Demonstrators participate in the #MeToo Survivors’ March in Los Angeles in 2017. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images
Demonstrators participate in the #MeToo Survivors’ March in Los Angeles in 2017. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

SocietyNovember 15, 2018

When will men start believing women?

Contributing writer
Demonstrators participate in the #MeToo Survivors’ March in Los Angeles in 2017. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images
Demonstrators participate in the #MeToo Survivors’ March in Los Angeles in 2017. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

A new survey of 1,025 New Zealand women found that 82% had experienced either sexual violence or harassment. Compelling evidence – but will men ever believe it, asks Emily Writes.

Content warning: This column describes instances of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment.

I read in resigned horror about Bauer Media’s survey of sexual violence against New Zealand women, which found that 82% of those polled had experienced sexual violence or harassment. Two thirds of them described the abuse as being of a physically aggressive nature. The results didn’t surprise me, but they did break my heart. I didn’t see statistics – I saw the faces of my friends, my sisters, my cousins, the little girls in my child’s class. It is devastating. I mean how could you read that headline and not feel pain?

Gosh, I guess I’m just very naive. Because pain was not what Stuff commenters felt while they sat red faced scratching their balls through their jorts, frothing at WIMMIN and FEMINAZIS who had clearly HACKED this poll in a nationwide campaign against all the Daves and Steves of the world.

Straight away, these helpful men shared their thoughts in the comments section. If you’d thought they’d be horrified by the stats you’d be wrong. They quibbled over whether cat-calling is abuse. They spent time on the Stats NZ website looking for reported sexual abuse rates. One comment that was actually published on Stuff, a national news website, said: “but please expect if out late in the wilds of town, where sexuality and hormones are burning like wild fires, that your going to get offers…surely as you are lovely…without offers what a loss of the night, the emptiness eh.”

Then there were those who needed to tell women that if they put their hand down a woman’s pants, or groped her breasts, that’s not THE SAME as a proper rape y’know? It’s not as bad. It’s not rape rape.

Oh the energy they spent, looking for ways to discount these women and their experiences.

If only they had that same vigour for actually stopping sexual abuse. It’s almost like it’s….misogyny?

What does it take to have men believe women? Video evidence doesn’t seem to be enough. Women who say they’ve been assaulted need to be dressed like a Gloriavale extra but even then that’s not enough because why did they hang around on the compound if they didn’t want it? They must remember every detail meticulously. Cry at the right time. Show trauma – but not too much trauma lest they’re viewed as crazy bitches who just want to ruin the lives of men. They need to be someone’s daughter, someone’s wife. Not a sex worker – someone with a respectable job according to John who is currently “between jobs” and spends his days commenting on Stuff. It must be violent; they must say NO in three different languages. But they can’t be in “town” or walking anywhere. Even then, did they say NO enough? Body language too? They must be stone-cold sober. If they’re nabbed off the street – even if they’re murdered – why were they out walking at 2am anyway?

This is identity politics, they say. Violence against women doesn’t really exist – it’s snowflakes, radical leftists, political correctness, dreaded hateful feminists who hate men (and if we did hate men, could you fucking blame us?)

Maybe he, sweaty Stuff commenter, doth protest too much. I certainly wouldn’t want to be on my own with a man who thinks sexual violence is an invention of the Labour Party. How convenient for them. I guess they’ll never have to look at their own behaviour if they view all of this as just a collective figment of the imagination of almost all women.

I asked some friends whether they thought the poll was true to their experiences of living as a cis or trans woman or non-binary person. If you’re a woman or gender minority the results won’t shock you.

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This is bound to be a pretty good estimate of the scale of the problem. Given the high rates of gender violence at the more extreme end, the size of “less serious” harassment will be relative to that (there will be a drop off as the crimes become more serious). I had my vulva grabbed and prodded when I was 8 by a 16 year old in a public pool (twice), and have lost count of the times I had my arse pinched when I was doing my job as a waitress. See also my sister, and mother etc etc.  – heterosexual woman, 40

I absolutely think this survey is correct. I was sexually abused from age three to ten. It was only when I went for therapy with my ACC psychologist, that I realised what happened to me after I was raped on a night out when I was 22. My boundaries were so screwed up I didn’t know it was rape. – bi woman, 34

At my old workplace, Community Law, I heard many stories of rape, gang rape, domestic violence, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and the really shocking thing was that these stories often weren’t the reason women were at Community Law for help. They may have been looking for help with WINZ, or a landlord, or immigration, or the family court. Their stories, and their stats, aren’t recorded anywhere. – Anon

I was out drinking, drugged by two guys and raped back at my auntie’s apartment. The neighbours called the cops and I was so scared of being in trouble for the mess they had caused I never laid a complaint even though the policewoman with kind eyes asked many times. Never really identified it as ‘raped’ because I was so out of it, and I went with them ‘willingly’ and can only remember bits and pieces and my overwhelming feeling associated with it is shame. – Emily, 18

I was groomed, kissed and petted from 10-16 by a music teacher’s husband. A boy at high school grabbed my crotch. A random at uni grabbed my boobs. Nothing came of it for any of them (except I chucked a jug of beer on the uni guy). – Kirsty, 36

I was ‘groomed’ by several older men from the ages of 11 to 16-ish as part of church youth programmes, (they were ‘father figures’), and I was raped three months ago by my boyfriend. – Rachel

I think it’s true. I’m 32. I was first violently raped at 14, when I was still a virgin. Then again repeatedly from 16-18 during an abusive relationship. Then again at 24 after a bad date turned violent. – Jane, 32

I was groomed and inappropriately touched by an uncle from 10 to 15. He said he felt sorry for me, as I had protruding teeth and was not pretty. I left home on my 16th birthday because of him. – Anna

At 14 raped by my best friend’s boyfriend, later that week his sister came to my house to beat me up (unsuccessfully). At 21 I was raped by my first cousin. – cis woman, 34

I think this survey is very accurate. I was raped at a church camp, aged 16, by a youth group leader who (upon reflection) had been grooming me for quite some time. – Kate, 47

I was repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted by a cousin from the ages of three to nine. It stopped at the age of nine when he was convicted of sexually assaulting another family member and sent away to a reform house of some sort as his punishment. When I was 20, I was drugged and raped by a guy I went out on a date with – I found this experience more horrific than what happened to me as a child. Also coerced into having sex when I was married to my ex-husband; it got to the point that I didn’t physically resist when he wanted sex after he punched me in the eye one time when I tried to get away. I now have a traumatic cataract in that eye. – Celia, 34, bi cis woman

I hear stories of sexual assault and rape maybe twice a week in my work with high school students. The prevalence is horrifying but I’m no longer shocked. Those stats seem all too accurate. – Louisa, 39, cis het woman

When I was a very naive and inexperienced 18 year old (with both sex and alcohol and life for that matter), I was ‘taken advantage of’ (such a euphemism) while drunk by a much older and trusted family member (not blood relative). – Elle, 42

I was sexually assaulted by another teen boy at 16. – Leigh, 32

I was groped and raped, repeatedly, throughout my marriage. – Linda, 49, cis het woman

When I was 26 I was raped by a man I knew and had invited into my home because he was my teacher and I trusted him. I have only just told my husband this. You are the first other people. Add in three years of sexual abuse as a child. All the usual sexual harassment that every young woman goes through. I resigned from my first job because my boss was harassing me but there weren’t words for that in 1985. After this I got fat. That protected me a bit. – Chris, 55, cis het woman

More Reading

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    Now, imagine if men read these and were horrified, What would the world look like then? What if they believed women? What if they were so disgusted by the behaviour of their fellow men that they were called into immediate action and marched on the street for change, for protection of women?

    I guess we will just have to imagine. Because I have no faith it will happen.

    Keep going!
    “To combat some of the largest drivers of ill health in this new century, we need doctors to be advocates, not just healers.” Image: Getty
    “To combat some of the largest drivers of ill health in this new century, we need doctors to be advocates, not just healers.” Image: Getty

    SocietyNovember 14, 2018

    2018 is forcing doctors to be advocates as well as healers

    Guest writer
    “To combat some of the largest drivers of ill health in this new century, we need doctors to be advocates, not just healers.” Image: Getty
    “To combat some of the largest drivers of ill health in this new century, we need doctors to be advocates, not just healers.” Image: Getty

    Treating the types of conditions and injuries which present in this era requires doctors to become advocates as well as healers, writes Dr Jin Russell.

    Last Thursday, the National Rifle Association (NRA) posted a deeply provocative and surprisingly idiotic tweet about doctors in the United States.

    This move was a retaliation against an email from the Annals of Internal Medicine, a high impact medical journal issued by the American College of Physicians (ACP), highlighting firearm-related research and the release of the ACP’s most recent position paper on firearms. The NRA article accompanying the tweet accused the medical profession of “respecting their own rights and opinions far more than they do those of law-abiding gun owners” and, shockingly, of publication bias in favour of gun-control.

    There’s a saying about letting sleeping dogs lie. Better yet, there’s the Hogwart’s motto from Harry Potter – ”Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus“, or, “Never tickle a sleeping dragon“. The NRA would’ve been better to have left the Medical Dragon alone.

    The tweets which started #itisourlane

    Physicians were furious. Over the next 72 hours they flooded Twitter with posts expressing their outrage, creating the hashtag #ItIsOurLane.

    Esther Choo, emergency physician and associate professor at Oregon Health & Science University, retorted “We are not anti-gun: we are anti-bullet holes in our patients.”

    Others, such as Mary Brandt, a paediatric surgeon in Houston, posted multiple links to scientific papers on gun regulation.

    But some of the most effective and hair-raising tweets came from a large number of physicians who testified to the carnage wreaked by guns that they had personally witnessed. The stories of their patients. Horrific photos of blood-soaked gauze, the aftermath of trauma surgery on gunshot victims. It makes for grim reading.

    Even the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Paediatrics used their official twitter feeds to publicly commit to advocacy on the issue.  Closer to home, Australian physicians have made headlines while advocating for the removal of children and their families from the offshore detention centre, Nauru. In 2015, over 1000 doctors, nurses and clinical support staff from the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne protested against the Australian Government’s policy of keeping children in detention. Physicians were at the forefront of bringing eyewitness testimony to the attention of the public.

    The hospital’s head of general medicine, Dr Tom Connell, speaking to the media, described the effects of detention on children’s wellbeing: “Our team see children with nightmares, bedwetting, and severe behaviour problems… anxiety and depression. It’s become so common that it’s almost normal in children from detention to have these symptoms.”

    Dr David Isaacs, a paediatrician at Westmead Hospital who has treated refugee children both on Nauru and on Australian soil, has been a vocal critic of Nauru detention policy. He shared harrowing stories of children he treated on the island detention centre. “I saw a six-year-old child who tried to hang herself with a fence tie. I saw a 15-year-old brave lad who’d sewed his lips up and his parents were cross with him for doing it, and he was cross with them because when he collapsed they let the medical staff cut the ties on his lips,” he recalled to the media in 2015.

    In September of this year, the president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Tony Bartone, wrote directly to the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on behalf of its membership urging a change in detention policy. The plea was rejected. Then just last month almost 6,000 Australian doctors, as well as 16 medical professional bodies, signed an open letter calling for the transfer of refugee children and their families off Nauru as part of the #KidsOffNauru campaign initiated by World Vision Australia and backed by over 300 organisations. Shortly afterwards on the 31st October, the Australian Government committed to relocating all the children on Nauru to Australia by the end of the year.

    The nature of medical work is increasingly technical and hurried. This leaves little time for physicians to advocate to challenge the structural determinants of poor health – those ‘wicked’ injustices that arise from the way in which our society is organised, rather than from a bacterial toxin, a rampant virus, a genetic quirk. But the medical profession is, as the Hogwart’s motto imagines, a sleeping dragon. When provoked, its reaction is a pretty mighty spectacle to behold. It roars with harrowing stories, with compelling data, and with images of bloodied theatre floors. It upholds a professional ethic that binds doctors to being completely for the other. If we see violence, we must testify to that violence.

    Doctors are ideally positioned to advocate. Aristotle described various elements of persuasion: ethos – the credibility of the presenter; pathos – the ability to appeal to emotions; and logos – the ability to appeal to the logical mind, sometimes with facts and figures.

    Doctors can use all three. We have the privilege of hearing people’s stories first-hand, we are eye-witnesses to their suffering. We are trained to interpret data and to contribute to scientific research. Since the Hippocratic Oath, doctors have pledged to live according to a shared ethic of care and concern for others rather than self. We treat and heal wounds as we are able; we will treat anyone who needs help.

    To these, add organisation. And this is the real dynamite. We often lament the extent to which we are externally regulated, but the fact is that our medical societies and professional bodies result in highly organised communities of doctors, sharing new knowledge and fostering empathy and action towards shared concerns. Our membership fees fund staff positions for policy and advocacy committees housed within these organisations for which doctors can volunteer their time. Advocacy campaigns can zip through medical networks like (and forgive me for the cheesy medical metaphor, please just go with it) an action potential along a nerve cell axon. Like a bundle of purkinje fibres. We are not left advocating as individuals. We can advocate through highly organised medical institutions.

    This ‘quartet of medical advocacy’ – ethics, scientific evidence, stories and images, and organisation – means that when doctors do speak up on issues, we can be highly effective advocates.

    The surgeon who sews up the gunshot victim is at their best. The physician gently asking after the psychological wellbeing of a refugee child is at their best. But we are all at our best when we are advocating for our patients, with one voice.

    The surprising thing I have learnt about medical advocacy, however, is that it is therapeutic for doctors themselves. Doing medicine within our speciality silos, living in medical ‘tribes’ – the day-to-day life of a medic can sometimes feel as if we are at war with one another, battling over a deluge of patient referrals and vexing clinical decisions. However, we can all agree that it is wrong to keep children in detention and deny them medical treatment. Just as we advocated for seatbelts to prevent injuries from motor accidents, and for pool fences to prevent child drownings, we can advocate for safer regulation around who can purchase guns, what guns can be purchased, and how those guns can be stored. Advocacy can unite the medical profession in a way that our day-to-day work is often unable to.

    This should in no way suggest that doctors are the only health professionals who are positioned to effectively advocate for their patients. Nurses, midwives, and other health professionals have taught doctors a thing or two about advocacy on more than one occasion. Indeed, nurse and midwifery organisations are powerful partners of the #KidsOffNauru campaign for instance.

    Here in Aotearoa there are issues that require urgent health advocacy. Harms that are done to our patients that we witness first-hand. The wounds of poverty, of food insecurity. The devastation of homelessness. The scars of domestic violence. The terrible sound of an infant battling whooping cough. To name but a few.

    “Advocacy is about speaking up for people with no voice,” Dr David Isaacs stated when reflecting on why he advocates. “I have not been a good enough advocate before and I’ve decided it was time I was.”

    To combat some of the largest drivers of ill health in this new century, we need doctors to be advocates, not just healers.

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