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‘SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO’ by Jess Hill

June 7, 2021
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The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men. – Judith Lewis Herman 

All of the references to violent domestic abuse by men in See What You Made Me Do are qualified by this very important statement.

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“When it comes to family conflict and domestic hostility in heterosexual relationships, women are just as capable of being physically and psychologically abusive…to their male partners. But when it comes to coercive control – the most dangerous form of domestic abuse, suffered by 60 to 80 per cent of women who seek help – women make up an extremely small minority of perpetrators. Domestic abuse is gendered. In its most dangerous forms, it is a crime perpetrated by men against  women. “

The gender gap in domestic homicide is crucial, and this is discussed at length in the book, by Jess Hill and others.

Shame and humiliation experienced by young boys, extensive research finds, can predispose them to extreme violence in adulthood.  When abusive men are confronted with these deep-seated feelings, women and children can suffer horrific abuse, and sometimes death, at the hands of those men who refuse to deal with the true source their own pain and frustration. In this well researched book, Jess Hill delves into theories and extensive research investigating why domestic abuse is so prevalent  and escalating in Australia and other countries around the world.  

Studies of domestic abuse perpetrators “do show a higher than average incidence of personality disorder, especially so-called ‘antisocial’ disorders such as sociopathy, psychopathy and borderline personality. “ However, in one major study, the vast majority of abusers were no more disordered than ‘regular people’.

Another study found that  “when abusive men emerge out of violent childhoods…the man is addicted to brutality to keep his shaky self-concept intact…The only times he feels powerful and whole,  is when he is engaged in violence.” A psychoanalyst goes further: “The passion to have absolute and unrestricted control over a living being…is the transformation of impotence into omnipotence.”

Patriarchy …after decades of research and work with victims, it was found that men who subscribe to rigid gender stereotypes are more likely to abuse their partners. ”Study after study finds that men are more prone to abusing if they’ve been: a) socialised into rigid gender roles, b) believe that men are naturally superior, or c) feel their masculinity or superiority has been threatened, particularly if women have not complied with their gender-role expectations. ”

Karen Willis, “a legend of the gender abuse sector” states that those who use violence in their relationships are into power and control … they want to “hurt, humiliate and dominate.”  Where does this sense of entitlement come from? Why this need for control and sense of entitlement?  According to Willis … “Good old fashioned  patriarchy.” …the system of patriarchy gives some men, what they perceive as permission, to use power and control and be dominant…”women and children within their families should be subjugated to them.”

Pornography…

Violent pornography is freely available on the internet  and can be accessed by children. Why isn’t it banned?  The past twenty years has seen hardcore porn go mainstream. It is extremely violent, and degrading to women.  There are alarming and harmful effects manifesting in men and boys who watch it and data from rape and sexual assault  centres…”show  that in the past five years the severity of sexual violence they are dealing with has increased exponentially.”

The chapters on police culture  and  Family Court failings  are harrowing reading. So many women and children have died because police did not do their job, even when a woman was in extreme danger, in fear of her and her children’s lives and had phoned police many times.   Too many violent and dangerous men are given the benefit of the doubt, and are granted custody by Family Courts.

There are statements emerging from those children, now adults,  who were forced to live with their violent  and sexually abusive fathers  because Family Court judges chose to believe the violent perpetrator over the testimonies of their children and the testimonies of abused female partners, who were the children’s protectors.  Family Courts put too much credence on only one  psychiatrist’s report; who often tends to believe the violent perpetrator rather than the obviously terrified children who do not want to live with their fathers,  A too common  accusation aimed at  mothers is that they are ‘guilty ‘ of ‘alienating’ their children against their fathers.

Tech savvy violent men have found new ways to hound and terrify their ex-partners and children. “Tech-facilitated abuse has become so ubiquitous that refuges and domestic violence services are teaming up with specialist risk and safety assessors trained to detect concealed devices and apps, which can even be concealed in a child’s favourite  toy…Most commonly though, a perpetrator tracks his partner though her phone. For $45 per month, you can see everything on someone’s phone, including stuff that’s been deleted.”

This is a must read for all those women fleeing domestic abuse, and for those who wish to help them. There is also a chapter on the last page of the book on which the author has listed help lines in all states and territories, including Immigrant Women’s Health Service and translation services. These numbers include  help with urgent accommodation and transport.

There is also an excellent chapter on successful Women’s Police Stations in other countries and we can only hope that Australian Police and the government see the benefits in these specialized police systems in the battle against the alarming rates of domestic abuse and subsequent deaths of women and children.

Aboriginal Women and Girls.

One chapter concentrates on the domestic abuse and other violent abuse of Aboriginal women and girls. The abuse of Aboriginal women and girls, by their partners, other family members, and white men, is particularly horrific. And once again, police culture, and the police response, to cries of help from these women and girls and their families, is woeful and it has to be said, racist! I can find no other plausible explanation as to why police minimise  the terrible plight of Aboriginal women and children, especially if the perpetrator is a white man.

“The culture that arrived with the tall ships in Sydney Cove was not only deeply patriarchal, but sexist…it was a type of violence introduced to Australia like an invasive species,” writes Robert Hughes. “The brutalization of women in the colony had gone on so long, that it was virtually a social reflex by the end of the 1830s.”

In some ways, nothing has changed in the 21st century Australia.  

In my personal experience, patriarchal religions have institutionalised  the power imbalances between men and women, which in turn helped socialise gender role expectations, all of which perpetuate domestic, and other forms of violence, against women. The ubiquitous spectre of the ‘fallen woman’ with all of its societal connotations,  has also aided and abetted some men’s deeply rooted subjugation of women.    

The author discusses several options for lowering the alarming and ever-increasing rates of domestic abuse and homicides in Australia, while advocating for cultural change in wider society.

This is a remarkable book by Jess Hill, and testifies to her extensive investigative research into the deeply rooted causes of domestic abuse.  The personal stories she has uncovered and writes about are truly heart-rending, and I as a reader, now realise just how little I know about  the suffering that domestic abuse is causing to women and children, not just in Australia, but around the world.

Thank you, Jess Hill, for writing this very important work. 

-Anne Frandi-Coory. 7 June 2021

‘Sex And Destiny’ by Germaine Greer & ‘Pornography:A Major Commodity’. Book Reviews

July 13, 2010
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The cover of Germaine Greer’s book

A quote from Germaine Greer’s  Sex And Destiny, p207, 1984 Secker & Warburg London:

And now sexuality has become a major commodity.  The sex merchants have a huge market among sexually repressed and starved people. While in earlier periods this market was restricted by Christian inhibitions, now that the sexual revolution has released us from the compulsions of secrecy, sexual commodities are flooding the market and are becoming the most profitable area of capitalism next to the market of aggression- the armaments industry. [Now, the largest and most recherché collections of pornography are owned by the sexually priveleged, not the sexually denied.]

Excerpts from an article by

Julie Bindel

Friday July 2 2010
The Guardian

The last time I saw Gail Dines speak, at a conference in Boston, she moved the  audience to tears with her description of the problems caused by pornography, and provoked laughter with her sharp observations about pornographers themselves. Activists in the audience were newly inspired, and men at the event,  many of whom had never viewed pornography as a problem  before, queued up afterwards to pledge their support. The scene highlighted Dines’s explosive charisma and the fact that, since the death of Andrea Dworkin, she has risen to that most  difficult and interesting of public roles: the world’s leading anti-pornography campaigner.

Dines is also a highly regarded  academic and her new book, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, has just come out in the US. She wrote it  primarily to educate people about what pornography today is really like, she says, and to banish any notion of it as benign titillation. “We are now bringing up a generation of boys on cruel, violent porn,” she says, “and given what we know about how images affect people, this is going to have a profound influence on their sexuality, behaviour and attitudes towards women.”  [We only have to read the news about young men (high porn viewers)  contracted to certain football codes to know this is true].

The book documents the recent  history of porn, including the technological shifts that have made it accessible on mobile phones, video games and laptops. According to Dines’s research the prevalence of porn means that men are becoming desensitised to it, and are therefore seeking out ever harsher, more violent and degrading images. Even the porn industry is shocked by how much violence the fans want, she says; at the industry conferences that Dines attends, porn makers have increasingly been discussing the trend for more extreme practices. And the audience is getting younger. Market research conducted by internet providers found that the average age a boy first sees porn today is eleven. “I have found that the earlier men use porn,” says Dines, “the more likely they are to have trouble developing close, intimate relationships with real women. Some of these men prefer porn to sex with an actual human  being. They are bewildered, even  angry, when real women don’t want  or enjoy porn sex.”

Porn culture doesn’t only affect men. It also changes “the way women and girls think about their bodies, their sexuality and their relationships,” says Dines. “Every group that has fought for liberation understands that media images are part and parcel of the systematic dehumanisation of an oppressed group . . . The more porn images filter into mainstream culture, the more girls and women are stripped of full human status and reduced to sex objects. This has a terrible effect on girls’ sexual identity because it robs them of their own sexual desire.” Images have now become so  extreme that acts that were almost non-existent a decade ago have  become commonplace. “To think that so many men hate women to the degree that they can get aroused by such vile images is quite profound,” says Dines. “Pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for  patriarchy. In nothing else is their  hatred of us quite as clear.”

Haifa,   in which pornography was shown changed her life forever. “I was astounded that men could either make such a thing or want to look at it,” she says. From then on, she knew she had to campaign about the issue. “Many on the liberal left adopt a view that says pornographers are not businessmen but are simply there to unleash our sexuality from state-imposed constraints,” she says. As a result of her research, Dines  believes that pornography is driving men to commit particular acts of violence towards women. “I am not saying that a man reads porn and goes out to rape,” she says, “but what I do know is that porn gives permission to its consumers to treat women as they are treated in porn.”

Sexual assault centres in US colleges have said that more women are reporting anal rape, which Dines attributes  directly to the normalisation of such practices in pornography. “The more porn sexualises violence against women, the more it normalises and legitimises sexually abusive behaviour. Men learn about sex from porn, and in porn nothing is too painful or degrading for women.” Dines also says that what she calls “childified porn” has significantly increased in popularity in recent years, with almost 14m internet searches for “teen sex” in 2006, an increase of more than 60% since 2004. There are legal sites that feature hardcore images of extremely young-looking women being penetrated by older men, with disclaimers stating all the models are 18 and over. Dines is clear that regular exposure to such material has an effect of breaking down the taboo about having sex with children.

She recently interviewed a number of men in prison who had committed rape against children. All were habitual users of child pornography. “What they said to me was they got bored with ‘regular’ porn and wanted something fresh. They were horrified at the idea of sex with a prepubescent child  initially but within six months they had all raped a child.” What can we expect next from the industry? “Nobody knows, including pornographers,” she says, “but they are all looking for something more extreme, more shocking.” In Dines’s view, the best way to  address the rise of internet pornography is to raise public awareness about its actual content, and name it as a public health issue by bringing together educators, health professionals, community activists, parents and anti-violence experts to create materials that educate the public. “Just as we had anti-smoking campaigns, we need an anti-porn campaign that alerts people to the individual and cultural harms it creates.”

“Myths about those of us who hate pornography also need to be dispelled in order to gain more support from progressives,” she says. “The assumption that if you are a woman who hates pornography you are against sex shows how successful the industry is at  collapsing porn into sex.” Would the critics of the employment practices and products at McDonald’s be accused of being anti-eating, she asks pointedly.

The backlash against Dines and her work is well-documented. Various pro-porn activists post accusations about her on websites, suggesting she is motivated by money, hates sex, and victimises women to support her supposed anti-male ideology. Dines is regularly criticised by pornographers in the trade magazines and on porn websites and she tells me that her college receives letters after any public event at which she is speaking, attacking her views.

Does she ever feel depressed by all this? “It gets me down sometimes, of course. But I try to surround myself with good things, my students,  colleagues, and my family.” She says the blueprint for her aims is the eradication of slavery in the US, which was achieved despite the fact that every single institution was geared to uphold and perpetuate it.   “What is at stake is the nature of the world that we live in,” says Dines.  “We have to wrestle it back.”

-Anne Frandi-Coory 13 July 2010

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