Media Storm - Misogyny in the media: Helena & Mathilda speak in Parliament!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi lovely listeners, it's Helena here. This week, Matilda and I went to Parliament. I know, the halls of Westminster itself. We wanted to bring you a little taste of why we were there and what happened. We were invited by the group Hacked Off. The Hacked Off campaign was established in 2011 in response to the phone hacking revelations and campaigns for meaningful reform of UK press self-regulation, ensuring that the victims of press abuse have their voices heard

Starting point is 00:00:36 and are given protection from continuing intrusions. Hacked off pulled together this parliamentary briefing to speak to MPs and parliamentarians about misogyny in the press and how the media can responsibly report on domestic abuse and gender-based violence. In the briefing, we got to speak about Media Storm's mission to put lived experience at the heart of reporting and promote empathy in the news. You'll hear from Hacked off in a minute, and we were also joined in the parliamentary briefing by Impress, a self-regulatory body for UK publishers, the Fawcett Society, the UK's leading

Starting point is 00:01:13 charity campaigning for gender equality and women's rights, and Melanie Sykes, editor-in-chief of The Frank magazine, and who I'm sure you know from your TV screens. We weren't allowed to record in the briefing. and Matilda and I may have had our audio equipment confiscated as we tried to sneak it in. But after the briefing, having picked up our recorders from the security card, we caught up with the speakers to ask them their thoughts and reflections. Here they are. My name is Jackie Hames. I'm one of the directors of Hacked Off.

Starting point is 00:01:47 Haktoff is an organisation which represents victims of press abuse, which campaigns for real change in the way depressed. is regulated so that it's more free and accountable. What did you think of today's roundtable? I think it was a brilliant discussion and it showed the power of the argument. There was nothing in there that anyone could actually argue with and I think that's what came over to me

Starting point is 00:02:12 and the sadness of it is is that the barrier to real change happening is in this place in Westminster. It's the change that is required in order to make sure that the process. keep to their own standards code and effectively if they just did that it could be the sort of precursor to real change in society and how we talk about women and how we view them and finally your sort of one takeaway message today that women actually are getting together and and pulling together

Starting point is 00:02:48 and having a real voice in this issue and we just need to turbocharge the power and the volume of it I'm Melanie Sykes and I'm a speaker and an author I've just written a book called Illuminated and it charts my life, my 52-year-old life and it's about the press and how I've been abused in the press over decades. It's about coercive control. It's about all sorts of women's issues

Starting point is 00:03:16 and the things I've suffered over the years and that's why I came today. It was really quite extraordinary hearing you speak I mean I know you said you were nervous but I was compelled by every word and I could see everyone in the room was you had some quite extraordinary stories of how the press has abused you, not just in the past, but really recently. This is the crazy thing because it's everywhere and it's been everywhere

Starting point is 00:03:37 since the beginning of my fame, which was 1997. But the more recent ones, yes, I was diagnosed autistic, ADHD very late in life. And I did an interview with Hello magazine because I knew that they pretty much print what you say and they're not out to get you but it couldn't go to print because until the editor had asked the journalist who had interviewed me

Starting point is 00:04:00 please just get her to comment on if she's seeing anyone if she's got a man in her life and it's the most extraordinary thing to get a late diagnosis of autism when you look back at your life and work out why you've done the things you've done and why you are the way you are

Starting point is 00:04:15 which I'm so thoroughly pleased with and I would have been nice if they'd have focused on the messages of that but it wasn't it was just like basically who you're having sex with it. And it's just, and it makes me sad that women journalists can't tell their stories that they want to tell. It hurts me. And if you don't mind just telling us, you know, before you reached this stage as a highly qualified author speaker with a platform on which you can actually call out the media for doing this to you, where did it begin

Starting point is 00:04:42 when you were just a victim of being bullied by the media? What did that look like? What were the worst kind of narratives that were being painted about you? The worst narratives have always been about me using men, about my sex life, about I was arrested. I was in a coercive controlling marriage and I was arrested on the night of an event and they paid my perpetrator money for a story and I have had my cautionary vote. I was innocent that night and I found out much later that women are taken from the home in domestic abuse situations. usually because the perpetrator is so good at charming people.

Starting point is 00:05:28 And we know that about abusers. That's a core trope of abusers. It's that you're able to manipulate and to disguise what's happening inside the relationship. And I was taken and that's all in my book as well. And the media and what they did to me over the following weeks, they were just absolutely ransacking the country for any man that might know of a history of violence in me. and of course they didn't find anybody.

Starting point is 00:05:52 Why were they so fixated on you? They've been fixated on me since 1997, and I've been told by a PR person that the Sun Newspoke particularly love me because when I'm in it, it sells. And that's all you need to know. And that's all I need to know. And actually, that was a sentence you said that struck me,

Starting point is 00:06:08 you said, I only recently realised just how much I've been bullied and how I've been used to sell papers. Yeah, the way they describe me is somebody that uses people, uses men for money. Realistically, all they've ever done is use me. So they're accusing me of what they actually do themselves.

Starting point is 00:06:27 And it's so transparent. I don't know how they can still get away with it and how people are still believing them. I mean, it's actually ridiculous. You actually said that as is your wrap-up message and maybe you would just share that with listeners. As someone, you know, who's been featured in those stories, what's your advice?

Starting point is 00:06:44 I mean, we're doing what we can to change and get the tabloids and their publications to be policed in some way. But until then, just stop buying it. Stop reading it. Stop buying it. Because when you don't buy it, they will fall. I want them to fall.

Starting point is 00:07:00 Did you feel today being here? Did you feel encouraged that... I'm encouraged that you're in the world. That's going to make my say. But it's true when I was listening to you guys and just thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all right. We're going to be all right because you're here. And it's my generation that have... but let it just go for the longest of times.

Starting point is 00:07:22 I've kept quiet about it. Look at me. In a way, I've been complicit in it. Look at you, not at all. No, but what I'm saying is now, now I'm not in it, now I'm not associated with it. I'm really out. All I want to do for the rest of my time

Starting point is 00:07:34 is make sure the experience of women and children and innocent people and men is a healthy one. And that's all my life's motivation is about. We're all in this world together. That's right. Let's get along. Yeah, exactly. Because what else are we going to do, you know?

Starting point is 00:07:49 I'm Jemima Olavsky. I'm Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society. What did you think about today's roundtable? Really, really interesting and powerful discussion. There were some quite painful examples of some of the ways in which women are being let down, harmed, actively harmed by our media, but a really constructive conversation about how we can do better and how we absolutely have the right and our right to demand more and demand better for women. And what would you say is your main takeaway message from time?

Starting point is 00:08:19 today? I think it's really important to recognise the prevalence and the normalisation of misogyny in our press. We often talk about, recently people have started to talk about the example of Andrew Tate and that's really egregious, nasty and an important issue that we address. But actually, really misogyny is far more a kind of day-to-day occurrence embedded in our way of life than people care to acknowledge. And we see that play out in really nasty examples like Jeremy Clarkson's article about Megan Markle, but actually in small everyday ways and it's that drip, drip, drip that means we, it almost becomes difficult to see or to notice misogyny because it's just a part of the backdrop of everyday life.

Starting point is 00:09:06 My name's Lucy Kirk Connallana. I'm the chief executive of Impress, which is a self-regulatory body for UK news publishers and we're all about raising standards and ensuring news can be trusted. The takeaway from today, it was a really great session where we talked a lot about pervasive harm in the media, particularly around sexism and misogyny and how that can impact on society. We also talked about what are the solutions, so ensuring that there's an accountable press, adopting ethical standards, and what are the types of policy budgets we can use to get us there. And just tell us a little bit about what the hell is wrong with the current regulation system we have. Like, why do we need impress at all? Well, certainly. So, as

Starting point is 00:09:45 At the moment, the press is entirely self-regulated, which means that the state has no involvement whatsoever, there's no independent government body that has any involvement whatsoever, and it's really patchy. So some journalists and editors apply recognised codes, some don't, and some sit outside any form of accountability whatsoever, and that creates this really patchwork system where people are having all sorts of news experiences, some of which are really harmful, and so what we're trying to do is advocate for a level playing field, a system where all news publishers in the UK are regulated to some extent and are applying the same sorts of ethical standards

Starting point is 00:10:24 when it comes to particularly discrimination, sex and misogyny in the media. Final question, how do you feel after that discussion today coming into Parliament, being heard by the full society, did it make you feel like change could happen? Yes, certainly. I'm always really encouraging to get in a room with people and there are lots of people agitating for change and reform. Everyone is really passionate about this and there's lots of consensus about the issues and lots of consensus about the solutions as well.

Starting point is 00:10:51 So there we are, all the brilliant women that spoke up in Parliament. If you want to find out more about responsible reporting on domestic abuse, you can listen to our episode earlier this series with Jamie Starling from the organisation Level Up. Just search, safety or status, migrant women and domestic abuse. abuse. Right now though, we're going to take you back to Media Storm Series 1, as it felt very relevant to our trip to Parliament. On our third ever episode, we spoke with two gender equality activists, Dr Leila Hussain and Gina Martin, about how the mainstream media upholds

Starting point is 00:11:29 misogyny and depicts victims of sexual assault, and how male perpetrated violence litters our pop culture. Thanks for listening. Welcome back to the studio where we'll be discussing how the media report on rape and sexual assault justice. Our first guest is calling in from Nairobi in Kenya, so we're very lucky to have her. She's a psychotherapist and women's rights activist, the founder of Dahlia Project and Safe Spaces for Black Women. And the first woman of color elected rector of the University of St. Andrews. It's Dr Leila Hussein. Hi, Leila.

Starting point is 00:12:06 Hi, hi, everyone. Thank you for having me today. Our second guest is the campaigner who made upskirting illegal. She's also a writer and she is an advocate for UN Women UK. It is the amazing Gina Martin. Hello, thanks for having me. Did anybody have any immediate thoughts on the investigation that we've just heard? Do you know what's so sad?

Starting point is 00:12:27 How common it actually is. That's my initial thought. I really reacted to one of the women they spoke to who said, you know, I'm a white woman who has a lot of privilege and it was so hard. for me. I can't imagine what it's like for black women. And I'm so as sad as it is, I'm glad that was acknowledged because there is a difference. Unfortunately, when we set it up safe space for black women last year, that was literally the reason we set it up because women are already at the back burner of everything. When you're black and brown, it's 100 times well. So that was

Starting point is 00:12:58 really my reaction to investigation. How common this still actually is? I also think that in the mainstream media in terms of how survivors are depicted, they're often reduced to stock images of white women with their head in their hands. You know, that reduces what we think a victim looks like. The investigation pointed to discriminatory attitudes held by juries as a significant factor in why it's so difficult to convict. I wonder whether Gina or Leila you think that the media contributes to myths and stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes of this kind? I think it definitely does.

Starting point is 00:13:41 I think so many of the problems we have are the very people who experience the thing aren't at the helm of being able to drive the narrative about the thing. And while we're talking about the media, you know, propagating these rape myths and stereotypes, I want to talk a bit about the phrase, non-consensual sex. Non-consexual sex propagates so many myths,

Starting point is 00:14:00 maybe the biggest myth being that rape is about sex and not necessarily about power and control and violence. There's also the phrase underage women, which frustrates me no end. And a really good example of this is when Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. And the media outlet Jezebel counted that in the five days since his arrest, there were over 90, 90, radio and TV mentions of underage women alongside Epstein's name. Now, I don't know if I'm going crazy here, but there's no such thing as an underage woman. You're a girl, a minor, or a woman. And I have been in broadcast newsrooms specifically where they cover a lot of crime in London and a lot of stabbings specifically. And they are so careful to use boy when it is somebody under 18 and man when it is somebody

Starting point is 00:15:00 over 18 and the same is not applied to instances of rape and sexual assault. And there's almost this grace afforded to perpetrators where the term underage women is used rather than child or girl. It's unbelievable. Call it for what it is. The fact that you haven't consented it's rape. Full stop. The term child marriage comes up all the time. And I'm like, how is a child marriageable? Does it make sense? So the language we use, But it does. It makes it a little bit okay. Because, you know, we respect the constitution of marriage. It's paedophilia. It's not child marriage. So for me, language is so key. When we constantly say female genital, it's a cultural, traditional practice. Instead of saying female genitality mutilation, it's violence. It's not practice. It's violence subjected to little girls who an adult touched their genitalia, which is sexual assault, but now took a knife to cut it, which is a a serious sexual assault. See, that has a whole different meaning. Like, where is this language created, right? It's not created from like regular working people on the street talking about

Starting point is 00:16:08 the issue. It's coming from the top down. There's a need to soften the language because we feel complicit somehow in all these different things and then it trickles down into society. And it's only when it gets to us that we go, hang on, that's not what we're talking about here. Why are you calling it that? Because you're making it seem normal to people as if it's an accepted part of society. That's something that just happens instead of something super, super violent. It's common practice as well to use the term had sex with in situations where adults, um, rape children or young teenagers. Just scrolling through Google, you have man had sex with 14 year old, man jailed for sex with teen. 32 year old had sex with 13 year old. That's not

Starting point is 00:16:51 sex. That's rape. Sex is pleasurable. Sex is joyful. Sex is about love. It's consenting on. It's consensual, it's a healthy part of life. This is about power, isn't it? Also, we always release the stats of how many women and girls have been violated, but not the statistics of how many men are the perpetrators. Yes. You never see that stats anywhere. Because then we can see the problem. We don't see the stats of the perpetrators. In the investigation, they talk about that pendulum swing to focus less on the victim and more on the perpetrator. The media needs to do the exact same thing. I have another question about how the media reports on these things, which is a

Starting point is 00:17:26 question of trauma porn quotations. You will often see tabloids regale in very lurid detail the sadism of these crimes. And at what point is it just voyeuristic? I think often the lurid details of violence reported in our media kind of encourages the portrayal of perpetrators as, or those perpetrators as like monstrous or somehow distinguishable from the average person walking down the street. And then that gives the false impression that perpetrators are like the other when statistics show that most rape and sexual assault victims know their attacker or they're their partners or family members even. Does this voyeuristic culture tie into our pop culture as well? We seem to have an obsession with series about serial killers and femicide. The Ted Bundy tapes earlier this year we started

Starting point is 00:18:23 watching Serpent, which was a BBC one drama about the conman and murderer Charles Sabrage. We watch a lot of it through his eyes and there's a scene in which he spikes the drink of a victim and you're given a kind of sense of excitement as you wait for the drug to kick in and I've had a drink spiked before and I found that a really distressing moment and stopped watching, is it overly sensitive to say maybe we need to police culture better in that way? Or do you think that these shows glamorise violent and objectifying attitudes towards women? I think it's unquestionable that the things that you take in, the messages you're taking through songs, movies, you know, TV shows, adverts, all that, socialise you into ideas of what's normal,

Starting point is 00:19:15 what's part of life and what isn't. A show that talks about or explores sexual violence can do that many different ways, right? Because if you take something like I may destroy you and you look at that, that's a very, very smart comment on culture, on structural issues we have, on race, on how these things interact and the complexity of that. It dives into that very beautifully. I 98% don't. So you get more of a sensationalist, superficial, very much through the male gaze. And it's not really a comment or even a critique or even an exploration of it. It's just a, you know, rudimentary, kind of voyeuristic look at it. And I think that's the problem is that the majority is like that.

Starting point is 00:19:57 This is not a new problem, but now, in the mainstream, people are so much more aware of how much these things happen. And I just think about decades of women and decades of marginalised people watching these narratives and not being able to watch them, while other people think, oh, the drama, how fun. Rape is literally made entertainment. Yeah. There's no context.

Starting point is 00:20:17 It's just entertainment. Like, since my work, I haven't, I can't watch. that stuff because I read about it and hear it every day. I need to escape and this is actually reality so I can't escape from reality by watching reality. Anytime I think about the question of pop culture I go back to blurred lines the 2013 song by Robin Thick which includes the lyrics I know you want it and I hate these blurred lines and the way you grab me you must want to get nasty or nasty and I remember at the time whenever I spoke of about how I felt about it, I would get told that I was being too sensitive and it was just

Starting point is 00:20:55 a song and get over it. And it was like actually impossible at that time for me to have any meaningful conversation about the song without somebody accusing me of being like an angry feminist who wants to like cancel Robin Thick or whatever. At the time like there was a backlash to this song. Many women who have been raped said my attacker said, I know you want it. It's literal defence that is used in court. Yeah, it was a literal defense. This shocked me during my interview with Chauvonne Blake, the prosecutor. She said the law on consent is such that you don't just have to convince a jury the victim didn't consent. You have to convince a jury that the defendant couldn't viably have believed the victim consented.

Starting point is 00:21:35 That's what I'm saying. The system's not broken. The system is there to protect certain men. Maybe if we started from that, we can actually start dismantling this properly. Because the moment we think, well, something went wrong. It's not something went wrong. It was designed this way. How many powerful men in the public eye have zero repercussions for the kinds of things they've done?

Starting point is 00:21:57 You know, Chris Brown's still making music. DeBaby with this whole, you know, HIV-AIDS thing, homophobic and just so toxic. And, you know, then Kanye West brought him and Marilyn Manson out on stage to baby's in the top charts. When there's no accountability for these men who set narratives and encourage narratives, why are we wondering why young men who look up to them and see them as the way they want to live and the way they want to be taking on this language too and seeing these kind of behaviours as not a problem?

Starting point is 00:22:29 Of course they don't, because my hero's doing it and nothing happens to him. Thank you for listening. Just a reminder, we've set up a Patreon so if you want to support us, follow the link in the show notes and our next investigation into transgender rights and the facts behind Scotland's self-ID laws, all be out on the 13th of July.

Starting point is 00:22:50 Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast, and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can also follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helena Wadia, and follow the show via at MediaStormPod.

Starting point is 00:23:16 Thank you.

Media Storm - Misogyny in the media: Helena & Mathilda speak in Parliament!

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.