A female teacher at a Tasmanian school where I spoke on the objectification of women could not stay to hear the end of my talk.
The images I showed were too confronting, bringing back traumas suffered two decades ago.
”The very acts that have become part of my trauma were there on display as a part of mainstream culture,” she said.
Do advertisers, editors, fashion, music and video-game producers think about how their violent images traumatise female survivors of sexual abuse and degradation?
T-shirts in surf stores depict women naked, bound and splattered in blood. Mainstream advertising shows women pinned down in simulated gang-rape scenes, tied up in cars boots, buried, chopped into pieces, decapitated. Women are shown as passive, vulnerable, often naked and as sex aids.
These images, among 200 in my presentation, took Genevieve back 20 years.
Once an idealistic young person, Genevieve worked hard to turn her love of acting and performing arts into admission to a prestigious performing arts school.
”It went without saying that you did not get in just on talent, but on marketability,” she says.
”I remember consciously dressing in a low-cut body suit and tight jeans aware that my acting skills were only part of my ticket in. From that moment on, I was a commodity and accepted treatment as such.”
Groomed by a lecturer, she ended up drugged and sexually assaulted for three days by five men. Each played out fantasies that were listed in explicit writing on the walls. Because of their power and status, she didn’t go to the police, fearing retribution.
She also felt that being cross-examined in the courts would retraumatise her. She had seen what had happened to other victims.
What Genevieve suffered came back to her as I spoke. Seeing my images caused her to panic. Her heart beat rapidly, she went into a hot sweat and she felt herself dissociating and losing time.
She says she felt retraumatised. ”I could feel a rising wave of fear. I’ve spent 20 years rebuilding my life. Every day I have to make a wall between me and the world. I’m so busy trying to protect myself. Deviant behaviour is now on public display every day.”
Do those who profit from the images they use to sell things even care about the impact on women like Genevieve? She is worried about the normalising of these images to children. ”What hope do my boys have of knowing where the line is? What hope does a girl who experiences these things have of getting understanding and support when she is confronted by constant exposure to images that say it is OK?” Genevieve asks.
Two years ago, Brian McFadden (his fiancee at the time, Delta Goodrem, was an anti-violence ambassador) released a song titled Just the way you are (Drunk at the Bar), which contains the lines: ”I like you just the way you are, drunk as shit dancing at the bar, I can’t wait to take you home so I can do some damage … I can’t wait to take you home so I can take advantage.”
In response, one survivor wrote in a comment on my blog:
”So, Brian McFadden, do you think this is something to poke fun at? Does my story deserve its own catchy tune and rounds of laughter and applause because you were so clever to come up with something witty that ultimately diminishes the trauma of my experience and belittles my feelings about it?”
Such imagery and words, as used by McFadden, create a harmful cultural narrative about what it means to be a woman today. Media and popular culture reflect values. Any reading of the social landscape tells us women are really only good for one thing: to be used sexually.
Anti-violence campaigner and sexual assault survivor Kate Ravenscroft points out that one in three women is a victim of violence, yet the trauma of their experience is diminished and belittled.
The cultural messages that make violence appear sexy are part of the same culture in which victims of sexual assault have to survive.
”Seeing that violence treated flippantly, carelessly, can be devastating,” she says.
Women like Genevieve battle to control rising panic most days, everywhere they go, because the acts done to them are on display so casually, with the tacit approval of governments who love to repeat a mantra that self-regulation is working. It’s not, and it’s real women who are hurt because of it.
As published in The Sun-Herald Nov 3 2013
2 Responses
I really do feel too that the cultural landscape in this media-saturated society normalizes sexual violence against women.
We have porn easily accessible on the internet showing violent images and women being degraded to a young audience. As porn becomes normalized, it slipped into the maintream culture. It seems that each time I oppose violent sexual acts, as seen in porn, I am told that a lot of women actually like this. Women like to be degraded. I am reminded of ’50 shades of Grey’. I am make to feel as though I am in the minority… I heard a woman sexologist talking on television (a discussion prompted by the 50 shades books) saying that women (yes, women!) liked to be dominated.
Consent is always made the issue but where is meaningful consent when consenting to sex seem to imply consenting to violence in the heads of some people? Even when acknowledging how consent is important, when in the absence of it, how can an experience believed to be enjoyed by so many people can be that traumatic? Trauma? Get over yourself! Sexual assaults are minimized. The message that violence against women is sexy, that acts that are not providing sexual pleasure to a woman, acts that hurts her, are actually enjoyed, is very dangerous for women.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Stop_1_in_3_schoolgirls_experiencing_sexist_violence_in_UK_schools
Totally agree, and it is resulting in violence against younger and younger girls. Sexist violence is the new racist violence … a way of proving your masculinity by beating up girls sexually knowing that older men in the police force and on juries will get you off any responsibility for your violence and it will be the victim that is put on trial. We dont have a justice system, just a tax system for paying for male violence to be seen as a question of free speech …