There is a reason men like Donald Trump get away with "grabbing" women "by the pussy". It’s because we are all complicit. Our complicity runs right from the schoolyard to the courtroom, and into every crack and corner between. Sexual assault and sexual violence were and are so normalised in our society that even crimes go unnamed.
As Jessica Valenti's book title states: . Our culture's myths prevail to protect the perpetrator of sexual violence and isolate, condemn, and shame the victims of it. But time's up, both here and abroad.
Time's up for rapists and perpetrators of sexual violence who are used to offending with impunity. Time's up for rapists and perpetrators of sexual violence who are used to thinking that the legal system is rigged in their favour, and that society-at-large will be too afraid to do anything about their crimes.
This week, our Department of Justice published not a report, but a plan, called .
Long-awaited reforms include giving all gardaí specialist training for working with victims of sexual crimes. There will also be training for judges and lawyers, because for far, far too long "rape myths" have been acceptable evidence in courtrooms.
Abroad, the MeToo movement has also gone up a gear this month. Survivor and activist Tarana Burke founded MeToo in 2006, a movement that went viral in 2017, and now it's progressed into affirmative actions with a new digital platform called Act Too. But it's not just any old platform, it's a "blockchain" platform, meaning every action, be that donating, volunteering, educating or mobilising voters, get's recorded and registered.
And on this new platform, there are hundreds of resources and actions for users to take. Act Too also lets users create a personalised plan for everyday actions they can take to create a world free of sexual violence.
See it's not just a hashtag or an Instagram post anymore, it's concrete actions and justice system reform. So if rapists and perpetrators of sexual crimes were comforted by the lack of progress when it came to society prosecuting them, they might need to think again.
A sea change is happening, the tide is turning, and time is running out for rapists and perpetrators of sexual violence.
And before we move on, the MeToo movement was never about taking down powerful men, to frame it as such makes the narrative about the abuser. It’s a movement that's using the power of empathy to support survivors of sexual violence. And this is exactly what our Department of Justice placed at the heart of its reform plan this week.
There is also a tendency to see sexual assault as a women’s issue, but that's kind of funny considering it's mostly men who commit the crime.
According to a 2010 survey, 90% of perpetrators of sexual violence against women are men. And when men are victims of sexual assault (an estimated one in 71 men, and one in six boys), 93% report their abuser to be a man.
So, it's fair to say that sexual violence is not a woman's problem.
And it's interesting because when it comes to the courtroom, the focus for too long has been on the behaviour of the victim: What did she wear, her sexual history, her alcohol intake, her perceived level of distress or lack of distress, and why didn't she fight back?
These are all rape myths, easily explained by extensive psychological research that shows most victims experience “tonic immobilisation” when being attacked — they play dead or submit in an attempt to minimise the damage.
The term "rape myth" has been in our awareness since 1970, and yet 50 years later, they are still thrown around like confetti in our courtrooms, re-traumatising victims and letting perpetrators walk out scot-free.
These rape myths, academic research has found, are strongly related to wider beliefs about sex and gender in our society.
These rape myths, researchers found, "had a cultural function".
This function? "To explain an important societal phenomenon in a way that maintained the status quo". The status quo being that rapists and perpetrators could move around with impunity and even boast about it, be recorded on tape, have that tape published for the whole world to hear, and then go on to ascend powerful political ladders.
These rape myths also serve "to deny, downplay or justify sexual violence". For too long, survivors of sexual violence have been trained to deny that crimes were even committed against them, trained to dismiss their own pain and trained to say nothing to no one.
In the UK, several studies highlighted the presence of these rape myths in their criminal justice system, a system that we take precedence from here in Ireland.
Rape trials in the Old Bailey saw both judges and defence barristers invoking stereotypes about women’s sexuality, as well as myths about the nature of rape.
Other research found cynicism in the policing system. Officers were openly sceptical if a survivor had not reported the crime immediately or did not have visible injuries.
These views exist to this day and worse still, they are not being used by defence barristers in ignorance.
In more research, barristers have been found to routinely invoke myths to portray survivors as "blameworthy for being in high-risk situations".
Society has been designed to protect rapists, not their victims.
Every time you ask 'what was she wearing'? 'how many sexual partners did she have'? or 'how much alcohol had she taken?'you are upholding the status quo, shining the spotlight on the victim and crucially, away from the perpetrator.
Why?
We have all been versed in these rape myths, myths that deny this colossal issue in our culture.
But now the tide is turning, hashtags on Twitter are becoming actions in real life and public uproar about how a rape trial was handled has led to legal reform.
If there is any message to be taken away here, it’s that your voice has an impact, it’s having an effect. Public outrage expressed in Instagram posts and Twitter hashtags are culminating to change the legal repercussions for perpetrators of sexual violence.
But the tide has only started to turn. Every single voice will count in ensuring a tidal U-turn.
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