Tag: #gender research

DAY ELEVEN: No it wasn’t different back then #1 – Researching rape in 20th century US

‘It wasn’t different back then’ Mara Keire illuminates how this ahistorical rhetoric enables justification of men’s sexually predatory behaviour. Her research on rape in 20th century US shows clearly the falsity of that excuse.

Mara Keire

Featured image: ‘The Little Butterfly’, credit: Library of Congress, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Defenders of men like movie producer Harvey Weinstein, architect Stanford White, actor Clark Gable, and director Roman Polanski rely on the argument that it was “different back then.”[1]  They use this specious ahistorical reasoning to justify predation. 

Studying the history of sexual violence serves three important purposes for me.  First, it provides the crucial evidence that “no, it was not different back then.”  Second, it illuminates the politics of power and networks of complicity that enable the ongoing oppression of women and children through sexual violence.  And finally, it allows historians to advocate for the victims they study. 

Learning about what people thought about rape at the time, seeing how victims and their supporters responded to attacks, and reading the commentary about legal cases large and small, provides a stark contrast to the representation of a sexually laissez-faire world where anything men did met with social acceptance. 

My work on sexual violence in early 20th century New York provides concrete evidence refuting the assertion that it was “different back then.” I hope that it will help anti-violence activists change this narrative exonerating predators for assaults that were not acceptable then and are not justifiable now. Studying the history of sexual violence also serves to obliterate the idea that rapists are solitary “bad apples.” Instead, researchers can uncover the networks of complicity that reinforce male power. 

Most recently, we’ve heard Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, and Maggie Nichols testify how they reported Larry Nasser to everyone who they hoped would listen from US Gymnastics to the FBI, but no one acted. Larry Nasser continued his predation because authorities thought a quack medical doctor was more important than elite young gymnasts.[2] 

While in the present day we need to unravel these networks of power in real time, as historians we can show them whole cloth.

For example, when Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson kidnapped and raped Madge Olberholtzer in 1925, the Ku Klux Klan had already known about his predatory behaviour toward women for years, but they had done nothing to stop him because he was a popular leader and useful to the organisation. After Olberholtzer died from her injuries, the Klan repudiated him. But Stephenson’s trial for murder and the subsequent revelations illustrated to a chilling degree how male sexual entitlement worked and the degree to which the people around him catered to and covered up his violence toward women. [3] Exposing the networks of complicity in the past shatters the myth of individual bad actors in present day cases.

Refuting the contradictory myths that rapists are either misguided men of their time or solitary monsters makes studying the history of sexual violence a necessary venture. However, I find that advocating for the once discredited victims is the most fulfilling part when writing this history. I chose to research rape because of my present-day activism fighting women’s oppression. I am not objective. I am emotionally involved. I care deeply about the girls and women about whom I write. I am one of them. As a survivor, I have the unparalleled opportunity to believe my ancestors in trauma. 

Author’s Bio:

Mara Keire is a Senior Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford.  She is currently writing a book called Under the Boardwalk: Rape in New York City, 1900-1930.  You can find her far too often on twitter at @MaraKeire

[1] Weinstein – Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades,” The New York Times (5 October 2017): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html

Stanford White – Paul R. Baker, Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White (London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1989), ix-xi.

Clark Gable – Lou Lumenick, “We’ll never really know if Clark Gable actually date-raped Loretta Young,” New York Post (13 July 2015): https://nypost.com/2015/07/13/well-never-really-know-if-clark-gable-actually-date-raped-loretta-young/

Polanski – Michael Cieply, “In Polanski Case, ‘70s Culture Collides With Today,” (10 October 2009): https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/movies/11polanski.html

All accessed 26 October 2021

[2] McKenzie Jean-Philippe, “Simone Biles, Aly Raisman Bravely Testify Against the FBI’s Handling of the Larry Nassar Case,” Oprah Daily, 15 September 2021: https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a37610818/simone-biles-aly-raisman-testify-larry-nassar-hearing/ (accessed 25 October 2021).

[3] Mara Keire, “#MeToo, Networks of Complicity, and the 1920s Klan,” Process: a blog for American history (24 January 2019): http://www.processhistory.org/keire-networks/ (accessed 26 October 2021).

DAY TWELVE: City Lights for Social Change

To mark 2020 16 Days of Activism theme ‘Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!’ Australian academics worked with local authorities to turn their City orange.

Picture above: Civic Park in Newcastle, New South Wales being lit orange to mark 16 Days of Activism. Photo by Eddie O’Reilly, UON Marketing and Communications. Reproduced with permission.

Effie Karageorgos and Kcasey McLoughlin

In 1991 the Center for Women’s Global Leadership instituted the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which has now spread to over 187 countries. It begins on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and ends on 10 December, Human Rights Day. In 2020, the University of Newcastle’s Gender Research Network has responded to the 2020 16 Days of Activism theme ‘Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!’ by turning Newcastle orange.

The Gender Research Network, established and led by Associate Professor Trisha Pender, has embarked on a Program in Gender-Based Violence research and activism in 2020, aided by a $70,000 University of Newcastle Faculty of Education and Arts Pilot Grant. Spanning sociology, history, law, literary, gender and cultural studies, the Gender Research Network aims to collaborate with local frontline services to tackle the urgent issue of gender-based violence.

The academic research funded by the project will cover legal conceptualisations of family violence, male clergy perpetration of sexual violence, media presentations of gendered and sexual violence in mainstream television and French and Australian media, the #MeToo movement and the relationship between historical Australian archetypes of masculinity and media representations of male violence.

Associate Professor Trisha Pender at the launch of the Newcastle 16 Days of Activism campaign to end violence against women, held in Civic Park, Wednesday 25 November 2020. Photo by Eddie O’Reilly. Reproduced with permission.

The impetus for this program has emerged from the alarming scale of gendered violence in Australia, with one woman murdered each week by an intimate partner. Gender-based violence is a pressing social and human rights issue that causes long-term physical and psychological effects and costs the Federal Government billions of dollars every year.

It is also a contentious issue in Australian society, with proposed legal reforms such as Victoria’s move to ban the public disclosure of names of sexual violence victims and New South Wales Labor’s push to criminalise coercive control causing widespread and impassioned debate from victims, victim advocates and researchers. The Program in Gender-Based Violence will not only address male perpetrators of violence against women, but also violence affecting LGBTIQ communities and children. It seeks to define how gender-based violence is reported and conceptualised within society.

A central facet of the Gender Research Network’s program in gender-based violence is the 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women campaign. The Network was awarded a Newcastle City Council SBR (Special Business Rates) grant for ‘City Lights for Social Change’, which has created a permanent lighting infrastructure for Civic Park. This turned the park orange for the 16 Days in 2020, but will also create a safer public space at night for Newcastle residents and will be available for use by other social change campaigns in the future. In 2020, the University of Newcastle also committed to turning the NUspace building on its city campus orange, and the Newcastle City Hall’s Clock Tower will also turn orange for the 16 Days of Activism from 25 November to 10 December.

NUspace at University of Newcastle being lit orange to mark 16 Days of Activism, a campaign focusing on preventing violence against women. Photo by Eddie O’Reilly. Reproduced with permission.

The launch and vigil of 25 November took place at 8-9pm, featuring Associate Professor Trisha Pender, with the support of the New South Wales Police Force. Pender was joined by a range of speakers from community organisations, including ACON Health and Warlga Ngurra Women and Children’s Refuge, as well as Federal Member for Newcastle Sharon Claydon and City of Newcastle Councillor Carol Duncan. During the vigil, the names of the 45 women killed by violence in Australia in 2020 was read out by a group of domestic violence researchers and activists.

Image from the Newcastle launch of 16 Days of Activism campaign to end violence against women, held in Civic Park, Wednesday 25 November 2020. Photo by Eddie O’Reilly. Reproduced with permission.

The Gender Research Network’s contribution to the 16 Days campaign also included a webinar on the current push to criminalise coercive control in New South Wales. The session was facilitated by Dr Kcasey McLoughlin, Senior Lecturer in Law, and featured Laura Richards, prominent activist and behavioural analyst from the United Kingdom, Hayley Foster, Chief Executive of Women’s Safety NSW, and State Member for Shellharbour Anna Watson, who was responsible for introducing the bill to criminalise coercive control to the New South Wales Parliament.

The recording of the Coercive Control seminar of 30 November 2020 is available online.

Effie Karageorgos is a historian and member of the Gender Research Network at the University of Newcastle. Her research is in the social history of war, and specifically histories of masculinity and trauma. Her monograph Australian Soldiers in South Africa and Vietnam: Words from the Battlefield was published in March 2016. 

Kcasey McLoughlin is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Newcastle Law School and a member of Gender Research Network at the University of Newcastle. She is currently a visiting Scholar at the Australian Human Rights Institute (UNSW). Her research, broadly defined, concerns the gendered values that shape political and legal institutions and the extent to which law can be used as a tool for achieving equality.