The police service of Northern Ireland needs to Be SMART

Between April and September this year, reported rapes and attempted rapes in Northern Ireland has increased by 10 per cent.

‘If the figures continue to increase for the next six months we will be looking at the largest number of recorded rape offences within recent years’, detective Chief Inspector Don Glass said in a statement to the BBC this week.

In an attempt to fight the problem, the police service of Northern Ireland has relaunched the ‘Be SMART Anti Rape Campaign’. Posters and advertisements for the campaign will be placed in colleges and entertainment venues. It’s great that the police are taking this horrific increase seriously, and that measures are taken to combat it. The Be SMART campaign is, however, not a good answer.

The campaign consists of two parts ; one is directed towards women (presented in pink) and one towards men (presented in blue). On the positive side, the campaign addresses both women and men, and the part directed towards men is not bad.

Unfortunately, the rest of it is in dire need of change. Firstly, the use of the word ‘smart’ has no place in an anti-rape campaign. Being raped or not has nothing to do with being smart, and insinuating that it does is a horrific insult to people who are struggling with the consequences of an assault. The use of the word also feeds the myth that some women are responsible for being raped, and that certain behaviour or choice of clothes makes rape justifiable. This myth keeps people from reporting rapes, and can make the process of recovery even more difficult.

With the Be SMART campaign however, there aren’t just insinuations feeding this myth. This campaign is putting it blatantly out there (Even after seeing this poster many times, a feeling of disbelief still washes over me every time I read it):

First of all, drinking alcohol is not grooming yourself for rape. Secondly, alcohol is not a rape drug. A rape drug is something a calculated rapist slips into your drink to make you less able to resist the assault he is planning. Thirdly, rape is more complicated than the sum of alcohol units consumed.

There are great anti-rape campaigns in the UK, such as Not Ever, a campaign dedicated to challenge woman-blaming attitudes. To combat the horrific crime of rape, the Northern Ireland police service (along with many others) needs to address the real issues, not to conform to myths and victim-blaming. It’s time for a revision of their campaign, maybe with some input and advice from some of the very good organisations out there that work with survivors of rape and sexual assault every day.

Little interference by the Garda allows sham marriages to flourish in Ireland

Illustration from stock.xchng

Recently there have been several investigations into so-called ‘sham marriages’, where women are trafficked into Ireland to marry Asian men.

By marring EU-nationals, the men secure European passports, enabling them to work, live and travel throughout the EU.

Sandra Zalcmane, head of Shelter Safe House, a Latvian NGO offering support to victims of human trafficking, has earlier said to the Irish Times that the number of girls and women they support after sham marriages has increased over the last year, and that Ireland and Cyprus are the most common destinations for such marriages. Zalcmane also said that the organisation has helped many women who has been raped and suffered sexual abuse related to sham marriages.

Arturs Vaisla, head of the Latvian police’s human trafficking unit, claims that organisers started to use force, fraud, rape and mass rape in 2009, when they realised that the Irish police could not do anything, and that they kept silent about the problem.

At the moment, entering a sham marriage is not illegal in Ireland. In many other countries, including Germany, France and Belgium these issues  are tackled by legislation, and registrars can postpone or cancel a wedding if they suspect foul play. A Latvian-English interpretor working in Ireland claims many marriages are obviously bogus, but that despite this, he has never seen a registrar block a marriage.

Officials at the Latvian ministry of foreign affairs last month told the Irish Times that they have tracked hundreds of women coming to Ireland to enter marriages with Non-EU nationals, but that they were ‘very frustrated by the slow response of the Government to the problem’. Latvian officials have been trying to combat sham marriages since 2006, but says the feedback from Irish authorities has been minimal.

The Irish Government has issued new guidelines to marriage registrars in a bid to reduce the number of sham marriages, but recent news stories prove that this has had little or no effect.

Just this week, another story about two women rescued by Garda in Dublin broke. The Garda broke into a flat where the women had been locked in for several days. The women had been told that they would travel to Ireland to work, but were met by two men who told them they would get married. When the women refused, they were locked in a bedroom. The women were able to contact friends in Latvia via a hidden mobile phone, who again alerted the Latvian police.

Next week Fine Gael will propose in the Dáil that the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill 2010 should be amended to make it a criminal offence to voluntarily participate in, or organise sham marriages.

Newsflash: Barbie is a feminist role model

Ah yes, just what we’ve always associated with Barbie; the freedom to chose to be whatever you want to be.

I’m sure Barbie has inspired thousands of women out there become pilots and soccer players.

Hilarious! (I can’t decide who’s more feminist; Kevin Myers or Barbie…..)

The week in quotes

If there are two candidates and one is a buxom young woman of child-rearing years and the other is a fellow, who is an employer going to hire when he or she knows that they will have to pay 20 weeks’ maternity leave?

As if the statement wasn’t insulting enough in itself, Irish Small and Medium Enterprises chief executive Mark Fielding throws in a not-so-strategic ‘buxom’.

Irish Times, 20.10.10

Women can be distrustful of their men at the best of times. (…) A study claims sex hormones in the contraceptive Pill bring out the green-eyed monster, making a woman more possessive and more likely to fret about her husband or boyfriend’s fidelity.

By ‘Daily Mail Reporter’ (now why would you want to retract your name from such a great article?), Irish Daily Mail, 20.10.10

Fergie lashes Wayne for disrespecting the club. Coleen goes shopping.

Important front page news from the Irish Daily Mail, 20.10.10

The upcycling trend is empowering women. It’s about making do with what you have. What can you do to keep your interior fresh without moving house? It’s fun.

Architect Lucina Lennon explains the previously unknown feminist benefits of interior design.

The Irish Times, 23.10.10

The popularity of models such as Jess Hart, Lara Stone and Georgia Jagger has increased demand for cosmetic orthodontic procedures. Some models are having brackets inserted between their front teeth to widen the gap and improve their career (…)

I wonder if a handy combo package of surgically created dimples and brackets between front teeth will be available for the fashion savvy any time soon?

Alice Fisher, the Observer 24.10.10

Mama Grizzlies lead the Republican hunt for America’s angry women voters

Headline in the Observer, 24.10.10

US government project campaigns for fathers to take time to be a dad

Image from fatherhood.gov

Image from nytimes.com

Image from fatherhood.gov

Maybe the Irish government could learn a thing or two?

Fears over longer maternity leave could lead to increased discrimination of female job applicants

The European parliament will vote on a proposal to extend paid maternity leave to 20 weeks today.

The controversy surrounding the proposal is a prime example of why introduction of shared parental leave and paternity leave is so crucial to gender equality.

The main arguments against the proposal is the burden of cost to businesses already struggling in the current economic climate, and that the proposal is ‘ludicrous interference in bosses’ freedom to employ women’.

UK MEP Godfrey Bloom contribution to the debate was the following:

About five and half years ago I caused a furore by suggesting that any small businessman with his brain in the right place would be mad to employ a woman of child-bearing age.

Since that time it’s got worse and got worse (…).

We have an extraordinary situation where we have young women, desperately keen to get into work, desperately keen to work for companies, especially small companies which are the driving force of the UK economy, and we have employers who are too terrified to take them on.

In the same manner, Irish Small and Medium Enterprises chief executive Mark Fielding said to the Irish Times today that most of the organisations’ members do not pay maternity leave, and that doing so ‘would have the effect of making employers discriminate against employing young women’. Godfrey Bloom said the same thing about the UK: ‘We’re making it (…) almost impossible for small businesses to employ young women, which is something they want to do’.

As much as one can understand the challenges for small businesses to have employees taking leave, these challenges should not under any circumstances translate into direct discrimination of women.

Most children have two parents. This is not reflected in leave entitlements. As a result, women are only welcome job applicants if they can be classified as too old to have children.

Men are discriminated against in leave entitlements, and women are discriminated against in work recruitment processes. And with that, Ireland acquires the neat sum of minus six million points in the race of moving away from those restricting gender roles.

Pulling the brakes on sexual harassment

Illustration from stock.xchn.com

My friend emailed me this great story yesterday, which really made my day. It’s a bit old, so some of you might have read it already, but I don’t think a woman like this can be mentioned too often!

Lisa Robinson, her husband and five-year old son had been on a day trip to Cardiff when their return journey on the train turned unpleasant. A group of about 30 soccer supporters on board the train were celebrating their teams’ win and at one point started shouting sexist abuse to a woman on the platform. When Robinson asked them to stop, the chanting was turned directly on her. Robinson said to the BBC that the chanting became ‘sexist and quite obscene’, so after a while she got up and pulled the red handle and stopped the train. When the driver came out, she asked him to call the police. He didn’t. Instead, he reset the handle and continued to drive, forcing the family to be subjected to abuse throughout the journey. When Robinson and her family arrived at their destination, she asked the driver to call the police, but again he refused.

That’s when she decided to take no more. She went down on the tracks and stood in front of the train until action was taken. Meanwhile, she said, some of the men from the train continued to abuse her and pulled out their camera phones to take pictures of her.

Finally, the police was called. After the incident, Robinson said to the BBC:

This is my community, this is my village. We’re not going to be bullied and certainly for women and families, they should be able to travel on the train in peace and quiet and go about their business without being bullied like that.

Truly a woman of action. As commented by the Observer’s Eva Wiseman: ‘Lisa Robinson sat on the tracks for us – I might get T-shirts made.’

The week in quotes

‘Get your tits out’

A store managers suggestion to a female employee to boost sales. The employee was subsequently awarded € 7000 for sexually offensive remarks.

Grainne Cunningham, Independent, 13.10.10

‘As a good little lefty and sympathiser of feminism (…)’

Kevin Myers? Sympathiser of feminism? Really?

Kevin Myers in the Independent, 15.10.10.

‘Yes, you really can get lipo for knees. You might have to spend a week in surgical stockings – but it’s worth it’

Avril Mair, Irish Daily Mail, 14.10.10

‘They depend on their wives to be the breadwinner and in exchange they do all the housework. But are ‘kept’ men’ a model for equality…or just lousy?’

Julia Lawrence, Irish Daily Mail, 14.10.10

‘If it’s a girl, tell her: “Why don’t you go home and wash your hair, and maybe you’ll feel better”. ‘

Woman in Dublin telling her friend how she advised her son to approach children at school who kept pulling his hoodie.

‘The Apprentice catfight did businesswomen no favours’

Does using the word ‘catfight’ make it better?

Heather McGregor, The Observer, 17.10.10

Role models of the week: the Real Deal

Former teenage mothers, including Laura McLoughlin, now 24 and Holly Railton, now 28, deliver the Real Deal, a HSE Crisis Pregnancy Programme focusing on sex education to schools all over the country. According to Railton, the students have a shocking lack of knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases prior to their participation in the Real Deal.

Almost 600 girls have already participated in the sex education programme, and  HSE announced yesterday that the programme will be available to another 600 girls this autumn and the coming year.

According to the Irish Examiner, the programme has been successful in changing young girls’ attitudes towards sex and pregnancy.

I can’t help but thinking about author Emma Donoghue every time I read about sex education in this country. In an interview with the Guardian,  she summed up the content of the sex education in her former school like this:

…it would not be until I was 16 that my secondary school would lay on the first of three annual so-called Sex Education classes. The first was all about the benefits of praying with your husband.

Thanks to all the great role models involved in the Real Deal, we’re moving away from that sort of nonsense!

Anita Sarkeesian on female presence in films

US- based feminist cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian regularly posts video commentaries on her blog Feminist Frequency. One of the interesting videos from her web series is ‘The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies’, a test about female presence in films. To pass the test, a movie has to pass 3 questions;

1. Are there two or more women in it, and do they have names?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?

You can see the video here (Warning: very bad test result!):

Thankfully, news stories today tells us about strong female presence in other cultural areas; the US National Book Awards shortlist was announced today, having a majority of female authors. Thirteen of the twenty finalists are women, the highest number of women ever nominated according to the Irish Times.

Also, ‘ The Modern’, an exhibition opening next week at the Irish Museum of Modern Art , has dedicated two whole rooms to Irish women who were central in bringing modern art to the Irish audience.