The Shocking Death of Sarah Everard Highlights the Sickness in the Heart of Orthodox Masculinity that can No Longer be Ignored.

 

Even in a society that is often has a fascination with the darker areas of human nature that borders on the unhealthy some events cause genuine shock and, maybe, prompt self-reflection.

 

That has been the case with the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard, a crime that has exposed the grinding daily experience of harassment, abuse and all too often violence faced by women in the UK.

 

The 33year-old marketing executive disappeared near to Clapham Common in South London on a Monday evening in early March. Two days later remains found in woodland in Kent were identified as being those of MS Everard.

 

Wayne Couzins, a serving officer with the Metropolitan Police, has been charged with her murder. An unnamed woman arrested on suspicion of aiding him to conceal the crime has been released on bail.

 

The murder has prompted an outpouring of grief across the country with many women speaking out about the abuse they have faced and the attitudes they meet when seeking help from the authorities.

 

An example of this is the advice for young women to avoid going out after dark in the interests of safety issued by the Met. To which Green Party life peer Jenny Jones responded in a House of Lords debate by suggesting that an alternative approach could be to impose a six o'clock curfew on men. A comment that neatly exposed official hypocrisy and ignited a storm of protest on social media.

 

It is a cruel coincidence that the murder of Sarah Everard coincided with the annual parliamentary debate held in honour of International Women's Day.

 

This year Jess Phillips, who speaks for Labour on domestic violence, opened the debate by reading out the names of 118 women who have been murdered in cases where a man has been convicted or charged with the crime.  In her speech she went on to say that violence against women was 'a thing we've all just accepted as part of our daily lives'.

 

Responding to claims made earlier by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick that crimes such as the murder of Sarah Everard were rare Jess Phillips said 'killed women are not vanishingly rare. Killed women are common.

 

Statistics for violence and other crimes committed by men against women are truly horrifying.  Over the course of their lifetime 1in 4 women will experience domestic violence and 1in 5 will be sexually assaulted, 83% of these women will not report the crime to the police (source: The Home Office).

 

These figures relate to pre-Covid times, since the start of the pandemic things have got worse, between March and June last year there was a 7% rise in  reports of domestic violence made to the police, the number of incidents that actually took place will be much higher with many victims being afraid of unable to seek help (source: ONS).

 

Women's rights campaign group Reclaim These Streets announced plans to hold a vigil in memory of Sarah Everard on Clapham Common on Saturday evening, this was later cancelled due to concerns about a possible breach of Covid rules.

 

 An unofficial vigil did take place on Saturday evening and was broken up by the police. The resulting scenes of male police officers arresting, often with the use of force, female protesters were broadcast by news stations around the world.

 

Two hundred women and representatives of campaign groups signed letter highlighting how 'women are still at risk doing the most-simple of things', such as using public transport and calling for a 'firm commitment ' from the government to take action.

 

Responding to public concerns prime minister Boris Johnson told the BBC he was 'shocked and deeply saddened' by what had happened to Sarah Everard, adding that 'we must all work to find the answer to this horrifying crime'.

 

Also speaking to the BBC Labour leader Keir Starmer said the case must be a 'turning point' in how our society treats violence against women.

 

That something must change is all too clear, the untimely death of a young woman living a normal, quiet, life had shone an unforgiving light on things we always knew were there; but chose to ignore. For decades women have spoken up about a culture that turns a blind eye to casual sexual harassment and worse, only to be dismissed as hysterical or lying.

 

Now in this moment of shock and anger we know that not to be true and, as is the often the case we demand that something be done. There is a lot that can and should be done.

 

We need, for example, invest in funding women's refuges  and to end the disgraceful practice where when a woman has the courage to bring her abuser to court she is then doubly traumatized by being quizzed on the stand about whether her behaviour in some way provoked what happened.

 

To date successive governments have proved to be willing to say the right things about violence against women, but decidedly slow when it comes to acting. An example of this being the signing of the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence put forward by the  Council of Europe in 2011 by the Cameron government, a decade on it still hasn't been ratified by parliament.

 

If, as the prime minister says, we are going to 'find the answers to this horrifying crime ', then we, meaning men, will have to take a close look at ourselves.  As the letter written to the government by women's rights groups makes clear ' something has to change and it cannot be on women, the victims in this, to lead that change'.

 

What we need to look closely at is the culture of masculinity and whether in its current form it is fit for purpose in the twenty first century. On the evidence available that does not seem to be the case.

 

What it means to be a man  in modern Britain is based to a worryingly large extent on a tightly circumscribed set of attitudes and behaviours, such as not showing your emotions or asking for help, that men are conditioned to 'perform' from childhood. This creates what Paul Kievel of the Oakland Men's Project and others have termed as the 'man box', a harsh orthodoxy where fear and shame are used to police behaviour.

 

 

 

This has a damaging impact in the physical and emotional health of many men. Evidence of which can be seen in, for example in men being 14% more likely than women to develop cancer and 37% more likely to die if they do (source: Cancer Research). Men are three times more likely to commit suicide and report lower levels of life satisfaction (UK Government Wellbeing Survey/ The Mental Health Foundation).

 

The fact that many men feel boxed in by self-imposed expectations and attitudes is damaging for wider society too. Men are more likely to be victims perpetrate and be victims of violent crime, not least because they are also more likely to try and mask the feelings they have been taught are awkward and shameful through substance abuse (source: The Mental Health Foundation).

 

The tight squeeze of the 'man box' makes men reluctant to call out colleagues who say or do things that are inappropriate for fear of being ridiculed or thought not to be 'one of the lads'. As a result, toxic attitudes, towards women, people of colour, or anyone who just presents as even mildly 'different' are normalized along with a dangerously unjustified sense of entitlement.

 

Many men will have read the paragraphs above and told themselves that it does not apply to them, or to their friends. That is what we all say and what we like to think; it is a dangerously comforting fiction.

 

To prove the point try a little thought experiment, you're with friends in a pub and one of the group says something derogatory about a woman across the room, or implied that one of the other guys is somehow effeminate for being on soft drinks,  do you call him out? I know what I would most likely do; and it does not make me feel proud of either myself or my gender.

 

Sadly, fear that I would keep quiet and dismiss it as just 'banter', drink talking; anything really than some of the things it might be. Maybe my hypothetical friend is just blowing smoke, saying things he doesn't mean to try and fit in; then again maybe he means what he says and that masks darker intentions.

 

Being trapped in a choke hold by outdated cultural norms does not excuse male violence, either against women or other men. The harm it does to us, and others should be a spur to break free. Doing so will not be easy, it will require imagination and emotion courage. It will require something else too, time, a lot of time, more than is available in a political cycle where two weeks is seen as an eternity.

 

It will be made that much harder by the extent to which orthodox masculinity is embedded in our political, economic and social life. You can see its workings in the hostile takeover that costs thousands of people their jobs; in the political 'debate' that turns into a shouting match.

 

Most of all it can be seen in the awkward silenced when we know we should have said something; but too the easy option of staying quiet. Fault, we must realize, lies in what we did not do as much as what we did.

 

The murder of Sarah Everard is a crime that has shocked our nation to its core, that is right we should be shocked at such a waste of life, hope and innocence. It should  also be for men a moment for real change, a time to think difficult thoughts  and do difficult things; not because that will make us feel better, but because  they are the only real way to make sure this never happens again.