Thread by @suzannezeedyk

WHY is it hard for many men to appreciate women's terror? WHY is #NotAllMen trendng this morn re #SarahEverard ? A THREAD.
I write it because I believe that once you can MAKE SENSE of confusng things, they stop being so distressng &exhaustng. You're better placed to tackle them.

2. If you aren't a feminist theorist or writer or reader, it is easy to miss how far back &how widely spread t discountng of women's experience is, in deference to men's. Seeing ths breadth is hard, gut-wrenchng. But SEEING it helped me make sense.I was more effective w/ my rage.

3. Here is t result of my attmpt to SEE, co-written 21 yrs ago. Most ppl think of me as a 'baby psychologist'. They don't know I wrote a feminist text abt The Male Norm. But I did. (It helped me understnd even more t importnce of caring for our childrn.) Let me give some quotes.

4. A 1969 case of the rape of a 16-year-old girl by 2 men: "Human experience has shown that in these courts girls & women do sometimes tell an entirely false story. Such stories are fabricated for all sorts of reasons."

5. 1998, Donald Findlay, a leading Scots criminal lawyer, is willing to risk "sounding harsh" when he stated that "women have to have a certain degree of responsibility when she invites a stranger back to her home."

6. 1981, Judge Wild in a case at the Old Bailey (where #SarahEverard & #SabinaNessa's cases were held) said: "Women who say no do not always mean no. It is a case of how she says it, how she shows & makes it clear. If she doesn't want it, she has only to keep her legs shut."

7. If you are a woman reading this and you feel sick, I understand. So did I as I wrote this book w/ my co-author Fiona Raitt. I am sorry that SEEING ths truth is hard. I felt sick too. But t thing is, whn I could SEE it, I didn't live in denial any more. I became more effective.

8. Let me give you some more quotes, going further back in time & more jurisdictions:
1906, a women aged 30 speaks of her childhood sexual abuse by her father. The court finds that she consented at the time because "she failed to make any opposition whatsoever".

9. 1887, a woman said that her father had raped her, resultng in pregnancy. The court discounted her allegations on t grounds that "her reputation for truth &chastity was bad long before t birth of her child." She was found to be an "accomplice" to t crime of incest. ACCOMPLICE.

10. That woman wasn't alone. 1901. A woman tells of being repeatedly raped by her father & that she tried to protect her sister. The judges decided she had "willingly & voluntarily consented to incestuous intercourse and was an ACCOMPLICE in law." (Yes, I feel sick too.)

11. Back to the present. 1995, Judge David Griffiths says in Winchester Crown Court to a man convicted of indecent assault: "If you had had t courage & good manners to say sorry &send a bunch of flowers, all wd have been forgiven." A crime of violence transformed through romance.

12. 1999, Italy's Supreme Court. The charge rape of an 18-yr-old woman by a 45-yr-old driving instructor is QUASHED by the judge because...? "It is impossible to remove a pair of tight jeans without the cooperation of the person wearing them."

13. How many examples shd I give? It is Sat morn. Do I want to think abt this? NO. I HATE it. I want to be free to come home tonight any time I like, w/out worry. I want t same for my women friends, aged 30or80or14. If I want that, I cannot live in denial of how widesprd ths is.

14. I want the men in my life and my society to also understand the fear I live with. When men refuse to do that, when they resort to #NotAllMen & #NotAllCops, then I learn again, gutted, that their identity is more important to them than my fear. They can't even LISTEN.

15. AND I learn that t systems & structures around me won't listen either. That was the point of our book. It tried to show how psych&law work TOGETHER, implicitly, to reinforce this construction of women . "Psychology does not encourage law to examine its assumptions abt women."

16. That's why there is such FURY over Philip Allott's commnts that #SarahEverard shouldn't have 'submitted' to her own kidnap. The men in t system do not want to hear. MY POINT IN THIS THREAD is to try to give a glimpse into far back in time this goes.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/o…

17. That's why there is such fury over comments such as DCI Harding. I get that it is hard for him to contemplate that a fellow officer did this. Instead of talking about how hard this is to face, he reached for denial. "He's not really one of us."

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1443199259399049220?s=20

18. That's why there has been such an embrace of the work of @DrJessTaylor , in her book Why Women Are Blamed For Everything, as women all over try to make sense of the confusing, distressing societal context that find ourselves living in. I believe that making sense is key.

19. That's why I hv been talkng abt t stunning work of @kate_manne, whose book "Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women" analyses how widely t cultural habit of discountng women's experience stretches. Here she is in 2020 at Bristol's Festival of Ideas.

20. That's why I wanted journalst @polblonde included in my new series #TheIdeasHour on @teacherhugradio, co-hosted w/ @realdcameron . Joan Smith wrote a seminal, controvrsial book in 1989 that said there was misogyny everywhere. She was right. There is. bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04…

21. I wrote this thread for the many women I know who are infuriated by what is happening w/ #SarahEverard & #SabinaNessa & so many other women - but who are also confused. They are shocked by the response of the system, and yet embarrassed by their shock & confusion. Don't be.

22. Making sense of how women are treated in our society IS confusing. It IS distressing. It IS infuriating. It IS exhausting. I found writing my book of 2000 terribly hard. I hated seeing these patterns. @polblonde talks about the PTSD she suffered from revealing what she found.

23. And yes, it is made worse whn t men around you (inc men you like, men you are personlly involved with) reach for denial & self protectn before they listen to yr confusion &distress &fear. Yes, very hard. And common. Its why I wrote abt denial ths week.

https://twitter.com/suzannezeedyk/status/1443504460035235843

24. But if you can SEE it, if you can SEE the cultural patterns, if you can sit in the midst of the terrible discomfort, then it begins to MAKE SENSE. For me, that was the turning point. I could MAKE SENSE of what was happening to me, as a woman. That helped me.

25. I acknowledge & welcome all the men who step in & step up, who get it, who speak aloud to push peers & systems to step out of a male normative view and decide to LISTEN to & think about women's fear. The world needs men willing to reflect on their #MalePrivilege. Thank you.

26/end. I hope this thread helps somebody. We live in difficult times. I don't know what to do except keep talking about them, trying to help MAKE SENSE, so that we can find a path out of the debilitating fury & fear. No one is alone on this journey. Thank you.

27/new end. And if you want a briefer account of everything I just talked about, musical & powerful as opposed to my historic academic analysis, try this, from Morgan St Jean. Thanks to @KellyJHutt for posting. I wish it didn't feel so true.