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Sexist jokes and domestic abuse, it’s a continuum

The news fills with reports of a man violently attacking, raping, and murdering a woman. Our criminal justice system tries him, he gets charged. We talk about how awful it was that this happened.

This is how we think of men’s violence against women; an extreme, sudden, ‘isolated’ incident.

But this isn’t how women experience this violence.

Unwanted touching, sexist jokes, being stared at, lewd remarks, being followed, catcalled, sexually harassed, pressured and coerced into sex, forced into marriage, unwanted comments on how we look, so called ‘honour killings’, rape, being told to smile, female genital mutilation, domestic abuse - they’re all connected.

Not a hierarchy but a continuum of violence against women where the acts blend, one leading and making way for the other.

As women, we experience this violence every day, so used to it, it can fade into the background. Something we’ve learned to deal with and shaped our behaviour around to accommodate.

Sometimes it’s brought into sharp relief. Something happens, we’re in immediate danger, we react, and then it fades back into the every day. Or something happens that leaves us with trauma that we must learn to live with.

So much of men’s violence against women and girls is normal, expected, accepted.

As a society, we focus on the extremes, but we need to see the connections between each form of this violence. They are both a cause and consequence of gender inequality. They are attempts at controlling women, to limit our opportunities, and continue the current power dynamic – one that most benefits men.

That is not to say that this patriarchal power structure doesn’t harm men too – we know it does! But this is a system that gives men most of the control of resources, decision-making power, and freedom.

To end it, we must recognise this system behind men’s violence against women and girls, see gender inequality as the commonality that binds each form of this violence.