This is part two of #MeTooWhere? Crikey’s examination of the past, present and future of the Me Too movement. Read the introduction here and part one here.
Unlike previous waves of feminism, the Me Too movement has largely focused on assault, harassment and supporting survivors. But sexual violence is not driven by sexual desire alone — it’s driven by power and control cultivated in an unequal society.
The movement’s founder, Tarana Burke, has said this hyper-focus on calling out harassment was never its point. She said to create a world free of sexual violence: “We start by dismantling the building blocks of sexual violence: power and privilege. This starts by shifting our culture away from a focus on individual bad actors or depraved, isolated behaviour.”
The movement’s focus on survivors’ experiences, while important, ignores the structures underpinning that violence. These root causes not only have a disproportionate effect on women of colour, Indigenous women and marginalised groups but often on men too. By failing to address them, the movement is unlikely to create long-lasting change.
Move the focus away from women
There’s been a cultural shift in recent decades to supporting and believing rather than shaming and stigmatising those who come forward with experiences of sexual violence. It’s a huge advancement — and an important one. Yet so much of the Me Too movement’s direction and energy has focused on providing support. In doing so, founding member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby and Officer of the Order of Australia feminist academic Eva Cox told Crikey, less attention is given to men’s behaviour.
“A lot of energy is going into providing services and making sure that women are taken care of … without really addressing the fact that there seems to be a lot of men around who behave badly,” she said.
“It’s this classic female thing of going into rescue mode rather than into change mode.”
This is what’s largely holding the movement back — stalling at the first step of raising awareness and support, without implementing change. As feminist scholar Nilmini Fernando said: “Every time [the white feminist movement] flares up, it only flares up around sexual assaults, and that is actually the symptom, not the cause.”
Power always plays a part
Every woman knows a woman who has experienced sexual violence, but few men claim to know perpetrators of sexual violence. This isn’t because there’s one serial perpetrator in each community harassing women — that would make things a lot easier to solve. The fact is that 92% of women physically assaulted by a man know their perpetrator. In 41% of cases, it is their former or current partner.
This is at the heart of sexual violence: it’s not depraved monsters committing it, but our fathers, friends, husbands and sons. The root cause is gender inequality driven by stereotyped constructions of masculinity and femininity and male peer relationships, or “male bonding”, that emphasises aggression and disrespect towards women.
“Gender equality is at the heart of the solution,” Natasha Stott Despoja, chair of Our Watch, a leading organisation addressing violence against women, told Crikey. But she stressed “gender inequality is not the same thing for all women”, with racism, colonisation, ableism, homophobia and transphobia other forms of discrimination affecting how inequality is experienced.
It’s the same driver for workplace harassment, sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins said: “Gender inequality underlies the broad structural conditions in society that allow sexual harassment, and other forms of discrimination and violence against women, to occur.”
Yet gender equality in Australia has gone backwards. In 2006 we ranked 15 in world gender equity. We’ve since slipped to 56 out of 153.
A culture obsessed with ‘masculine’ values
Australia’s culture is built around archetypical “masculine” values. We’re highly individualistic with unequal power distributions, and define success through individual achievements: promotions, wealth, power. Too often women are seen as something to be achieved. You don’t have to look much further than Parliament’s so-called “big swinging dicks” club to find an example of this.
It’s these same values that teaches boys not to cry, that men must be the breadwinners, that sex is a conquest and life is a competition. It’s why domestic violence risk increases by 35% when women start earning more than their partners.
This lack of emotional literacy leads to more than one in three middle-aged men feeling emotionally unconnected and unsupported. One-quarter have no one outside their immediate family they can rely on. It also fosters a sense of inequality. These emotions come back to haunt women in the form of sexual violence.
“The men at the bottom feel they’re grossly neglected and the people at the top end feel they can do anything as long as they get away with it,” Cox said.
“If we actually got people to feel more respected and more being seen as good citizens then maybe we’d be able to get rid of some of the gross behaviours of the people that feel angry.”
The fact these values are so ingrained in our culture makes change difficult. Without addressing the culture, quotas — as implemented by the Labor Party in 1994 and now being considered by the Liberal Party — won’t lead to massive change.
“We have been getting more women into positions of power but they only let them in if they weren’t going to change the system,” Cox said.
Our Minister for Women, Marise Payne, remains silent, the new Assistant Minister for Women, Amanda Stoker, is anti-abortion and has said women were “playing the gender card” when they came forward with bullying claims, and Liberal Party federal vice-president Teena McQueen has said she “would kill to be sexually harassed at the moment”.
Jenkins agreed with Cox: “While gender-balanced leadership is only one of the mechanisms to addressing sexual harassment in the workplace, it is an important element of reducing the power imbalances that can enable it.”
Do you think the Liberal Party introducing quotas would help? Write to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault or violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au.
Next: While sexual violence affects everyone, not everyone gets the same benefits from calling it out. All women need to benefit — not just middle-class white ones.
Yes, it is a men problem. I’m wondering when I will see a senior male politician stand up in a big forum, hoping Albanese – maybe a press club speech, say something like;
”FFS guys, what the hell is wrong with you, us? Keep your hand off it, yours in company and hers at all times unless she actively consents. Where did you get the idea that you could do that stuff? Where did you come from, why haven’t you grown up? Why are you so smug in your gross immaturity?
And to those guys who hit or intimidate women, who the hell do you think you are? When are you going to wake up? FFS, grow up and grow a real pair”
It would be nice.
And to women generally, please stop going out with these types of men. None of it is your fault, but for crissake, pick the nice guy. Steer away from the big noting, big swinging dick kind of guys. Everyone can spot them a mile away, stay away from them, they’re full of it. Children in psychological terms, almost all of them.
I want all of these men to become part of that insipid, desiccated, forlorn, useless, moping group that label themselves incels. (involuntary celibates) Oh my god, what a whining mob of dicks they are.
But the women who attach themselves to violent men often have low self-esteem and lack agency.
If quotas merely give us more LNP women like Teena the Trainwreck, which I suspect it will, then there is no hope for the Tories ever fixing their gender problem.
In one aspect,the Liberal Party has indeed achieved equity: its male and female ministers seem as incompetent and corrupt as each other. Not exactly what we had in mind …
I could not agree more, Amber,. But, the tough question remains: What do we do?
Margaret,
It is a difficult question. The attention to the female side is only part of the problem. It’s the male side where the changes need to come from. That does not mean that women need not continue the struggle but they should know thine enemy.
Unfortunately many successful women adopt the male approach to power and success. Often to their detriment by not realizing that power often comes from chauvinistic recognition by other males.
Merit based in the real world is generally BS.
The key is breaking down the gang of mates syndrome.
White male domination is the over-arching question and there’s no point blaming white feminists. Nor do I have the background to debate violence among non-whites, although local Indigenous communities managed Covid very well, provided they had unconditional (stress that) state support. In the 1960s, one solution was refuges, another legal aid (both cut severely). The first meant victims including children had to leave their own homes. The second is the legal system. It is stacked against all kinds of hidden violence committed by people on others who know each other. This is in work or home; sexual harassment is barely dealt with; rape gives no free legal court defence for alleged victims, but it is done in Germany.We need such reforms urgently. Defamation laws were not cleaned up by A-G Porter, who ignored proposed sexual abuse reforms and aims to destroy the ABC. Michaelia Cash, new A-G is unlikely to do anything just or fair. Look at Jane Hume on low pay – she’s another faux white male supremacist, who despises anyone “not rich”, as are most Liberal women, so forget quotas. They are also heterosexual, as far as I know. Labor is not being as oppositional as I would want, but ALP women insist vehemently on major structural problems. We have feminist anti-racists running the ACTU. Equal and better pay is worthwhile on its own, although it should mean top-paid male CEOs should lose pay downwards. Morrison, a major white, male rights supporter, loathes every word of this. [By the way, I talk as a woman hiding behind my late dog “Hector”. Wonder why!]
Cultural change is going to take a decade at least. Perhaps influence soapie producers to write these issues into their story lines. Prolonged exposure works. repeat repeat and repeat again.