By Belinda Brown: Striding
down the avenues and boulevards of Paris in my early 20s, I regularly
found myself receiving verbal advances from men. Working as a model in
that cosmopolitan city I suppose it wasn’t surprising that I attracted
attention from the opposite sex, whether it was wolf whistles or
appreciative comments.
Sometimes
I found it flattering, sometimes - like the man who groped me in when I
was travelling on the Metro - the attention was most definitely
unwanted.
But did it ever occur to me to call the police? Of course not.
This
was normal social intercourse and if I felt the men were a nuisance I
had the nous tell them to get lost, often in their native language. And I
can promise you they all did. Without exception. Even the man on the
underground. After I’d whacked him with my handbag and told him loudly
to get lost, he did just that. While his behaviour was odious, it was
not beyond my wit to deal with it. I certainly didn’t consider it
necessary to call in the authorities.
And
yet, according to one British police force, because I’d been singled
out on account of my sex, that’s exactly what I should have done on all
of these occasions.
Nottinghamshire
Police Force, we learnt this week, has become the first in the country
to categorise wolf whistling as both misogynistic and a hate crime and
urges women who are ‘victims’ of such unwanted attention to muster their
courage and report it.
It
has grimly decreed: ‘Unwanted physical or verbal contact or engagement
is defined as exactly that and so can cover wolf whistling and other
similar types of contact. If the victim feels that this has happened
because they are a woman then we will record it as a hate crime.’
The
definition includes street harassment, verbal abuse, unwanted physical
approaches and taking photographs without consent. Also included are
using mobile phones to send unwanted messages, unwanted sexual advances
and ‘unwanted or uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement’.
Moreover,
the force’s chief constable, Sue Fish, added the weight of her
approbation, declaring: ‘I’m delighted that we are leading the way
towards tackling misogyny in all its forms.
‘It’s
a very important aspect of the overall hate crime work being conducted
and one that will make Nottinghamshire a safer place for all women.’
I’m
now a middle-aged mother and academic, and in the years since my
modelling days, attitudes have changed. Much behaviour that was
acceptable even 20-odd years ago is now definitely not, and rightly so
in many cases, but, far from welcoming this new initiative, I’m
appalled.
It does neither men, or women, a favour but only further entrenches the gulf between the sexes.
For
a start, I have to take issue with Ms Fish, and Nottingham Women’s
Centre’s manager Melanie Jeffs, who says she is ‘pleased’ that the
police ‘recognise the breadth of violence and intimidation that women
experience on a daily basis in our communities.’
Do
most women actually experience deplorable levels of aggression from men
on a daily basis? Should we be making the sweeping assumption that
males are inherently all heinous predators? From my own recent
experience and those of other women - of all ages - I know I don’t think
so.
In
any case, I think it’s utterly wrong to assume that men are invariably
boorish brutes who fail to get the message when they’re asked to back
off. If we cast them as such we’re heading for trouble.
By
running to the police and reporting a ‘hate crime’, we run the risk of
making the unfortunate chap who happened to wolf whistle a passing girl
angry and hostile. Result? Growing animosity between the sexes.
And
instead of protecting women, I think Nottinghamshire’s new policy
infantilises and patronises us. It is, I believe, deeply demeaning to
suggest that we are too weak and enfeebled to deal with a casual remark
or an unwanted advance.
Vitally, we
need to stop casting women as helpless and hapless. Instead of telling
our daughters to run to the police, we need to encourage them to learn
how to deal with these low-level irritations that should barely cause
consternation, let alone be catalogued alongside serious assaults.
Elevating such trivial annoyances as wolf whistling to ‘hate crimes’
distorts our view of what a real crime is, and who the real criminals
are. If you treat something as trivial as wolf whistling as a hate crime
then people who are victims of more serious and devastating abuse may
struggle to be taken seriously because people will no longer be able to
differentiate what’s really unacceptable.
In
my grandmother’s era a young man who complimented a woman on her
appearance would not have been treated as a pariah. Often it signalled
the first tentative stage of courtship.
When
I was in my 20s, would I have reported the stranger who invited me out
to supper to the police for ‘misogynistic behaviour’ had this new ‘hate
crime’ existed then? Of course I wouldn’t. I would have considered it a
waste of both my time and that of the constabulary.
Yet
today’s youth must be wary: telling a teenage girl she looks lovely
could lead to a reprimand; even a criminal record. Rather than
encouraging young men and women to understand each other’s point of view
and open up lines of communication this new initiative surely
encourages a mentality that shuts down social interaction. Youths are
often gauche, but criminalising awkward, or misguided, advances doesn’t
help them learn what’s appropriate - and what’s not.
Ultimately
I believe the streets will become less safe, not more so, if
hard-pressed police are so busy investigating the building site Lothario
who has whistled at a passing woman that they don’t have time to deal
with the rapist. Surely common sense dictates - especially in a time of
limited resources - the police would be more profitably engaged in
investigating serious offences of violence against women.
And
yet we learn that three months of valuable police time – and doubtless
thousands of pounds from already strained budgets – have already been
frittered away in training Nottinghamshire’s bobbies to recognise the
crime of misogyny.
It
all seems a ludicrous over-reaction. As a social anthropologist and
writer I have considered the insidious way strident feminism -
essentially turning the opposite sex into our enemy - has poisoned
relationships between men and women. I believe the female chief
inspector of police, who instituted this absurd new crime, is enforcing
the presumption that the actions of all men should be viewed through the
prism of our paranoia: they must be all be demonised.
Consider
the case of marketing co-ordinator Poppy Smart, 23, from Worcester.
Wolf whistled every day for a month as she past builders on a site,
justifiably she found the behaviour so intimidating, humiliating and
insulting she felt she had no alternative but to go to the police. And I
have great sympathy for her.
Although
the West Mercia force investigated Miss Smart’s complaint – she said
the wolf whistling was akin to racial harassment – no action was taken.
Presumably had the incidents happened in Nottinghamshire the result
might have been different. Still I feel an acerbic put-down, or witty
remark would have nipped this whole unpleasant business in the bud more
effectively than any police report.
Of
course I deplore any conduct that becomes irritating or irksome, but
being wolf whistled is not the same as being racially abused. Surely the
problem here is not really the men’s behaviour. Rather it is the way it
is understood. Men find pretty young women attractive, and we want them
to find us attractive. They respond more strongly than we do to visual
stimuli, and do so in a very visceral way. This does not mean they would
threaten us. Simply that they are too busy working on building sites to
pick up messages of political correctness.
I suspect there are some countries where men are more circumspect about expressing their appreciation of female beauty.
When
I lived in Poland in the 1990s, I was never wolf whistled; possibly
because the beauty, slenderness and impeccable grooming of Polish women
rather put me to shame. But I also suspect it was because Polish men had
been brought up by mothers whose fierce work ethic and self-sacrifice
in both supporting and running their families instilled in their sons an
ever so slightly fearful respect for both their mothers and women in
general.
And
if it is respect that we women want, we will not get it by constant
complaints, carping and demands for special privileges. Neither will we
achieve it if every time a man expresses his appreciation of our beauty,
we run to the police.
It
seems to me, too, that while women are prepared to emasculate men with
these new powers, the same females accord themselves the right to be
more predatory themselves.
In
this new era of draconian rules and regulations, it is considered
perfectly politically correct for a woman to ogle a man’s muscular
physique, while he has no right to compliment her on her figure. And who
would have a scintilla of respect for a man who rushed to log a
complaint against a woman merely because she’d said he looked good?
Equality works both ways.
Actually,
I think life is infinitely poorer and drearier for these po-faced new
directives. Today, in mid-life, I would feel hugely gratified if a
stranger – man or woman – told me I looked lovely. Now that I’m older, a
wolf whistle would actually make my day.
It
is not an insult to be found attractive, actually there is something
reassuring and confidence-boosting to be appreciated for our looks.
And while we rightly strive to be women of substance, an appreciation of our appearance need not detract from that.
So
I would say to all young women, as I do to my own ten-year-old
daughter: accept compliments graciously, but if you are offended have to
courage, not to rush off and tell tales, but to confront the person who
has caused offence.
This, after all, is what empowerment means and how respect is earned.
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