Preventing Violence Against Women: Role of Men

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mrs Gillan—Madam Gillan—the many variations on what you have been called today—

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Order. Madam Chairman or Mrs Gillan will do.

[Jess Phillips]

Madam Chairman, Mrs Gillan, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Thank you.

[Jess Phillips]

When we look at the fight to stop violence against women in the UK, we see protest after protest by women: reclaiming the night; laying down red shoes to signify the women murdered at the hands of their partners; and women with banners and signs. I know from all my work and from endless academic studies that tackling women’s rights issues here and around the world is always best organised and best realised when women self-advocate. We will not be given a break; we will have to take it. I know that men should not lead this fight, but we women will achieve nothing without the world’s men joining in and helping us.

It is a shame that I have to say this, but I am glad that, as a man, the previous speaker—the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy)—also felt he had to say it. Time and time again, people with egg-faces on Twitter accuse me of thinking that all men are rapists. So, for the record, I will say that I do not think that all men are rapists. I am sure that it is strange for many people out there to hear that I am married to a man, and I have never said that I think all men are rapists, regardless of how many times it has been quoted as something that I have said.

I do not think all men are sexist and I do not think that all men commit violence against women, or against anyone for that matter. Most men are absolutely smashing. Most men would gladly stand up, shoulder to shoulder with their sisters, and demand better. In fact, in a recent Survation poll undertaken by the Fawcett Society, nearly nine in every 10 men surveyed said that they wanted women to have equality in all areas of their lives, which was a higher proportion than the proportion of women who said that. The truth is that men out there want equality, and now we have to help them to act on that.

Unfortunately, a very tiny minority of very vocal men are not like that. A tiny minority of men rape women; a minority of men hit their partners. In any group, there is a tiny minority who let the majority down. It is the same tiny minority of men who get incredibly defensive when women speak up about this issue. I am here to say to them, “Dude, don’t always assume that we’re talking about you.”

It would be fair to say that sometimes I can be clumsy with my words. Sometimes, my emotions and frustration pour out in words that perhaps I should consider just a little more, but I get angry because it is an unpalatable truth that women are sexually harassed and assaulted and physically abused hundreds and hundreds of times every day in this country, and always have been. For every man who has tweeted me, emailed me and called my office this week to say that that is total rubbish, three times as many women have sent me messages telling me their experiences. The most wonderfully heartening messages this week, and I think they were the messages that I received most frequently, were those from hundreds of men showing their support for the women in this country.

Violence against women is not something that just happens on a TV drama or in one section of society; it is everywhere. I have worked with women who have the most horrific tales to tell and I have tried to retell their stories; stories of rape as a weapon of war, and stories of a life of torture and fear. This violence exists—it happens—but the reality of violence against women is far less bombastic, and far more pedestrian and everyday, and that is what people find so hard to believe.

Here are some of the stories from my life, and from the lives of others who have been in touch with me this week. I will start with my own story.

When I was 19, I was having a drink in a bar and a man pinned me against the wall, and stuck his hand up my skirt and inside my knickers, in full view of all of his mates. I slapped him in the face, as I am sure everybody in this room today would expect me to do, and I was thrown out of the bar, even though I told the security staff what had happened. The man and his mates laughed at me as I was ejected. I was terrified, and I am sad to say that that was the not the one and only time that I have been terrified by a member of a tiny minority.

Following my recent outing on “Question Time”—an occasion when my words could possibly have been chosen better—I received hundreds of messages from around the country. Here are just some of them:

“I was dancing on the dance floor. A group of lads started to lift up my skirt and try to pull down my pants. I just walked away.”

“I am a beautician and I was in a consulting room with a client. He asked me if I offered extra. I said no, he exposed himself to me and started to masturbate. I asked him to stop, he said sorry, he couldn’t control himself. I am visibly pregnant. It didn’t stop him. He’s been in since as if nothing happened.”

“I was on the tube this week. A man kept putting his hand on top of mine on the rail, every time I moved it he did it again. I moved my hand, to tip-toe and reach the handle above me. I’m not tall so it was difficult. He then stood so close behind me that his groin rubbed against me. I couldn’t do anything.”

“I stopped going to clubs because I was fed up of being touched inappropriately by strangers. Now, as a barmaid, I just have to deal with ‘banter’ in a work context!”

“I first got my bottom groped in a pub when I was 15. I thought nothing of it. When I was 20, I woke up from a nap on a long-haul flight to find the man in the neighbouring seat with his hand inside my blanket. I was too shocked to respond.”

She said she just sat there with him the whole way. She continued:

“At 21, I was on a train when a man knelt on the floor in front of me and ran his hands up my legs—again, I did nothing.”

This story is from a teacher:

“Last week in the corridor at school, I overheard a girl tell her boyfriend to wait while she just went to the loo. After she walked off, the boy’s two mates laughed at him. One said to another, ‘Don’t let her order you around, keep that bitch on a leash.’ They were 14.”

My story and every one of the hundreds of stories that I have read this week have one thing in common—the victim never mentioned the incident to their parents, their partners and certainly not the police. Figures will never show the reality; this is just part of our everyday normal life. Women shrug it off—“Just one of those things.” For most women, this is an accepted part of life; we think of it as an annoyance. Having to tell a man, and I have done this repeatedly in my life, “No, I don’t want to get into your car”, is a pain but no biggie.

I have met girls who did get in the car. Certain men know where to look for the vulnerable girls who will get in. They are the girls in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and—before we congratulate our own areas—pretty much every town and city pretty much everywhere in the country.

Violence against women is everywhere; on every street, a woman is taking a beating, or just keeping quiet and waiting for the ordeal to be over. In every nightspot in the country, some teenage girl is being groped and shamed. Every school in the country has a kid whose time there is respite from what they see at home. When a problem is everywhere, we need everyone to join in the fight to stop it.

The first part of this fight is for us to ask the question a lot more. I ask every person in this room, both men and women, to ask the women in their lives—their daughters, wives, sisters and friends—if they have ever been frightened by the behaviour of a man. You will be shocked and surprised by what you hear.

We need action. We need every man who sees his mate touching a woman’s bottom to speak up—don’t laugh; it is not just one of those things. We need every man who hears another man referring to a woman as a worthless bitch, a whore or a slag to speak up. No man should ever let the statement, “She was asking for it”, pass without comment. If men think their mates, their sons or their dads are being a bit lairy, tell them to pack it in. Most of all, when a woman says, “It happens,” do not tell her she is wrong. Do not think that it means she thinks all men are like it or that it means she thinks you are like it. Just listen.

The white ribbon campaign is brilliant. It gives a space for men to pledge to fight against violence. If every man who was on our side spoke up, it would drown out the very loud minority who do not support women’s rights. As I am speaking, hundreds of the noisy men are taking to the internet right now to shout at me and say things like, “She wishes someone wanted to rape her”. Let us not let them be the voice that stands out.

Here in Parliament, I have been proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with men in the fight to protect refuge funding. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) have fought valiantly to protect domestic violence refuges across the country. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) dedicated much of his previous life as the Director of Public Prosecutions to improving the harrowing situation for victims of domestic and sexual violence in the criminal courts. He now stands shoulder to shoulder with me and the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and many of our female colleagues from all parts of the House in trying to improve how women and children cope with the family courts.

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. She referred to the courts. Last week, the Court of Appeal found against the bedroom tax for discriminating against domestic violence victims. Does she agree that it beggars belief that the Government seem more intent on fighting that decision than protecting those victims and compensating them?

[Jess Phillips]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. There is one particular man seemingly fronting up the case to take the issue back to the courts and to try to damage women who have been put in specialist supportive accommodation. I ask that particular man, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to stand with me and pledge, as part of being a white ribbon ambassador, to do his bit to stand against violence against women. Unfortunately, I fear that that request will fall on deaf ears.

Our network of specialist services is under threat, and I ask everyone in this place to stand with us and fight for them. I ask Ministers today, as my colleague from over the border, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, asked, to answer how we can make our safe spaces and refuges sustainable for the future so that they are not merely living hand to mouth every year. I ask all the men in Parliament and Parliament itself to sign up to the white ribbon pledge. How councils have done that and the definite beneficial effects have been outlined.

This is not an us and them issue for women and men. Women fighting for their rights to live free from violence are not attacking men; they are defending women. The more men who join us in the fight against violence against women, the less it will happen. More women will speak up and more women will be free to go out dancing, to settle down with a partner and to live full lives. We must encourage every women who suffers violence to report it to the police. I wish I had. All I ask of every man is simple: please just tell us that you believe us. Otherwise, we will just keep keeping it secret; just taking it as if we deserve it. I want to give a massive thank you to the men in the Chamber and especially to my colleague the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North for calling the debate. Men are brilliant, funny, kind and caring. We do not just want them in our lives, we want them in our fight, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) on securing this debate, which is timely given the urgent question earlier today about the visit by the rape apologists from—

[Jess Phillips]

I don’t know where they’re from.

[Naz Shah]

When we consider violence against women, we always look at the woman and the family, but there are wider implications. As someone whose mother served time in prison for killing an abusive partner and as a woman whose own forced marriage is well documented, I want to provide a cultural narrative to the debate from a BME perspective and to enlighten people about the issues around women in prison. In this country, two women a week are murdered by their partners, but some women are driven to kill because they see no other way out and have nowhere else. Services are not responsive due to language barriers or a lack of understanding. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) mentioned, some women are still not believed. My experiences happened over 23 years ago, but many women face the same issues and obstacles. Language barriers and cultural differences are a double whammy, leading to more hurdles to overcome to access services. We must be mindful of the barriers that women face.

I am pleased to see Ikram Butt, the first Asian rugby player to play for England, present today. He is a white ribbon champion and has come all the way from Yorkshire. He has canvassed me many a time about wearing my white ribbon, which is important because he is a role model for Asian people and Asian young men in sport. Sport is one way in which we need to engage with young people and young men in particular.

I had a natural hatred of men and of my own community because of my experiences, but my hatred was alleviated by the good men whom I came across and worked with, who taught me that our communities do contain decent men. However, that fact does not take away from the inequalities that women suffer. Turning to women in prison, the majority—nine out of 10—of women incarcerated in our prisons committed a crime because they were a caregiver or because they suffered some form of abuse. When women with children are imprisoned, the system not only incarcerates the woman but punishes the whole family. The entire family, including the children, are set up to fail because services are not geared correctly towards children. I was lucky that I was 18 and not in the care system and was able to look after my siblings, but the experience of prison affects young people as well. When discussing violence against women, we should not talk only about the woman who has been violated. Whole families and communities are affected. When a man commits violence, he is perpetrating a crime against a whole community or people. It is not just about the woman who is physically hurt or controlled, whether financially or mentally.

I am disheartened by the Government cuts that have affected charity organisations. Last year, I led a debate on cuts in the voluntary sector in this very room. Since my election, Bradford has seen the closure of two local charities that helped women. Both the Blenheim Project, which was a refuge, and the Manningham Mills Community Association, which was a place for women to come together and seek support, have closed. In addition, more than a third of the women who go to Women’s Aid are unfortunately turned away because of the cuts since 2010. There has been an increase in reports of rape this week in my local area alone. We need to address the cuts to local authorities, police forces and organisations such as Women’s Aid. It is fantastic that we are empowering men, and it heartens me to see so many men taking part in this debate and that the debate was led by a man. However, we are setting our communities up to fail if we do not address the wider issues of the funding that should be available to communities.

I urge the Minister to consider the implementation of the Istanbul convention, which has been signed by the United Kingdom but has not yet been ratified. I also advocate making awareness of gender-based violence the focal point of our school curriculums. I am unsure whether we are doing enough to address children’s anxieties about the role of women and power and control. If we are to address the matter, we cannot just address what is currently happening; we need preventive work for the long term. Young people have even more issues now, such as body image, and I have an 11-year-old daughter, so I am familiar with the pressures that young people face and I am exasperated by them.

Social media has a massive part to play in violence against women. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley has been persecuted, and such action is unacceptable. I have experienced Twitter trolling, but nowhere near that of some of my colleagues. I stand by my hon. Friend and I retweet things, as do many others, but we need more men to do that. I encourage the men in this room to troll the trolls. I would like the Minister to commit to embed such issues in our curriculum, so that we can empower young people and teach them that the way to get real power and control is not through the persecution of others but through being comfortable and by empowering women. Like my hon. Friend, I thank the fantastic men out there. I have two sons of my own. Men are wonderful, but we need more of them to help us. Be the majority, not the minority.

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]