Yesterday, the man who murdered Zara Aleena was jailed for attacking her as she walked home. His confession prompted PM Rishi Sunak to acknowledge that women ‘have not felt as safe as they should’. These comments reveal a strange sentiment, which puts the focus on women’s feelings of safety rather than on the reality that two women a week are murdered in the UK.
We are still waiting for clarity on how the government will tackle men’s violence against women without relying on an already overwhelmed criminal justice system, one which discriminates against people of colour and does not prevent perpetrators from reoffending.
Such vague commitments to women’s safety have led people to ask, yet again, what can be done to stop male violence. Official responses to the high-profile murders of Sabina Nessa, Nicole Smallman, Bibaa Henry, Sarah Everard and Libby Squire – to name a few – have been criticised as victim blaming, superficial and ineffective. At a time when the UK has essentially ‘decriminalised’ rape, how can we tackle a pervasive issue like gendered violence? If longer prison sentences or well-lit streets are unlikely to make the world safer for women, then what will? These repetitive discussions often take us to what feels like a hopeless space.
A model from social psychology might help us to visualise a way towards a world without gendered violence. In his 2000 book, Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine, Elliot Aronson makes a distinction between pump-handle and root-cause reactions to complex social problems such as school shootings. Pump-handle solutions – so-called because of the 1854 cholera epidemic when British physician Dr John Snow realised that removing the handle from a contaminated water pump would reduce local infections – are immediate, short-term responses based on cost, speed and emotional reasoning more than proven efficacy, which are often the result of authorities wanting to be seen as responding quickly to a problem. However, just as disabling a single pump cannot cure a city-wide disease, localised measures such as metal detectors or see-through backpacks will not prevent gun violence in schools and such interventions can be damaging as well as ineffective. To fully understand the mass shootings at Columbine, Virginia Tech and Parkland, Aronson argues that we need to identify and address the root causes: toxic masculinity and an education system which fosters meritocracy, competition and exclusion.
This model can be applied to men’s violence against women. Immediate responses such as police training, speedier court processes or better-lit streets may reduce violence in certain contexts for some individuals but will have little wider impact. Such responses also overlook the root causes of violence against women: gender inequalities, widespread stereotypes about rape, victims and perpetrators and patriarchal social structures. In fact, pump-handle interventions can inadvertently end up reinforcing these root causes. After the murder of Sarah Everard, former West Yorkshire PCC Philip Allott stated that it was women’s responsibility to resist illegal arrest by predatory police officers. Over the years, women have been told to stay in groups, not ‘overindulge’ and book the right taxi when out at night, while gay men have been advised not to listen to loud music. Even children are expected to make the ‘right’ choices to avoid sexual exploitation from adults. Such interventions demand that potential victims restrict their behaviour and their freedom – and face blame if they are attacked or killed – while no such constraints are put on potential offenders. These narratives reinforce the myth that violence is caused by victims and maintain harmful stereotypes around gender and sexuality, while absolving men of any responsibility for violent or controlling behaviour. Pump-handle responses also deflect criticism from the statutory organisations that are supposed to keep us safe and overlook the wider structural, social or cultural contexts that enable sexual violence, such as poor conviction rates, a culture of disbelief around women’s experiences and widespread gender inequalities.
This is not to say that pump-handle interventions should be abandoned. They need to be carefully considered by those with specialist understanding of gendered violence rather than rushed out in service of PR optics. We also need to accept that meaningful changes cannot be made without addressing the underlying reasons that some men choose to be violent. And here is where we can make space for hope in these conversations; we can implement meaningful, relatively simple interventions which reduce violence and help those affected by rape and abuse. We know that small actions can afford dignity and respect to survivors, but that such moments can also be lost within the wider impact of degrading and obstructive criminal justice, health care or social care systems. We must commit to longer-term work which centres survivors’ needs within these systems and implement immediate restraints upon those who want to commit harm.
This is not a new or revolutionary approach. Feminists have long drawn attention to the root causes of violence against women and since the 1970s, writers like Susan Brownmiller and Mary Daly have called for an overhaul of patriarchal society. This requires significant dismantling and rebuilding of systems rather than just the ‘adding on’ of resources, as education and investment alone cannot alter existing cultures. While such societal transformation is difficult to envisage, let alone implement, we cannot continue to rely on interventions which do little to prevent violence. The value of Aronson’s model is that it can derail the mainstream narratives which inevitably lead to dismissive, victim-blaming responses. We must demand that politicians and police chiefs give up on crude pump-handle reactions and make a real commitment to root cause solutions. To do this, they will need to listen to the specialist organisations that understand men’s violence against women and step up to the challenge of working for long-lasting, meaningful change rather than the knee-jerk reactions we are used to seeing.
Amy Beddows is a CBT therapist and PhD student at London Metropolitan University researching women’s experiences of victim blame. She has a special interest in the ways that media can reflect, subvert and challenge misogyny and violence against women.
Amy is part of the Media Sigils, a special interest group exploring media depictions of gendered violence. You can follow them on Twitter @MediaSigils or sign up to the mailing list by contacting mediasigils@gmail.com.
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