Labour MP Jess Phillips received online rape threats for opposing another MP’s suggestion that there should be a debate to mark International Men’s Day. I read about this with no sense of surprise whatsoever. “Oh look, a female MP has been threatened with being bound and raped... what should I buy for supper tonight?” Well, if not quite like that (certainly not “meh” or “whatever”), it was more a kind of blanking, an absence of response. It all seemed quite ordinary somehow, just another woman in the public eye being threatened with rape. Hey, what’s new?
Then I caught myself doing this, turning away, preparing to look at other stories. Finally, I was shocked, but mainly at myself, at my own grotesque under-reaction. I read the story again and forced myself to take the information in, properly process how vile and insane it all was, how horrible for Phillips.
It felt like some grisly process of re-sensitisation, like recovering your sense of smell or taste, only this time it was about regaining basic humanity and decency. Just when did rape threats against women start feeling so normal and everyday?
Sometimes the real shock is the absence of shock. Some of the threats aimed at Phillips were understandably deemed too graphic for mainstream reports. If I’d initially seen the threats in full presumably I wouldn’t have blanked. This is disquieting in itself: isn’t it how the porn trajectory works –people requiring progressively harder (more extreme and violent) material? Similarly, it was as though I needed more hardcore news details to get my full attention. The mere mention of rape wasn’t enough anymore.
The specifics of why Phillips received rape threats are irrelevant. If her manner of opposing the debate was deemed objectionable (she scoffed a little, saying that the lack of female parity in society was more of an issue), there were ways for people to disagree without resorting to lurid terrorisations. Had this been a male MP, it’s doubtful that his penis would have resulted in the comments provoked by Phillips’s vagina. It’s usually with women that criticism lunges straight for the sexual organs, facilitated by social media.
This isn’t just about female MPs, though the modern-day sexualised viciousness with which they are abused is worth noting. As PM, Margaret Thatcher was unpopular (and abused) but mainly for her policies. Could you imagine her or Barbara Castle being bombarded with “routine” public rape threats? It has become an unavoidable part of the female public life in any arena, almost something for an assistant to schedule in between meetings (“Check how many threats my vagina has received today”).
At which point I suppose a kind of gallows ennui can’t help but set in, not just among those receiving the threats, but also, crucially, among those who aren’t directly affected. “Oh right, just another dreary instance of ‘Woman gives her opinion/woman gets punished by being threatened with rape’… What’s on telly later?” The consensus is that, these days, it’s how things are and you just have to deal with it.
While there’s value to this attitude – better than women feeling permanently intimidated – there are also dangers, not least that it reframes obscene threats as an unavoidable part of female public life. Abuse evolves like anything else and this could be the latest achievement for those who sit at computer screens, making these kinds of threats – not so much that they scare their female targets (although they often do) but that they desensitise them and everyone else, effectively “grooming” an entire generation to accept the new reality.
Even if rape threats are not a gruesome “novelty” anymore, it still feels important to resist desensitisation, not to blank as I did – instead to be angry, and stay angry, however many there are. Rape threats should never become background noise.
How to make the Donald look clever
Over to the Republican leadership race in the US, where candidate Ben Carson tweeted the remark: “It is important to remember that amateurs built the Ark and it was the professionals that built the Titanic.” Which appears to be a rebuttal to criticisms about Carson’s lack of experience.
Sadly, it wasn’t as effective as he might have hoped. I’m going to put myself out there and posit that the story of Noah building a big boat and animals coming in two by two (“Hurrah! Hurrah!”), surviving a flood, and then repopulating the world might be just a teensy weensy bit fabricated. You know, all made up and stuff.
And while you could say that professional incompetents built the Titanic, this doesn’t mean that getting non-professionals to do it would have produced a more favourable outcome. All of which rather ruins the point that Carson is trying to make. Although I’m sure he wouldn’t mind as he’d probably be too busy blaming Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet for the sinking of the Titanic.
The thought of Carson being professionally instructed to tweet in the manner of a confused Sunday school pupil is just too far fetched. Surely he must have done it on his own? All of which produces a compelling argument for special advisers to candidates being given permission to hold chloroform-soaked pads over their noses, or nail their thumbs to planks of wood, should they show any inclination to dash off a folksy unofficial tweet during the campaign trail.
Or are stranger forces at work here? Certainly this latest incident gives me the confidence to keep working on my conspiracy theory that Carson has merely been planted as an opponent, brilliantly conceived to make even Donald Trump appear relatively sage and statesmanlike.
Life is just one big sweetie shop for poor Justin
Justin Bieber stormed off stage in Oslo after one song, saying it was because fans grabbed at him and wouldn’t listen as he was trying to clean up spilled water. He later apologised, claiming fatigue from posing with “Beliebers” for endless selfies. Still, junking a show after one song seems a tad extreme. Then again, in Bieber’s world, perhaps it isn’t.
This may be one of the less acknowledged perils of child stardom. Becoming famous as a child or young teen, as Bieber did, is different to adult-onset stardom. Fundamentally, there’s nothing to look forward to – you’re already in the sweetie shop and you know there’s no Willy Wonka. Moreover, fame becomes so hyper-normalised that even the exciting stuff (playing a big European show) must feel like a chore, the equivalent for an ordinary Joe of being nagged to put the trash out.
Perhaps Bieber’s sense of “normal” is so skewed that, to his mind, he didn’t abandon a major performance, he merely had a tantrum and sent himself to his room to cool off. Such a vast disconnect with reality is worthy of anyone’s compassion. Bieber’s problem isn’t controlling his temper – it’s managing his boredom.
