#157 Combatting Rape Culture and Sexism in Schools
“Why sexual objectification matters: An Object is used for the needs, amusement or gratification of the subject. To the subject’s product specification. Objects are replaceable and objects are disposable.”
We speak to Gemma Aitchison from Yes Matters about the Yes Matters Commitment, an initiative to tackle rape culture in schools. Helping schools to show pupils and parents alike that they are taking rape culture seriously and that they are taking the well being, safety and social development of their child seriously, the project teaches educators about consent, respect, good mental health and emotional regulation skills.
Gemma also discusses why she created YES Matters UK, and about her work to challenge policies in Westminster and the European Parliament. An inspirational story of a working-class woman determined to change the world.
You can follow the work of Yes Matters on Twitter @matters_yes
Or Facebook @yesmattersuk
And Instagram @gmoxiegirlz
Listen Here (Transcription below):
Transcription
S - Thank you for making the time to talk to us about sexism and rape culture in schools.
It’s timely that we talk about what schools can do to tackle the problem of girls being sexually harassed at an exponential level.
What kinds of things do you think can be done?
G – There’s so much that can be done. At the heart of this is gender stereotypes and for girls specifically, sexual objectification culture of women and girls is at the heart of this because we live in a society that does that to women and girls and as we’ve seen throughout history, before you do something that’s unacceptable to a group you first dehumanise that group. That is the case for women and girls. It seems to be almost the acceptable ism, for some reason.
These headlines that talk about Ofsted or other things when it comes to girls they use words like ‘shocking’. I don’t understand how it can be shocking when we put our children in a society that teaches them that what matters about girls and women is how they look and that they are decorations or objects to be used and valued according to how pretty they are or what men think. How can we then be shocked at the results of that, results that are very obvious? Which is why back in 2014 we started campaigning for a compulsory sex education that included things around consent and around gender stereotypes and highlighting that, which was supposed to come out in schools last year but obviously because of covid that didn’t happen and it’s coming out this year.
S – Is that a reference to the PSHE curriculum that you’ve contributed to?
G – Yes, we campaigned for it. Essentially Porn Hub is being the sex education for our children and still is. We did some work with the Shadow Secretary for Women and Equalities who at the time was Sarah Champion who was really supportive and then there was a cross-party group who came together to contribute towards the sex education and we were involved in writing the parts about consent and gender stereotypes and raising that they are harmful. More about how gender stereotypes are harmful. We see them in domestic abuse, violent crime, rape, murder, child sexual abuse, child sexploitation, over and over again.
We see things like in domestic abuse the need for dominance and control, the man has to be dominant and in control. He is entitled to respect just for being a man.
We also see it in rape and the entitlement that comes from sexual objectification.
In the female gender stereotype, we see entitlement to our bodies, for us to provide free labour. Gender stereotype are at the root of a lot of problems for women and girls. Also high suicide rates for boys because they’re taught – ‘don’t cry like a girl’ and ‘man up’ and that having emotions is female instead of human. Then they don’t have emotional regulation skills and they don’t ask for help.
I know the latest thing is to say that gender is progressive. The research we’ve done extensively since 2013 tells us that gender stereotype are only beneficial to the people selling pink and blue things because they get to sell twice as much and they’re not really helpful to anybody else.
S – There does seem to be a clash in terms of the stereotypes being pushed onto younger and younger children and there are many ways of tackling this problem.
In terms of education, there needs to be a national strategy in place that is lacking at the moment. Also a campaign called – Everyone’s invited – the website has been inundated with accounts of sexual harassment and assault against girls in secondary schools, colleges and universities?
How else can teachers be equipped in terms of the curriculum you have contributed to?
What other work can they do?
G – What most schools can do is how Yes Matters was formed. The reality is that our teachers are trained as educators so they are not experts at supporting victims or victim rehabilitation or anything like that.
The teachers are now pulling together this PSHE curriculum, they’re following the government guidance as they should be doing but they’re not prepared for all the disclosures they’re going to get. As a society we ignore the realities of being a female. We tend to downplay and minimise and say it’s shocking or doesn’t happen a lot.
So what’s going to happen is, these teachers are going to talk to these kids about what healthy relationships are and what consent is and what respect is and how everyone is supposed to have that and what unhealthy relationships look like. These kids are going to come to a lot of realisations to what has happened in their lives, what they’ve seen, what they’ve seen their friends do, what they’ve seen family members do. The reality is teachers are going to get a lot of disclosures and they’re not going to know how to deal with them because they’re not trained to know how to deal with them.
The automatic response might be to just push the kid towards the legal route but as we know sexual offences are not taken seriously, the legal route is failing girls and women. Rape is pretty much legal in the UK. Domestic homicide is at an historical high and that’s not a coincidence. Men who kill women and girls always have sexual offences in their past.
We’re essentially a State that condones violence against women and girls.
The teachers are going to have no idea how to support these pupils.
So what we decided to do was put together this Yes Matters commitment and essentially what it is is a list of commitments that the school will do and also get training to do that would be around addressing the culture in schools.
Ofsted found today that 9 out of 10 girls feel unsafe in schools because of rape culture and because of sexism.
What we’re asking schools to do is sign up to the Yes Matters commitment which will hopefully become a sign, that as a parent, if you know that your school is signed up to the Yes Matters commitment, you know that if anything happens to your child that it will be dealt with properly and your daughter, niece, god daughter is going to be safe in that school.
The list of commitments we’re asking schools to commit to are:
Never to condone or enable rape culture
Have disclosure management skills including knowledge of the legal procedures that the pupils may need support going through.
To have zero tolerance of sexual harassment with implications for the perpetrator and not the victim.
To challenge pornography and sexual objectification culture.
To be trauma informed in order to support victims with healthy coping strategies so they do not suffer.
To support boys with emotional development skills
To have anti- victim blaming knowledge
To have knowledge of CSA and the implications for the family and the child
Have critical awareness of on-line sexual offences including child based abuse material
To have perpetrator tactics knowledge so staff and pupils can identify them and ensure they stop working
To have local sign posting in place.
They’re the commitments that the school will have to sign up to and we would provide staff training so they are informed about what to do if anything happens to the young people at their school so they will know if they get a disclosure, be that child sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual offences they will then have the tools to actually deal with all of that in the best way.
Also if there is a young person that is going down the legal route or not, the trauma that they will be able to support them with that trauma in the healthiest and safest way. We feel like that that is a gap that is there at the moment.
S – That sounds like a great initiative that you’ve started. How has the take up been so far?
G – We’ve had a couple of enquiries so far. We only put out the information and made it public today. Given the timing of the Ofsted findings was unexpectedly good timing.
We need to get the word out there.
It seems that schools are aware of these findings. They care, they want to be there for young people and they want to make sure there is a safe environment for them to learn, thrive and feel safe in.
This is the tool to give them that. With a lot of teachers, if a child discloses child sexual abuse, it’s not going to occur to them that the majority of perpetrators of child sexual abuse are family members or family friends and therefore they won’t know to expect that the family may be hostile after the child’s disclosure or there could be implications that they are ostracised from the family.
There’s a lot of things teachers won’t know to consider. They’re not trained in that.
We’re telling teachers to deal with these subjects but not helping them deal with the aftermath.
I feel like the teachers want to help and want to have a good environment for all their pupils to be safe but they don’t have the training for that yet, which is what we’re aiming to provide.
S – What would the schools have to do to take you up on your commitment?
G – There’s more info on our website, they can email yesmattersuk@gmail.com then what would happen would be, they would get all the information and pricing to consider. Then they would let us know if they wanted to go ahead or not.
We will also have funding in place for State schools.
When a school signs up to this, they get the staff training and PSHE App for the pupils to do games and activities on the App that are about things like consent and stereotypes so they get quite a lot for it.
That money goes to some of the other programmes that Yes Matters runs. For children who have been victims of child sexual abuse. We provide victim rehabilitation and support.
S – Does it include primary schools and secondary schools and further ed colleges?
G – Yes it does but am aware that when it comes to primary schools, people are more sensitive about that. They don’t really accept the information.
Evidence from 2 weeks ago shows that the age of exposure to pornography is now 7 years old whereas a couple of years ago it was 11 years old.
Also it’s around aged 7 that girls start hating their bodies and peer on peer abuse is massively up in primary schools. One in three primary school girls have experienced unwanted touching.
So there’s all this evidence yet parents and teachers are like – oh we want to protect their innocence, we don’t want to talk about that stuff.
It is appropriate, it’s just the staff going to be trained to help them if disclosures occur.
I think we will get less inquiries by primary schools.
S – There has been a lot of research into the extent of sexual harassment and sexual assaults against girls, including the Ofsted report. You have spoken out about the prevalence of sexual assaults against girls as well as female teachers in schools.
There’s quite positive actions taken by organisations that support staff. We need to take note of the statistics you have brought to our attention.
G – What I would say is if you’re a teacher, a parent and you’re worried about the stuff Ofsted have said today about 9 out of 10 girls feeling unsafe because of sexism in schools, just get in touch. We think that this is really needed in schools because essentially I think as adults we need to take responsibility for the world that we put our young people in. Young people are like sponges; they soak up the world around them and in this case they have soaked up a society that condones and enables violence against women and girls and sexism so what we need to do is give them the proper support that they need and arm them with the tools so when they’re older they can have a healthy relationship with themselves and with other people.
They deserve that. Young people, boys and girls deserve to know what is safe, what is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable so they can keep themselves safe and be happy. Ultimately that’s what Yes Matters is about. Young people having the tools to live good lives and happy lives and safe lives.