited by MNHQ at poster's request]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for but Anita Hill seemed to bring the concept of sexual harassment into the mainstream (Clarence Thomas trial) in the US at least.

Thank you, interesting.

I was thinking more about how it unfolded in the UK, but now you have me wondering how did it connect with the States- did it originate in the UK and then spread over, was one country behind the other? Did feminists link up accross nations?

I will delve

I don’t really remember. It was much more hidden back then. Most women were still dependent on their husband. Divorce was not easy and financial independence difficult. If you move on a decade you start to see the true effect of the Sexual equality bill so better wages and the ability to support yourself and increasing divorce rates.
We had a neighbour ( very middle class area) who was thought to be abusing her children, it could be that the husband was the perpetrator but if he wasn’t he still supported her childcare style. I think that SS eventually were alerted and they relocated suddenly to somewhere remote in Scotland. I’ve always wondered what happened to them.
It is difficult to escape abuse when you have nowhere to go. Sexual harassment in work was tolerated because unemployment was high and benefits difficult to access.

The eighties were empowering as women started to realise how unequal they were despite the Sex equality act.
Certainly, within universities there was a growing women’s movement who were actively policing the activities of students.

I was a dental student, every year the Christmas party was held in the students union. There was the usual drinking, dancing and a tradition of a stripper. As women we had no problem because the female dental students in earlier yrs had put their foot down so there was both male and female strippers. However, the women’s group campaign to remove all such events from the union building so the event was held elsewhere.

We put together a student satirical show every year. We started to get more and more censorship of the tickets and program since the women’s group were allowed access to all areas. It became very intrusive and frankly petty at times.

There was some institutionalised sexual abuse/harassment within the system but often it was used by some female students to their advantage.

What was totally wrong was the entrance policies for universities. If a course had 500 applicants for 100 places, they were awarded based on the percentage of women and men applying. So if 30% of applicants were women 30 places were given to the top 30 women even if the rest of the female applicants scored higher grades than all the males applicants.
The reason why we see so many more women in the professions was down to campaigning by women’s groups in the mid eighties. It took a long time for them to realise just how unequal their policy was.

I don’t really think there was a definitive turning point and I think sexual abuse and harassment still happens but it is less obvious.

I think in the 80s women were still struggling to get society to accept that domestic violence was a male problem, not something that women somehow allowed themselves to be the victim of.

Not forgetting what got into the media via media feminists had very little to do with what activists and campaigners were doing in the grass roots.

The International Conference on Violence, Abuse & Women’s Citizenship in 1996 in Brighton was said to be the first meeting of its kind to openly discuss this. Strangely I cant find any write up, other than Julie Bindel writing as though this was yet another feminist achievement that would never have happened without her! The reality being that 99.99% of feminists actions and acheivements happened without her, or her even being known.

Here are a few personal memories published by Trouble and Strife http://www.troubleandstrife.org/articles/issue-35/postcards-from-brighton/

I suppose (hope) that the papers are archived some where.

Wasn't the 1980s the start of the Ladette culture that tried to say (as part of the backlash against Women's Liberation) that being a feminist was to ape male behaviour.

As the media loved this, ie getting drunk, having casual sex and wearing very little clothing, so wasn't really receptive to the notion that women might be being taken advantage of.

In much the same was a hippie culture was sold as peace and love, but was mainly about grubby men thinking all women should be available to men sexually.

Oh OK so I have wrong decade entirely, was it the 90's that started to tackl CSA?

I can remember when the Met announced they had built a dedicated rape suite, after working with Rape Crisis. It was on the BBC news as a serious report, which was huge.
I had a look on their website but much of their history seems to have been memory holed.

Oh OK so I have wrong decade entirely, was it the 90's that started to tackl CSA?

I'm sure it was happening, but dont think it was that overtly in the public eye.

I think this was one of the first groups to focus on it (rather than it being part of VAW) and it says they were founded in 1987 https://cwasu.org/about-us/

The Unit was founded following a historic conference on child sexual abuse in the spring of 1987 Child Sexual Abuse: Towards a Feminist Professional Practice that brought together survivors, women’s groups and services and professionals.

The do hold events so may be worth looking at what they have done and are doing.

In the early 80s after a number of dreadful child deaths social services were reorganised with a focus on child abuse. The Children Act 1989 was hugely important and many feminists like me working in schools were informed via the focus on child protection - having a designated lead etc. There was also (for some of us) an awareness of the activities of the Paedophile Information Exchange on the left in the 1970s - 80s & increasing publicity about paedophiles in Children's Homes, schools, children's sport etc with numerous local authorities being complicit or neglectful about what was happening.

do you feel that as a society we are currently taking this work that was done for granted, and sliping in our safe guarding role?

*Slipping in our safeguarding role.

by this I mean failing, deteriorating etc.

Basically what are your thought with regards to the perception of child safe guarding now?

Not sure cos I wasn't around then, but I think Women Reclaim the Night marches started in the UK in the late 1970s. And a group called WAVAW -Women against Violence against Women- was active shortly afterwards, maybe the early 80s
Sorry to be so sketchy, but hopefully you can follow the history using these references

I don't think society is that good at safeguarding. Talk to people on SM, and many have misconceptions about what it is.
The DBS system has been undermined, convicted sex offenders have been able to have their names removed from the register, and the care system is not fit for purpose.
Personally, I think the training should be mandatory for everyone.

In some ways we have very good, evidenced researched safeguarding policies etc - every child death is investigated and issues identified, constantly reviewing etc..
BUT - it's not kept up with the pace of technology and societal changes and catastrophically we've allowed people who should be nowhere near child safeguarding policy / practice to weigh in and actually undermine aspects of this.

Ladette culture was 90s and ushered in third wave feminism. A reaction against the intellectual "wholegrain" 70s/80s feminism (second wave). 70s/80s was a high activity time for British feminists. You really don't have to dig too deep. Virago press, spare rib, TV had lots of female writers -and series like lives and loves of a she devil and others I can't remember that highlighted abusive intimate relationships. Child abuse became more spoken about in mid -80s. Esther rantzen started childline. The concept of rape within marriage was tested in court in early 90s at which point it was already accepted that a husband could indeed rape his wife. So attitudes must have changed enough for that to be considered reasonable at the time ( although not codified in statute until sexual offences act in early 2000s.

The Cleveland and Orkney child abuse inquiries brought CSA to the front pages for months. These were huge news stories that were in the public consciousness for years.

I was a child in the 80s and came of age in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, many efforts to highlight male violence and abuse against women and girls, especially in homes or communities, were met with a kind of amused eye-rolling.
The attitude towards Mary Whitehouse (who was one of the first to highlight CSA) was a case in point.

There was more acceptance of ‘stranger danger’ as a real threat, mostly due to some bloody terrifying public information films shown in schools!

Popular culture had some success. In an earlier era (the 70s?), a screening of The Forsyte Saga had prompted a parliamentary debate on marital rape. I remember the film ‘The Accused’ being huge, in terms of media coverage of the topic of rape.

But the overall picture was very mixed and public understanding almost certainly worse than it is now.

Reclaim the Night started as a response to Peter Sutcliffe, police told women to stay home for their own safety because they were failing to solve the murders.

Hi OP in my earlier posts I displayed an ongoing problem I have with numbers, so in terms of decades let alone centuries I often dont get it right. But the dates of the 2 conferences I mentioned are accurate. And of course these wouldn't have happened without existing grass roots work.

But in terms of the general population I am not sure that any of the incidents mentioned up thread where ever spoken or written about within the context of child safeguarding.

In fact I think even today if you used that phrase, many people, would not really know what it means. Let alone that much of this came out of a feminist analysis.

Even in terms of violence against women, they somehow place it as an institutional problem, ie men in the army, men in the police, men in schools, men in sports. Never that it might be the men not the institution. (Was very surprised on the thread posted by someone concerned that a man had now been employed in the nursery her child attended, how many posters responded that it was her who had issues and why shouldn't men work with pre-school children? very strange)

This was another well known case, and what was extraordinary was the level of abuse the social worker (Liz Davies) got over years for trying to get this exposed and dealt with. She started trying to get someone to listen in 1990 and it took 30 years. https://www.islingtongazette.co.uk/news/23340550.islington-childrens-homes-abuse-scandal/

I don't know if this is at all pertinent and it might be too early, but there was that documentary of the woman who claimed she'd been gang raped being interviewed by two or three hostile, male police officers. I think it led to changes on how rape victims were treated by the police.

Sorry meant to add, that because by and large society, let alone governments, dont acknowledge that that men are the main perpetrators of sexual abuse. So it is always dealt with as a few bad apples, some failed vetting, etc., never gets talked about in the public domain as an issue about male privilege.

And despite so called advances by feminism, women dont get listened to.

So maybe we are slipping in terms of safeguarding, but it is also muddled up in the failure to properly fund services for children and vulnerable women.

The fact that the state thinks that unregulated accommodation is suitable for children escaping violent homes and women violent partners, just shows how miles away we are from acknowledging the structural problems in a male dominated society.

Although after a lot of pressure it has now been banned for under 18s, it still isn't safe as young people and vulnerable women could be in the same unstaffed house as pimps and drug dealers. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-bans-unregulated-accommodation-for-young-people-in-care

Is it the one where they said if she could sit on a hard chair she hadn’t been raped?

There was certainly a documentary that showed the appalling attitude police in the 70s/80s had towards rape victims and the outcry brought in changes.

Im wondering how much soaps like Brookside and Eastenders ( especially the Jordache family storylines) contributed to public awareness and a shift in the perception of violence against women and girls.

That was the Roger Graef documentary in 1982 in a series about the police. A woman who'd been raped was asked awful personal questions about her sex life, menstruation and her mental health. Police officers told her directly that they didn’t believe her. It exposed the fundamental misogynistic treatment of women and there was a massive public outcry. The police were publicly shamed into changing how they dealt with women and rape cases.

The only bit I can remember clearly was one of the male officers mockingly repeating 'I wiped myself down with a teatowel!'. I saw that as a woman giving a detailed statement and describing something that could, if found, corroborate her. He saw it as someone being needlessly verbose by wasting his time on trivialities and venting his contempt at her.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0cvtvdv

Not available at the moment.