Stopping sexual violence
I suspect most readers will have at least one political activity planned for this week — the annual Reclaim the Night march.
Reclaim the Night is now an annual event in nearly every major city in Australia, and in some states there are also marches and events outside city centres, such as the Reclaim the Night festival in Sydney's west. Participation in this annual demonstration against sexual violence has grown steadily since 1978, when the first march was held, but there has been an explosion of interest in the last two years.
A survey of women conducted just prior to this year's federal election revealed that sexual violence, along with employment, health and child-care, was an issue of major concern to the majority of women in Australia. Surveys such as this, work by bodies such as the Australian Institute of Criminology and the various sexual assault phone-ins have helped to place this issue squarely on the mainstream agenda in the past two years.
We can now prove what feminists have long argued: that all women are oppressed by misogynist violence; that most sexual violence is perpetrated by a man known to, often intimately known to, the woman assaulted; that most sexual assaults are never reported; that women are more likely to report assaults by strangers than by people known to them; that in most cases of reported sexual assault no action is taken by authorities; that a large proportion of women who have reported an assault and been through legal action would never do so again because the legal process was so harrowing and unsatisfactory; and that sexual assault is less about sex than it is about power.
In light of this evidence, comments by judges such as South Australian Supreme Court Justice Derek Bollen (of "rougher than usual handling" and "not sufficiently battered" fame), have been recognised, even by sections of Australia's monopolised and conservative media, as either "ill informed" or, more rarely and more accurately, sexist.
Bringing the issue of sexual violence onto the mainstream agenda is something feminists have been trying to do for years. But our task does not end there.
Just to be "against" sexual violence does not mean much — no-one is campaigning "for" it, at least not openly. The question posed now is, how is it to be eliminated? What are our demands and how do we fight for them?
Conservatives argue that women (like children) must be protected from violence, and that the best way to ensure protection is to strengthen "the family" through a return to "family values". One need only look to NSW Premier John Fahey's call for a reduction in funding to crisis refuges, which "encourage women and children to leave the family", for evidence that such a view is alive and well, despite proof that a large proportion of sexually abused women and girls are assaulted within their families.
Conservatives also argue that "sexually explicit material" or "pornography" is also a cause of sexual violence. Pro-censorship campaigners have even found allies in some parts of the feminist movement. But sexual violence has little to do with sex and much to do with unequal social, economic and political power. This fact, in combination with recognition that the tendency of the state is to censor progressive media much more readily than truly violent or vilifying images, has nourished a strongly anti-censorship feminism, especially among young women.
To advance this struggle against sexual violence, we must clearly dissociate ourselves from the proponents of conservative "family values" and anti-sex censorship, and maintain our focus on the real cause of violence against women — the position of women in society.
There is a temptation, now that police commissioners, current affairs gurus and even the prime minister have declared the elimination of violence against women a "priority", to make concessions to the conservative agenda in an effort to gain powerful support. But feminists built Reclaim the Night, and it should remain our platform, for our politics — for women's liberation, not for protection racketeers and anti-sex moralists.
While we should always strive to increase support, the support we welcome is for our demands, not for some gutted or mangled version acceptable to the guardians of the status quo. To defeat sexual violence we must defeat sexism. We must fight for equal pay, child-care, the right to meaningful work, equal treatment under the law and control over our bodies. While we remain oppressed, we will continue to be abused.
See you at the demo.
By Karen Fredericks