Posters appealing for information about ‘our dear friend Sarah Everard’ still cling to the lampposts that line the path to Clapham Common bandstand. Over the past week, thousands of people have passed Sarah’s smiling face on their way to pay their respects, laying bouquets and lighting candles in her memory.
Sarah’s abduction and murder, allegedly by a serving Metropolitan Police officer, has triggered a wave of anger and national soul-searching. ‘It could have been me’ has no doubt crossed the mind of every woman and girl, especially since Sarah seemed to do everything we have been taught to ‘keep ourselves safe’. She left her friend’s home at a reasonable hour, took a well-lit route and rang her boyfriend to let him know she was on her way. Yet her remains were found nine days later, hidden in woods.
Although such seemingly random attacks are rare, violence against women and girls is not. Last week, on International Women’s Day, Labour MP Jess Phillips read out the names of the 118 women killed by men in the UK in the past year. It took her over four minutes.
The strength of feeling in the wake of Sarah’s death has been incredible. Women are starting to want to speak out about their own experience of sexual violence and the prevalence of everyday rape culture. Whether it be catcalling on our morning jog, ‘gentle advice’ on how to ‘avoid attracting unwanted attention’ with what we wear, or looking the other way as someone gropes us on the tube, women have had enough.
An important conversation has been started and it is one that many hope will lead to tangible change. However, there is one thing the UK media has yet to address – their own role in perpetuating myths about violence against women and girls.
Scrolling through Twitter on Saturday night, it was hard to miss the videos of police grabbing and manhandling women. Reposts of that image – a red-haired, masked woman being pinned to the ground by two male police officers at Clapham Common – were accompanied by captions expressing outrage at the police’s disproportionate response to a peaceful vigil.
As more footage emerged and feelings intensified, the BBC tweeted coverage of the Clapham Common event, opting for the headline ‘Sarah Everard: confrontation with police at ‘unsafe’ vigil’. The tweet was later deleted and the headline changed but the obvious implication was that the vigil was wrong and those who attended were hostile to police. The women paying their respects and emphasising their support for their fellow women were portrayed as the antagonists, while the police were simply doing their job, saving the country from some unspecified danger.
A set of societal myths and subconscious misconceptions are both revealed and reinforced by the media’s framing of sexual assault and violence. The problem is further complicated by the fact that more people now consume their news online – on social media, apps or on the internet. Many of us are guilty of simply scanning the headlines without investigating the real story, and it’s a desperation for ‘clicks’ that has forced publishers to cram the most sensational elements of a story into the headline, hoping it will entice us to visit their page and boost their readership.
Hours before the ‘confrontation’ at Clapham Common, the BBC tweeted another article. The headline read ‘Teenage girl headbutts man after being grabbed on path’. Because of the unusual method she used to defend herself from sexual assault, the young girl is framed as the aggressor, with the headbutt being the active verb in the sentence. Meanwhile, the sexual assault itself is described in the passive, as though the grabbing had just happened, as much out of the perpetrator’s control as an earthquake or the weather.
Rape culture is hard to measure but characteristics include victim-blaming, implying consent, questioning credibility of claims and encouraging sympathy for perpetrators. In a number of cases, the British media strays beyond reinforcing this phenomenon into actively promoting it.
In April last year, the Daily Mail twisted the story of the tragic murder of Elsie Smith, 71, to suggest that the pressures of lockdown seemed to be the real culprit. The headline read, ‘Retired painter and decorator, 71, struggling with lockdown stabbed wife to death then killed himself in latest coronavirus killings’, inviting people to blame lockdown more than the man who brutally stabbed his wife in the head and neck.
There are countless more examples of headlines diluting the perpetrator’s accountability. Some headlines imply a sexual relationship between victim and perpetrator, mention how much the victim had to drink or introduce issues that seem to reduce the perpetrator’s blame (unemployment, depression, alcohol, the latest football result). Each of these uphold the idea that sexual assault is defensible, that it’s the victim’s responsibility to keep themselves safe, and thereby normalise the fear most women experience on a daily basis.
It’s hard to explain, let alone excuse, the constant framing of women as antagonists or aggressors while diminishing the responsibility of men, but the media is both a product and a producer of the two main culprits – ingrained misogyny and a culture that normalises many instances of sexual harassment.
If we are to use this moment as a turning point to help women feel safer on the streets and in their homes, then the British media must turn with us. Stereotypes, rape myths, victim blaming and careless terminology have no place in the pages of responsible news, just as violence against women and girls has no place in the society Sarah Everards’ loss has made us all envisage.
