Guest Post: "Hijinks"?!

We're pleased as punch to be bringing you a guest post from Anna (another Anna!).

You could be forgiven for feeling a whiff of nostalgia when seeing the newspaper headlines. Variations on the theme of “Inside the England players' Hilton hijinks” conjured up memories of childish pranks in the Just William or Jennings series, or a myriad of Enid Blyton books.*

So what exactly had the England Rugby Team been up to one night in a hotel? Had someone spiked the homemade lemonade with salt and curry powder? Perhaps someone had tied the shoelaces of another player together causing him to fall onto a cleaning trolley which in turn whizzed along the corridor and catapulted him into a lift. Or had someone left a bucket of green slime on top of a door, lying in wait for an unsuspecting player? All of which would be perfectly appropriate newspaper headlines in a world without violence or poverty, and where said rugby players were not earning an order of magnitude more than schoolteachers.

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like we’re anywhere close to that kind of world. Reading between the lines it was entirely evident that something much less innocent had occurred; some kind of sexual assault, and it was later confirmed that a woman had said she had been raped by players.

And yet the most appropriate word the media could find to describe this was ‘hijinks’. A word the dictionary defines as meaning: “playful, often noisy and rowdy activity, usually involving mischievous pranks” or “boisterous celebration or merrymaking; unrestrained fun”.

Oh, but the reporting gets worse. In this article, an unnamed England rugby official “says a rape allegation against four players was "designed to destabilise" the tour - and suggests Kiwis' bitterness at their early exit from the Rugby World Cup might also be a relevant factor.”

WOT?

I know rugby is very important to a lot of people. And that’s okay. But ultimately it’s a game. And rape is not**. And linking the two in this way is absolutely sick. One, it is saying that the woman who was raped is making it up; which is not just thoroughly insulting, and almost certainly adding to her trauma, but offensive and discouraging to all women who have been raped. But more than that the reporting of rape is made out to be a game, something you would do to get support on your side, to tarnish another, or for simple revenge.

And then there’s the fact they’re referred to as “young lads” and “boys”; once again we have the whole infantilising of men, implying that they are really the victims and can’t be held responsible for their own actions. And it’s feminist who are accused of being anti-men…

Much has been made of the fact that the woman in question has not made a formal complaint (and therefore the police can’t do anything about it – which is interesting, as whilst I’d hate to see prosecutions go ahead against the wishes of the victim, I don’t see many murder cases ignored on the grounds that the victim hasn’t made a formal complaint). And this is not because it didn’t happen. I cannot speak for her, but I am as close to certain as I can be that one or more of the following reasons are behind the fact she has not done so:

• she does not think she will be believed
• she is aware of the terrible way the police treat rape victims
• she is aware of the terrible way the ‘justice’ system treats rape victims
• she knows that if there is a prosecution the media will dig up every last piece of her past and use it against her

Oh, on that last one. Well that already started several days ago. The focus of this articlein the herald is not on the perpetrators but on:

The women at the centre of a sex scandal involving four English rugby players have been described by witnesses as "sports groupies" who were cavorting and lap-dancing with the men on the night one claimed she was raped.

Cavorting and lap-dancing eh? Well then they clearly deserved it.

But wait, there’s more!

One witness said the girls in question were well-known "sports groupies" and last weekend had been fawning all over the four English players.

"They were climbing all over them with their boobs hanging out. It was shameless behaviour," a witness said.

"I was down there and was gobsmacked to see what was going on, all these drunken girls throwing themselves about. They had no standards or self-respect."

Even worse; they did not adhere to what the unnamed witness considered appropriate standards of dress.

And then there’s the self respect thing. It comes up a lot; women getting drunk, women getting pregnant “too” young and so on. It’s odd this; in a world which continually disrespects women, they are still expected to respect themselves. And that self respect seems to consist entirely of not behaving in the sexualised manner that so many men expect. Riiiiiight.

Why is it so hard for the media to take rape seriously (hint: referring to it as ‘hijinks’ is not taking it seriously), to treat the women who have been raped with respect and not imply that they deserved it? It shouldn’t be so difficult.



* All of which of course have problems of their own, but I don’t have time to discuss that here
** I was at a talk by Louise Nicholas at which one woman very kindly decided to reassure her that what she had been though was even worse than the All Blacks being knocked out of the world cup.