By Waleed Aly
November 25, 2006
QUESTION: which public figure made the most contemptibly misogynist comments about rape reported in the past month?
Amid the recent furore surrounding Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, you probably missed the answer: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin was speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Conversation turned to the topic of Israeli President Moshev Katsav, suspected by Israeli police of raping female employees. Putin was unaware a nearby microphone was on. He joked that Katsav was a "mighty guy". "Raped 10 women! I would never have expected that from him. He surprised us all. We all envy him."
When comments this disgusting come from the political leader of one of the world's largest nations, scandal is inevitable. The excuses were painfully familiar. "It was a joke which did not have anything to do with the official part of the talks," explained Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. It "was not addressed to journalists". Somehow, this was meant to assuage us, as if the abhorrence of Putin's remarks inhered not in their content, but the fact that journalists heard them. Still, Peskov continued: "It is not always possible to translate a Russian joke into another language in such a way that you convey its complete meaning." If so, one wonders why Putin chose to share his "humour" with an Israeli. Does Olmert possess special insight into the Russian comedic tradition?
Ultimately, we were asked to believe it was all a misunderstanding. "These words should in no way be interpreted as President Putin approving the possibility of this sort of crime," said Peskov, demanding of us new feats of interpretive gymnastics.
The defence of cross-cultural miscommunication has reached new levels of infamy after the recent the Hilali controversy. And indeed, at least in Hilali's case, it is precisely this cross-cultural element that has allowed so many commentators to adopt such a sanctimoniously outraged posture. Their rage could be unbridled because it in no way implicated them. For several commentators, Hilali's comments were immediately and exclusively co-opted into a discourse against multiculturalism. The implication is that the malady embodied in Hilali's remarks is entirely alien to us.
Sadly, this is more convenient than erudite. Only days earlier a video surfaced of a dozen Werribee schoolboys sexually assaulting a semi-naked 17-year-old girl before setting her hair on fire and urinating on her. Someone was proud enough of this production to sell copies of it for $5 in the western suburbs. The boys laughed as they did it. Two of their parents dismissed it as a bit of fun. For them, as for Putin, sexual assaults against women are a source of humour.
The facts are that the blight of misogynist thought and violence is closer to home than is comfortable. It was oft-noted during the Hilali saga that victim-blaming attitudes to rape were commonplace in Australia as recently as two decades ago — a fact evidenced by a parade of comments from judges and barristers. Certainly, it is possible that what so provoked Australians was not that such comments are threateningly foreign, but that they are menacingly familiar; that they remind us of the darker portions of our recent past.
But in truth, this is not simply a relic. Our deliverance from such attitudes on violence against women is more official, and less popular, than we might admit.
A VicHealth survey of 2000 Victorians released last month found that 40 per cent considered rape a product of men's inability to control their need for sex, while half believed, without evidence, that women falsified claims of domestic violence to gain a tactical advantage in family law disputes. Fifteen per cent still believe "women often say no to sex when they mean yes". A quarter are prepared to excuse domestic violence perpetrators if they are genuinely remorseful — which the report notes is dangerous given that domestic violence is often episodic, punctuated by remorseful moments.
Unlike the Werribee video, these attitudes cannot be quarantined to the domain of a delinquent fringe. They point to a stubborn, significant malaise in our social consciousness, and a willingness to trivialise violence against women.
Yes, other parts of the world have worse records. And yes, we have made laudable progress. Numbers of women who have suffered physical or sexual assault have declined in the past decade. Nearly everyone now accepts domestic violence is a crime. Those who believe that "women who are raped often ask for it" are now only 6 per cent. Ten years ago, they were 15. But continued progress is only possible when we acknowledge that problems remain. And they do.
Today is the day to recognise this. White Ribbon Day, the UN-declared day for the elimination of violence against women, is about keeping this global problem in our consciousness. One might have hoped the stream of news over the past month would mean we would not needed reminding. Popular attitudes suggest we do.
Waleed Aly is a White Ribbon Day ambassador.
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