On totally respectable women
Catherine Bennett notes that judges and cops and politicians are still saying that some women deserve to be murdered:
[Sarah] Everard was, Lord Justice Fulford said, “a wholly blameless victim”. Ah. The other sort – the woman who contributes to her own death at the hands of a pitiless stranger – evidently lives on in the mind of the senior judiciary. Forty years after the police and prosecution virtue-rated victims of the mass murderer Peter Sutcliffe, the criminal justice system applauds a female victim who lives up to the highest patriarchal standards. Sir Michael Havers said at Sutcliffe’s trial that “perhaps the saddest part of the case” was that “the last six attacks were on totally respectable women”.
As opposed to whores, he means. Of course, if Sutcliffe had murdered any johns Sir Michael Havers wouldn’t have ruminated on their failure to be respectable – it’s only women who become suitable murder victims via transactional sex.
Turning to the mitigating arguments, Fulford acknowledged of Couzens that “some of his colleagues have spoken supportively of him”…But only thanks to the judge did we discover that even after he was known to have kidnapped and killed, the depraved Couzens – with his prostitutes and violent pornography – enjoyed support from colleagues. Are they among the officers now being investigated?
Is the Mayor of London reinstating Joan Smith as co-chair of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) board? No. I expect the same No applies to Bennett’s question. Are any male-dominated institutions doing anything about misogyny and violence against women besides uttering brief platitudes about it? No.
David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, was among the prominent men tweeting their abhorrence: “Enough is enough. We need to treat violence against women and girls as seriously as terrorism.”
Sometimes, you gather, it’s acceptable to discuss endemic male violence against women and girls and sometimes it’s not. Just before the Everard verdict, Lammy had angrily dismissed women exercised by this very subject as “dinosaurs”. Women who value women-only spaces – where they feel safe from male violence – he characterised as “hoarding rights”.
Hoarding rights at the expense of men who want to invade those spaces. We need to take violence against women and girls seriously, and we need to welcome men into women’s spaces and punish any women who object.
Lammy, along with some Labour colleagues, simultaneously denounces male violence, then, taking victim-blaming to as yet unprecedented levels, is furious with any women concerned about losing the few places that individuals he depicts as terrorists can’t access.
So which bit of it can we conclude they really mean?
Not the first bit.
Here are just some of the rights I have hoarded.
The right to walk down the street without being catcalled.
The right to go to a bar without being hit on by PUAs.
The right to refuse sex with anyone.
The right to ride public transport without fear.
The right to walk in public spaces without fear.
The right to receive all the health care I need, especially reproductive health, without judgement.
The right to be heard at all meetings, regardless of the worth of my opinions.
The right to be paid fairly for the work I do.
The right to come home from work and relax.
The right to dress however makes me feel good, without having to worry it will make me a target.
The right to have the Police listen and take seriously any complaints I may make to them.
The right to have laws made that benefit me and my sex.
If I open these boxes and share my rights with women, what do I lose?
I don’t necessarily read Fulford LJ’s wording that way. Granted that there is a lingering prejudice among some that some women were to some degree asking for it, I think we can read his comments as addressing, rather than reflecting it. It’s judge-speak for “Look, some of you will be wondering whether Everard was in some way slightly open to criticism; but I’m laying it out to you that she wasn’t.”
Principle of charity, an’ all.
It used to be that ‘respectability’ was revoked after the fact, so that the misogyny could roll on without interference. The Delhi gang rapist killers made justifications like: ‘why was she outside at night?’
I don’t know, Enzyme. It seems to me that his comment suggests that other women are not “totally blameless”. Of course, he could have been addressing those who say she shouldn’t have allowed him to arrest her, etc, but if so, he should have just said “women are not to blame for rape, the rapist is”. It could just be careless, allowing people to assume he is dividing women who have been raped into blameless and not blameless, or it could be he is really dividing the women. I don’t know enough about his history to determine which one it was, but even if it is careless, that carelessness is a very dangerous carelessness.