5 days ago
Sarah Harte: Are we living in the age of rage?
It feels like we've gotten angrier. It's the age of rage. Anger often masks other emotions, such as powerlessness or fear. I feel this a lot at the moment. The trip switch goes up—too many personal worries against a background of global carnage and economic turmoil.
However, a specific brand of misogynistic rage is directed against women and girls because of their gender. It's not new. Our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers lived with it.
Last week, my article went viral. Essentially, I debunked the idea that men just snap and lose control in a domestic homicide when the murder of a woman is the endgame of a long road of abuse and coercive control and will have a premeditated element. Countless experts, including psychologists, academics and criminologists, confirm this.
The article hit a nerve with women who reposted it many times. The feminist writer Caroline Madden said: 'Women are sharing articles like yours with each other because they're horrified by these family murder-suicide and femicide cases, and they're also appalled at the thought of what the victims in these cases most likely went through in the lead-up to the murders.
"Almost every woman I spoke with last week, including a stranger I got into conversation with, brought up the Vanessa Whyte case or issues relating to it. Women are heartbroken by it to the point of barely being able to continue speaking after mentioning the case.
"But women are continuing to speak, continuing to share, continuing to raise their voices despite the abuse that speaking out about gendered violence and femicide can attract. Because this feels like a tipping point: women have had enough."
Caroline kindly called me because she saw misogynistic comments that last week's article attracted. I'm talking about men who went for the 'fuck you bitch' line (this one was mild, compared to many others) and who felt that I had overstepped some invisible mark they had laid down.
Family members told me not to read the comments, but I did. What I took from some of the more problematic ones was a need to control, mixed with a sense of humiliation, deep-seated entitlement and rage.
As the Gen Z male who volunteers to manage my social media accounts commented:
Do these guys not understand that ironically their misogynistic comments literally prove the thesis of your article?
To the Twitter user who said: "Sarah Harte doesn't have a medical degree to analyse these things". You're correct, I don't. It's a fair comment. But I do work as a strategist in domestic, sexual and gender-based violence for an organisation called Haven Horizons.
Our work focuses on changing the attitudes and beliefs that drive domestic abuse supportive behaviours, and it is based on engaged academic research and experiential knowledge.
I wonder if misogyny is so embedded that some men - and women - struggle to recognise it?
As it happened, just as the article blew up, I was coincidentally researching how media reporting on male violence against women should be framed to educate people and challenge stereotypical attitudes about male violence against women.
I came across a quote from a Scottish journalist, Anna Burnside: 'How we frame stories about violence against women is so important.
Violence against women is not caused by drink, drugs, provocative outfits, mental health issues, stress, money problems or infidelity. It is caused by men.
"That is the story that we need to tell.'
Breaking for lunch, I said to an older male relative in a rare moment of defeat (we all have them) that it felt futile to work in this area if an article like the one I wrote attracted those kinds of comments. He pointed out, logically, that it was more reason than ever to keep going.
Manosphere
A UN report in March sounded the alarm on how the online manosphere is moving misogyny to the mainstream. What was once fringe has transmuted into an organised resistance to the wins made in terms of gender equality.
Some males do not like the gains women have made in being recognised in the public sphere. It sits badly with them, and so there is a backlash. Hence, the kind of comments that women attract online are amplified by social media, fuelling a growing rage.
Laura Turquet, the deputy head of the research and data team at UN Women, pinpoints two main reasons for the backlash against women and gender equality.
One is that some men hanker after 'an imagined past where men and women had much more traditional roles'. They were top dog, essentially.
The second is the growth of economic inequality. 'When people feel that they can't access a decent job or a basic standard of living, they look for scapegoats, whether it's migrants, LGBT+ people, or women who are speaking up.'
Another factor in the rampant misogyny towards women is porn, especially pernicious among younger men. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris (due to retire in August) again warned last week in the Irish Examiner how online pornography is 'corrupting' young men, motivating them into inflicting serious sexual violence on women.
He said this was seen in relationships and was driving the rising levels of domestic violence. Meanwhile, the tech companies make 'billions' from this trade.
This cannot be attributed to cultural noise generated for the sake of column inches. Instead, it's an explicit, well-informed warning coming from the horse's mouth—another alarm bell in a series of warnings.
I thought what was especially interesting was that Commissioner Harris said domestic violence remained a 'taboo subject.' He said we need to be more aware of the problem. There is a denial of the extent of the problem of male violence against women.
Traditionalists will probably claim that what we are seeing is the result of liberalism. I disagree. I instinctively mistrust people who denigrate Catholicism willy-nilly (at its core, it is a great philosophy with much to offer).
Still, the monopoly of the hierarchical Catholic Church was hugely damaging, particularly around so-called morality. So much unhappiness sprang from the suppression and denial of women's rights and other marginalised groups.
There was massive violence against women and queer people under the Catholic regime.
Societies change tack. The cultural map of Ireland has changed beyond belief over several decades, and in many ways for the better. Yet now technology has changed the way our young people are being socialised into beliefs, values and practices.
To not grasp this nettle is not only damaging to women who, as Caroline Madden said, are despairing. But it's bad for young men, too. As Drew Harris said, they are being corrupted. They must be confused and adrift. This is ultimately terrible for social cohesion.
We are at a clear societal turning point, when collectively at a familial, community, and national level, we have to fight back against misogyny, social media, the degradation of public discourse and porn.
There are lots of things we can do, none of them a perfect or easy solution. Various measures must be executed on several levels simultaneously, from banning smartphones under the age of 16 to publicly educating people about the dangers of porn and domestic and sexual abuse.
We have to create a different web of meaning for young people so they can maintain positive bonds together.
We badly need a national summit with actors from different sectors of the community to discuss this and frame solutions. Educators, parents, frontline domestic, sexual and gender-based violence professionals, gardaí, survivors of abuse, policy makers, legislators and politicians, liberals and yes, conservatives too.
We need to set aside our differences as good people who ultimately want the same thing, the best for our children. And we must figure out in good faith how to combat the tech billionaires who are corrupting young people.
We've changed before and stood up against a harmful system. We can do it again. The time is now.
