#131 Fiona MacKensie: We Can't Consent to This
Listen here (Transcript):
In this episode of the FiLiA podcast, Fiona MacKensie, from the campaign group ‘We Can’t Consent to This’ talks to Gemma Aitchison about her campaign to make the government ban the so called ‘rough sex defence’. Now set to become law in England and Wales, those accused of murder and assault will no longer be able to claim that the victim consented to their death or injury as part of rough sex or a sex game gone wrong.
60 UK women have been killed by men who claimed a sex game had gone wrong, and in the last five years, the defence was successful in seven of the 17 killings of a woman which reached trial, with the man being found not guilty or receiving a manslaughter conviction.
The campaign is now moving to Northern Ireland where the Northern Ireland Justice Minister Naomi Long has opened a consultation to adopt a new law, expressly forbidding the use of “consent” defences to charges of violence for ABH and above.
Transcript:
Gemma Aitchison from FiLiA in conversation with Fiona MacKensie.
F – FiLiA was the first time I spoke about this in public and got an amazing response from the audience, one of whom has campaigned with us all the way through.
G – Tell us about your campaign.
F – We’re a campaign called ‘We Can’t Consent to This’ we set up 2 years ago. It was in response to the killing of a woman called Natalie Connolly who was killed by her partner with an astonishing level of violence. He was prosecuted for killing her. He was initially prosecuted for murder and then the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) decided to prosecute him for manslaughter. His defence throughout was that she had asked him to do the violence to her and that it was rough sex and that she died accidently and that the violence he did to her was something that she wanted.
Not just the CPS gave that sympathy, the judge in his sentencing gave an astonishing short sentence for manslaughter and was very sympathetic to the claim that she had consented.
I was furious about it. I set up this campaign which was to draw together the stories of women who had been killed by men, in what the men claimed was rough sex gone wrong or a sex game.
What was so horrifying so quickly was that I found over 60 women in the UK who had been killed by men claiming this. Just under half of the time they had been successful.
So initially it was a campaign around the use of the rough sex defence in criminal cases, the killing and injuring women.
Then we also found out that women, as part of their normal sex lives, were being violently assaulted by men and were not getting the response they should from the criminal justice system.
So we now campaign across, normalisation of violence against women and also criminal justice system failings in response to claims of rough sex and also around sexual violence.
G – We have an astonishingly low conviction rate for rape. Men just don’t know when we’re consenting but when they kill us they are so sure that we consented. When we say what we did and didn’t consent to, no-one’s really sure but when a man says what we did and didn’t consent to, it’s accepted.
F – There’s no research or evidence on this until I did it. We also looked at cases of injury, so where women were able to give evidence in court as to whether they had consented. In over 100 cases that we found the women said – I didn’t consent to this – but the guy said she did. He often gets the sympathy, he is believed.
It’s just astonishing that this has been happening, that there’s been this trope, in the criminal justice system and wider society, that women were just asking for it. It’s hideous.
G – It’s never a man’s fault, it’s always ours. Our justice system and laws are manmade, most made before we even had the vote. It does highlight the boys club. Men will defend other men that they don’t even know but they’ll still stick up for them.
It must be so hard for the families of the women who died or have been hurt.
I’ve heard that some men say they copy it from pornography and pornography has become increasingly violent. Those of us who work in children’s services hear a lot of teenage girls refer to breath play and love bruises and things like that. So pornography is almost grooming children to be more violent in their sexual relationships in the future.
Do you think that as pornography is consumed, that as a woman is reporting to a police officer or a jury, that if they are a consumer of pornography she is less likely to be taken seriously?
F – At the beginning of the pandemic the BBC surveyed UK men and asked – do you use violence against women in your sex life and if you do, what influences you to do it? – and 70% said they did and most of them said they were influenced to do it by porn.
I don’t think there’s a massive public awareness yet of just how horrifically violence against women the ‘normal’ porn sites have become.
There’s the awful, horrifying, criminal content available on the front pages of major porn sites which now kids are getting access to. Absolutely terrifying.
G – It’s become almost accepted. No surprise that blaming the woman and the man is the victim.
Every time feminists make some sort of progress, sexists tend to make progress as well. There’s always a new battle.
F – It’s so true, I was chatting with women a while back who worked on the ‘No More Page 3’ campaign and women worked so hard on that, then you turn around and there’s this world of horror that has also been going on for a long while and it takes years for these things to become recognised as a societal problem and years more to fix it and do something about it.
G – If something becomes normalised then it’s harder to stop it. There’s this idea that there’s something wrong with you if you don’t accept it.
So your work is standing up and saying – no, this is not ok – you should be really proud of that.
Could you tell us about the recent developments in your work?
F – Most recently we managed to get the Westminster Parliament to accept a change in the law to make it absolutely clear that you cannot consent to serious harm or to death. Essentially banning the rough sex defence in the law. Which is absolutely huge.
This has not become law in England and Wales, we expect that to happen later this year with the Domestic Abuse Bill which it will be part of, eventually gets through.
That was huge win last year. A big effort across party. Harriet Harman, Mark Garnier and Laura Farris.
And a whole team of cross party MPs, journalists and feminist organisations and us all pushing for this. I think credit to the government for accepting that and proposing the solution.
We are going to keep an eye on how that works in practice. That’s the big thing. It’s not just about what it says in law, it’s what happens in practise.
Most recently we had, the Domestic Abuse Bill came back to the House of Lords, which is fantastic to see that making progress through Parliament.
Northern Ireland have been consulting and just closed the consultation of making the same law change there to essentially ban rough sex defences.
After a long campaign by many organisations, the government said they were going to consider a specific offence of non-fatal strangulation which is a huge potential win. A long way to go for that to become law and lots of details to be worked out.
So a fantastic first week of 2021.
G - As you say, they would downplay it as serious abuse. If there’s a rule that says – this is wrong – that’s really important.
F – A lot of the work we have done with young women, 19 or 20 now, all of this violence in sex is completely normalised for them. In their relationships with their boyfriends, the violence is totally normalised and very difficult for it to be recognised as something that is wrong.
One women said that when she was 14 she saw in Instagram etc. choking and strangulation as normalised and an expression of passion. It was only when she was older and spoke with her Mum about it and her Mum was horrified. That normalisation is so difficult to push back against.
This law change is very much about women in domestic abuse relationships or being assaulted sexually, making sure they have the right access to the criminal justice system. Also helping women who have been assaulted to see what happened to them. An assault, if that’s what happened to them, to see what happened and that’s okay to acknowledge that.
It’s impossible to underestimate how much pressure there is on young women to be okay with seriously extreme violence in their sexual relationships.
G – It’s mass grooming. Pornography categories are abuse categories. That’s what they are. Men are not helping themselves. Women are going to get to the point where with a one-night stand, he is more likely to kill me than anything else, so I won’t bother, I’ll just forget it, I’ll stay at home.
F – We shares stories and woman say what’s happened to them. They’ll say, this happened to me and next time I’ll tell him I don’t want it and it still does it anyway. This is why I think pushing back against the normalisation is so important because we know that, if that’s all that’s on offer, it’s really difficult. It’s really difficult to stay home, you want human contact or a fling or whatever.
It’s a really grim time for women but I think really big public support for a change in this, this is happening on a wide scale basis and there’s obviously lots of people who think it’s completely normal and who try and push back on our campaign work but at the same time there are lots of people who are just appalled by it and cannot believe this has been happening.
There’s really important discussions to be had about how we fix this because it’s not just going to be about addressing and accessing porn, it’s going to be across the board.
G – It’s going to go against the ‘not all men’ argument and with millions of views, these teenage boys thinking this behaviour is normal and then going into their relationships and doing this and then thinking – are they not supposed to cry?
F – It’s heart breaking. I have huge sympathy for young boys who are seeing this as normal. It’s such a thing to grow up with and then at some stage they’re going to realise what they did. It’s really grim.
There’s a complete lack of recognition of how widespread violence against women is in society and the – how does it happen? – where does it come from? – is this nature or nurture? – this complete explosion in women’s experience of violence against women in the last 5 – 10 years, it seems as if it’s come from nowhere, it’s 100% culturally driven. It’s very much part of porn and social media that’s normalised something that’s abhorrent particularly for older women who are 40s and 50s and up who are just raging that this is happening to young women because they remember the time in 80s and 90s when you could literally go and have sexual relationships with people without getting battered.
G – We see again the gender stereotypes in this, the idea that the man is in control and dominant and tough and the woman is the sexual object who’s replaceable and disposable and submissive and it’s again reinforcing that over and over again to make the man feel manly and big, he has to make the women feel small.
F – This is not subverting the norms, this is old school violence against women which is being repackaged as sexy and sold back. There’s nothing new in this, what’s new is the widespread nature of it. It’s an old story on a mass scale.
G – And they call it empowering.
F – There is that trick. How it’s sold is like – you’re in control. It’s real trick being played on young women.
G – More needs to be done to tackle it but before that gets done you need to raise awareness which is exactly what your campaign has done. It’s given other organisations and women the tools to fight back with. Thank you for doing this work and I have no doubt you have had plenty of backlash from it.
F – We’re so grateful to hear that and we hear from women saying it has helped them understand what happened to them and it helped them. We get a massive amount of flack as well. It’s extremely rewarding to hear it’s having a positive impact.
G – It’s worth remembering that the people who are defensive are defensive for a reason.
F – We get men writing into us telling us we’re being really unfair and it wasn’t their fault. I generally take them at face value and say – really sorry to hear this but if you’d like some evidence to maintain your boundaries and say no to stuff you don’t want to do and they go on the offensive. It’s not representative of the male population. The ones who feel motivated to get in touch with us are definitely not saying thank you it has helped me think differently, it’s more like – how dare you suggest I should go to prison for nearly killing my wife.
G – It reminds of what they say – it hurts my feelings when you talk about how I hurt your feelings – I don’t think they realise they are not the only man to say those things to us.
Do you have any support or strategy for when you get flak from men? I personally use – not all men go into my kitchen!
F – We’ve been fortunate, we’ve not had anything like the horror that a lot of women and women’s organisations have had on-line. I think that a lot of that because what we do is focused on MPs and the Press. I think the more we do social media, the more we’re going to see of that for sure. I just think everyone is persuadable. If we get scary stuff, we’ll just block them.
The men who are really angry because they want to strangle women and we look like we’re stopping them.
G – Is there any way women can get involved and help? Is there any MP that you need contacting? Are there any ways we can get involved and support you in some way?
F – We get lots of offers of volunteer support and are always very grateful. We tend to struggle to get back to people in a timely fashion. If everyone keeps an eye out on our website and we are very welcoming to people who are able to give some time to the campaign. The most important thing is that we want people to regularly write to their MPs. It is astonishingly effective.
We have a whole series of 2021 activities that we want to achieve at Parliament. We haven’t had our kick-off meeting for the year yet, it’s too early but we’ll be doing lots on the non-fatal strangulation piece later this year. There’s going to be an on-line harms bill. There’s heaps to do particularly in Scotland where I’m from which has been very tardy. There has been no real movement in Scotland on the rough sex defences or the strangulation.
Keep an eye on our website where we have actions that we update regularly. It’s boring admin but it’s so effective and we’d really welcome hearing from people who have had a response from their MPs or are able to take part in consultations. It’s impossible to underestimate how effective it can be as we have seen over the last 6 – 9 months with the Parliament at Westminster.
G – Even if your MP is terrible he is still going to be looking for the things he needs to do so it looks like he’s doing something. They do sometimes pick stuff up so it’s worth sending letters in.
F – We got cross party support for what we have done recently.
G – You can’t go against it without looking incredibly dodgy.
F – The MPs so far have been incredibly supportive. We might get some opposition at some point. It’s all part of the process, we welcome it.
G – You’re so nice
F – I can’t bear all the hideous stuff on-line and everyone is so angry. It’s such a contentious hideous subject I just want it to be positive. We don’t want to be mean to our enemies. I don’t want to rail at them on-line, I do want to challenge their thinking and for this to be a positive focused campaign. People can disagree with us and we are very polite.
G – If you do get people who disagree with you and actually engage in honest dialogue with you, it’s an opportunity for learning perhaps.
F - Twitter is particularly nasty; it lends itself to that adversarial which can be good or really difficult. It can be a welcome discussion tool as well.
G – Thank you very much, remember even though it might feel like an earthquake and with only a dustpan and brush to sweep it up, your work will be affecting women and girls that may never even meet. It’s a ripple effect and you will be changing people’s lives just by standing up and saying – no, this isn’t right.
F – I hope women listening to this will be as inspired as I was by the feminists at FiLiA. I did this because Karen Ingala Smith set up her Counting Dead Women project. I was inspired by those who had done work before me. It is possible to make change. It has been much easier than I thought it would be.
G – One last final question. What is your favourite cake?
F – I’ve been thinking about that all the way through. It’s Black forest gateau. I’ll have to make one this weekend.
G – Based on that I do believe we can be friends for life.
F – The website and contact are …
We Can't Consent To This (@Wecantconsentto) · Twitter
https://twitter.com/Wecantconsentto
Talk to your local schools, your male relatives, your friends your daughters and nieces. It’s really important because everyone deserves mutually, enjoyable, respectful and consenting sexual activity.