Essen said:

I don't think Janice Turner quite knows what she's letting herself in for! I wouldn't be at all surprised if her email box didn't explode within a few days. After all, this stuff is ALL AROUND US.

(My personal peeve today is newspapers using 'had sex with' when the correct term would be 'rape'. "He was facing charges of having sex with a 9 year old" and so on. I can see that it's blurred when (for example) a 19 year old has sex with her 15 year old boyfriend or girlfriend, but 9 year olds cannot consent to sex.)

Posted on 28 September 2009 at 6:04 PM

Sarah said:

I agree, what a pleasant suprise!Just picked up my parents copy of the times and got all excited. Read the full article if poss- http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6849600.ece
if just for this paragraph!

"Somewhere in the free-market driven moral relativism of the past decade, we have lost the ability to say, without fear of being called uptight or fun-sucking, that selling sex on the high street, raunchy outfits for toddlers or scabrous attacks on female public figures based upon their looks just ain’t right. And our best weapon for changing things is exposure and ridicule. So send your clippings, quotes, anecdotes or ads to us. Feminism — or whatever you want to call it — is back, and we’re not going to take it any more."

Posted on 28 September 2009 at 6:44 PM

Daniela Vincenti said:

The second case is absolutely shocking and constitutes blatant sexual harassement. I hope Lisa took legal action.
In the first case I would have complained to BT customer service.

Posted on 28 September 2009 at 6:55 PM

Liz said:

Much as I applaud this column, it will take more than that for me to give any money to rupert murdoch..

Posted on 28 September 2009 at 8:20 PM

Liz Estabrooks said:

I was brought here by the Twitter posting "British Newspaper asks for readers experiences of sexism." So glad I clicked on it and looking forward to reading and participating.

Far too often I hear comments about how sexual harassment and discrimination against women no longer exist. My son informed me that a teacher at his high school even said that. Every day these "little" things happen that, unfortunately, prove it is all around us an accepted as the norm.

Thanks for keeping the truth going and inviting us all in.

Posted on 28 September 2009 at 10:04 PM

dizzy_sparkle said:

Just don't read the comments unless you're feeling brave. The very first comment kindly explains how us women degrade ourselves, and men won't respect us until we all dress decently. Grrrrrr.

Posted on 28 September 2009 at 10:30 PM

Jennifer Drew said:

On the subject of sexism how about the media's mass euphemising of 'rape' which has now become unlawful sex with 13 year old girl. Roman Polanski has been arrested because he had fled the US in order to escape sentencing for the rape and sodomising of a 13 year old girl. Polanski drugged the teenage girl in order to facilitate his rape yet the media euphemises this into 'unlawful sex with girl.' No, it was not 'sex' but rape. Will be sending details to Janice Turner but I doubt if this latest piece of male excuses and hiding tactics will be printed.

Posted on 28 September 2009 at 10:44 PM

Essen said:

In the case of Roman Polanski, I understand that newspapers are concerned with a) space and b) being accused of defamation, but I caught quite a few 'having sex with' in reports yesterday. I can see that they can't/won't say 'rape', but is it too much to ask that they make sure they call it 'unlawful sex' at the very least?

Posted on 29 September 2009 at 9:55 AM

Fiona said:

Good to have a place to gripe about this stuff. In spite of the fact that I registered the accounts and pay the bills on cheques bearing my name only, likewise our mortgage, utility companies over time alter their records to list my partner's name first on all bills and correspondence. I tell them if they want the bills paid, make sure they come to me. This has also happened to our electoral registration. I registered us when we first relocated, I complete the forms, they now come addressed to my partner. Yes, it's everywhere.

Posted on 29 September 2009 at 10:00 AM

JenniferRuth said:

Polanski broke the terms of his plea bargain when he fled the trial.

Regardless, it was rape - you cannot have sex with a 13 year old girl. End of.

I have seen much worse than the media using the term "unlawful sex" - take this from The Guardian:

"Gailey was given champagne and drugs by the director, who then had sex with her."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/28/roman-polanski-arrested-ignores-victim

Had sex, had sex, had sex - it implies consent and I have seen it everywhere from people leaping to defend Polanski. I think the media know exactly what they are doing when they use this terminology - they are using it to defend him.

Rape culture - we're soaking in it.

Posted on 29 September 2009 at 10:29 AM

maggie said:

Re Polanski:

He was convicted of Statutory Rape - i.e. unlawful sex with a minor.

It was certainly not as Duncan Campbell wrote in the Guardian today.

'Gailey was given champagne and drugs by the director, who then had sex with her.'

I agree with Jennifer. This euphemism has to stop.

Posted on 29 September 2009 at 10:54 AM

Laurel Dearing said:

anyone else expecting over half the things to be sexism to men by anti-feminists and state presented as by feminists or all women?

Posted on 29 September 2009 at 11:00 AM

maggie said:

Actually Statutory Rape does imply consent but sex with a minor is illegal nonetheless. This was the lesser charge Polanski agreed to.

The transcripts of the court case as available on the Smoking Gun website (trigger warning), showed that Gailey claims the act was non consenual.

Posted on 29 September 2009 at 11:23 AM

Sweetman said:

Hope no one minds but I've been looking around for somewhere to have this rant re Polanski.
Is anyone else disgusted and angered by the sheer volume of people supporting the rights of a man who drugged and raped a 13 year old girl? Now Almodovar and Tilda Swinton among others have appeared in the media defending this. Grrrrrr.

Posted on 29 September 2009 at 1:14 PM

JenniferRuth said:

@Laura Woodhouse

I didn't mean my comment to be in opposition to yours, but rather back it up. Sorry if it came across that way! The subject just makes me very angry.

Posted on 29 September 2009 at 1:49 PM

Lisa Brown said:

@JenniferRuth

I am not for a second comparing the two, but purely based on your fairly broad statement,
curious to know what you make of this case, in terms of ethics, etc:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2233878.ece

Posted on 29 September 2009 at 8:14 PM

JenniferRuth said:

@ Lisa Brown

I'm not sure I really understand your question. Which part of my post constituted a "broad statement"? When I said that a fully grown man cannot "have sex" with a 13 year old girl?

Are you asking if the 13 year old boy was raped by the 15 year old girl? Because they would both be under the age of consent. Technically, there can be no statutory rape if neither person is an adult. Plus, as you said, the situation cannot be compared to a 43 year old man drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. Adults have a responsibility to take care of those that are not yet fully mature or emotionally developed and not to exploit them. Yes, this includes being 100% sure that they are not under the age of consent. "She looked of age" is NOT an excuse - although one might ask what a man in his 40's thinks he is doing wanting to sleep with a girl so young. Those under the age on consent are generally legally and socially unequal to adults therefore placing the adult in a place of power. He is shirking his responsibility to take care of her and her emotional well-being in order to satisfy his own desires. This is clearly reprehensible.

By using terms such as "had sex" in the case of something that is clearly rape the words are trying to paint a picture where the victim was fine with what the rapist was doing.

If I have misunderstood your question I will try to clarify again.

Posted on 30 September 2009 at 9:14 AM

Shreen said:

dizzy_sparkle: Just don't read the comments unless you're feeling brave.

It seems to have snowballed now. The level of ignorance and misunderstandings are just ... breath taking, heart breaking, and deplorable.

By the way I'm reading the full article on this new feature, can be found here:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6849600.ece

Posted on 30 September 2009 at 10:34 PM

Helen said:

Great idea about the sexism watch, however, it's a pity about Janice Turner's attitude in the original article (http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6849600.ece)
[Quote]:When The Times published my article last month on how feminism’s silence over the past decade has ushered in a grim, sexualised culture, I was astonished by the response. Hundreds of women — and some men — commented on the website, many more e-mailed me directly. The message overwhelmingly was: thank God, someone is saying this — I thought I was alone. [End quote]

Get that? Don’t Blame the Patriarchy; it’s feminism’s silence which is responsible for the grim, sexualised culture. Leave the patriarchy out of it; what did feminism expect, going out dressed like that? It didn’t scream or try to run away!

It’s just that I’ve had it up to here with the “feminists have been silent about…” trope that springs up everywhere in the media both on line and off.

As far as daily life goes, in her anecdote about the newspaper editor, she illustrates beautifully the “not ruining the entire afternoon” and “not wanting to be the strident joy-killer” pressures that weigh on women and girls who are already conditioned to be nice and nonconfrontational. As well as the forces of “get over it” and “sense of humour” and “overreacting”, there’s the Concern Troll which sometimes appears when we do bring the topic of everyday sexism: Why are you blogging/writing talking about this trivia which is only the concern of rich, western white women? Why are you Silent about [insert preferred topic here]. As many of us don’t want to be entitled whingers, that shuts us up, too. It would be nice if Turner could have paid some attention to the pressures that silence us.

Turning to the writing thing, for one, most of us - unlike Turner - don’t have a platform in the mainstream media. Indeed, you don’t go out and force yourself into the mainstream media as an opinion writer; you get invited in, so how she could judge us as silent or not in the days before blogging is a mystery. It’s also a mystery why she should blame feminist “silence” instead of the much more likely assumption that the mainstream doesn’t like us and that a male dominated media company and editorial staff are likely to reflect that dislike. Most importantly, she demonstrates a lack of knowledge or disregard of just what has been going on in the online world for the last decade.

Turner could educate herself a little as to just how silent feminists have been by going through the archives at your site, Feministe, Shakesville and its predecessor Shakespeare’s Sister, Pandagon, Feministing, I Blame the Patriarchy, Hoyden about Town and of course I could go on (and on and on), but you get the idea.

Posted on 30 September 2009 at 11:46 PM

Anna said:

Infuriating incident of the day: it seems trivializing and making jokes about incestuous sexual abuse and child rape is now the norm. Check out this post on a popular student forum:

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1051847

So far, I haven't yet seen one person say that a joke of that kind is wrong. It just makes you so frustrated. I wonder what all the people who found it funny would do if they had heard of something like that actually happening?

And people say we don't need feminism!...

Posted on 01 October 2009 at 4:51 PM