By Ruth Skilbeck
The
new awareness in Australia to end misogyny and sexism that has been sharpened
by Jill Meagher’s alleged rape and murder, is coming not a moment too soon and
tragically too late. Propelled by anger, and determination, we can but SPEAK
OUT, take action, find strength in solidarity, and activate for change to make
a safer society for women.
If
silence is the cloak that conceals and allows these crimes of sexual violence to
be perpetrated, if silence is the gag of shame that prevents the truth from
being told, if silencing is the weapon of intimidation and assault, we have to
SPEAK OUT and break the silence for good.
This year’s Reclaim the Night march in
Australia has a particular urgency, and rallying point, and that is the alleged
abduction, rape, and murder of Jill Meagher 29, ABC employee, who moved to
Australia from Ireland with her husband three years ago. She was approached and
allegedly abducted as she walked home alone in lit streets in inner Melbourne after
meeting colleagues for drinks at a bar after work on September 22.
Jill Meagher’s alleged murder (as it has to
be described as the accused has yet to be brought to trial) occurred just a few
weeks after disgraced Sydney radio broadcaster, Alan Jones, had opined on air
to his audience that women were “destroying the joint” and referring by name to
women in prominent positions in society, a few weeks later Jones was recorded
saying in a public meeting to young Liberals that Australia’s first female PMs
father had died of shame.
Coming so soon after the shocking misogyny voiced
in Jones’ mainstream media broadcasts, Jill Meagher’s killing was the catalyst
to an up surging public movement mobilized through social media opposing rising
misogyny and sexism in Australia, signified in increasing verbal attacks on
prominent women in public position, and calling for an end to sexual violence
against women. This is a call to end sexism and misogyny on all levels, as symbolic
violence of verbal abuse leads to and creates a climate for physical and sexual
violence, from the anti-women vitriol of misogynistic media commentators, which
give the coded go-ahead green light of approval to wife bashers and rapists, in
the justification that somehow women deserve to be “kept in their place” as
defined by misogynists.
A couple of highly successful social media
campaigns, Destroy the Joint, and Sack Alan Jones sprang up to oppose misogyny and sexism,
and specifically targeting Alan Jones program and calling for advertisers to
withdraw their sponsorship from Jones radio station 2GB. Advertisers and sponsors have withdrawn in hordes from Jones program. As previously
reported on this site. Mercedes Benz was the first high profile sponsor to
drive off at top speed and all his former sponsors have followed suit. This has
been costing the broadcaster $80,000 per morning since then.
Last week, a Reclaim the Night rally held
in Melbourne attracted 5000 marchers, and Jill Meagher’s memory was honored
with speeches and tributes.
Tonight’s march in Sydney is expected to
attract approximately 1000.
The renewed movements to end misogyny and
sexism in Australia are calling for an end to the silence that allows sexual
violence and crimes against women – domestic violence, rape, verbal violence
and harassment- to go unreported or unpunished.
The kind of attitude that says a woman “deserves” to be raped and
attacked and abused because of her behavior, clothes, working in a male
profession etc. Calls for an end to the “blame the victim” attitudes that further
violate the survivor of the attack and enable the male perpetrators to get away
with and continue their violent crimes under a cover of silence and
intimidation.
"You know, this is not just about
the Facebook page of Destroy The Joint or the Sack Alan Jones site, it's about
ordinary Australians finally standing up to someone who's bullied them for
years," said Jenna Price, UTS academic, journalist,
mother of three and founder of Destroy the Joint, in interview on Radio 2GB.
Three weeks after Jill Meagher failed to
return home, when the alleged killer had been found, 30,000 people filled the
streets of inner Melbourne to march in solidarity and show their outrage at the
murder of Jill Meagher and the threat to the safety of their city’s streets and
community neighbourhoods.
Jill Meagher’s murder provoked an enormous
public reaction, in the days after her disappearance as efforts escalated to
find her a social media campaign sprang up on Facebook and twitter and then
when her body was found, to find the killer. Police in part attributed social media, to
the rapid finding of the killer, as they appealed to public to come forward
with any information or sightings they had of that night, where she had been
abducted outside a bridal shop, as shown on surveillance video.
It may well be the impacts of social media
that are cutting through the “myths” that have dogged sexual assault cases and
prejudiced against women:
“There are many powerful myths about
women and their sexuality which may influence the views of players in the court
room – namely the judge, lawyers and jurors as well as the community.
Acceptance of these myths may mean that jurors have strong expectations about
how a ‘real’ victim would behave before, during and after an alleged sexual
assault.” p. 1
From Hot Topics: Legal Issues in Plain Language, 56, 2007. Published by
the Legal Information Access Centre.
After the murderer was found, police had to
call for a Facebook page to be closed down lest the postings of hatred
interfere with the running of the legal case and render evidence against him
invalid.
The marches around Australia, and the big rally
planned in Sydney’s Hyde Park, will be focusing on this tragic murder of a
young woman doing what many young women across the country and the world, have
felt safe to do walk home alone from their local pub at night, and then found
that they were not safe. The march is for making the streets and the night safe
for women around the world, to end violence against women. The first
Reclaim the Night march took place in Belgium in 1976, and in Australia in 1978.
This tragic case highlights the danger and
ignites a fear of dangerous strangers – the rapist and aggressor as an
assailant, unknown to the victim.
However, government figures from the Australian
Bureau of Statistics, show that in most sexual assault cases the assailant is
known to the woman who is assaulted, and in the majority of cases, the attacker
is in the same family as the woman who is attacked, and can be husband, or
other relative.
" Indigenous women reported three times
as many incidents of sexual violence in the previous 12 months as
non-Indigenous women in the Australian component of the International Violence Against Women Survey.” (2007, p 3) ref
http://aifs.gov.au/acssa/statistics.html#safetysurvey.
“Much of the current data available on
sexual assault in Australia comes from the Women’s Safety Australia Survey,
conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 19953. Information was collected from
approximately 6300 women aged 18 and over about their safety at home and in the
community. In particular, information was collected about women’s experiences
of physical and sexual violence, the nature of the violence, the actions women
took after experiencing violence and the effect on their life.
The ABS Women’s Safety Survey found that:
> one in six adult women had experienced sexual assault since
the age of 15 years;
> sexual assaults after the age of 15 years were most commonly
committed by a man known to the victim and usually occurred in a home;
> one in ten women who had ever been in an intimate
relationship disclosed an incident of sexual violence by an intimate partner;
> most women were sexually assaulted by someone they knew – the
most common relationships were boyfriend/date (27.8%) and ex-partner (22.8%);
> only one in ten women had reported the sexual assault;
> only about one in five of these women had sought professional
help. "
From Hot Topics: Legal Issues in Plain Language, 56, 2007. Published by
the Legal Information Access Centre.
According to the just released 2012 results of the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report, the gender gap in Australia has increased by ten places since the first report in 2006 and
Australia has dropped to 25th place in the world, behind Mozambique
and Burundi.
In Ireland however it is the reverse.
Ireland is now at fifth place, and the gender gap in Ireland has closed since 2006.
The new awareness in Australia to end
misogyny and sexism that has been sharpened by Jill Meagher’s tragic death, is
coming not a moment too soon then and tragically too late. Propelled by anger,
and determination, women and men must now speak out, take action, find strength
in solidarity, and activate for change to make a safer society for women, and
everyone, to put an end to rape and sexual violence, and ensure that streets
and workplaces, educational institutions, and homes are all safe places for
women.
©Copyright Ruth Skilbeck
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