By Gemma Aitchison, founder and director of YES Matters UK. This article was adapted from the speech Gemma gave at #FiLiA2021 during the Sexualisation of Young Girls Panel.

In October 2021, I spoke on the panel of the Sexualisation of Girls at FiLiA. During this panel, I answered questions put to me by the Radical Girlss group who made up the rest of the panel.

Many of you will know my story and why I became a radical feminist. It was after the rape and murder of my 16-year-old sister Sasha. The reason she was killed and the reason that girls experience harm and injustices is for one reason and one reason only: it’s because they are girls. It’s not because of their identity or feelings. It’s not because of what they’re wearing. It’s not because of where they walk and it’s not because a bus driver hasn’t saved them.  It’s because they’re girls and violence against women and girls is dismissed purely because it is violence against women and girls. That’s why it’s not taken seriously. 

With all the media awareness around Sarah Everard, I’m sure many of you have noticed that the man who murdered Sarah, like the man who murdered my sister, had committed previous sexual offences against women and girls.

And so what I really feel strongly about as a feminist is that if as a society we listen to girls instead of dismissing them as objects and not subjects. If we listen to what they have to say and acknowledge them as credible witnesses to their own experiences when men flash them and film them and touch them and make them uncomfortable. If we listen to them, we can prevent further abuse and escalation before there’s a dead body at the end.

I think the term “not all men” summarises it perfectly. It shows that our society prioritises men’s feelings over women’s lives. That comes from gender stereotypes, without a doubt. We have the sexual objectification of girls. This attitude of entitlement comes from the subject being entitled to the object. The object adheres to the product specification of the subject, which is heavily influenced by pornography. We are supposed to be young and thin and white and hairless. As Andrea Dworkin said how can you expect one half of the population to be safe, when the other half films their abuse and puts it into entertainment categories for their pleasure. If our abuse is their goal for their sexual gratification then, of course, girls are not safe. And I do think it’s especially prevalent in pornography. It reinforces those gender stereotypes as well as racism and it also paints a target on our girls’ backs. They tell the “actors” to be thin and hairless like little girls and it promotes paedophilia. This is something schools need to acknowledge about the danger girls face in their lives.

Social media and pornography have a huge impact on our children’s mental health and safety. Just because it’s not some dodgy guy in a trench coat hanging out around a park doesn’t mean that it’s not child grooming. OnlyFans is a Child Pimp. Porn hub is a Child Groomer. They are grooming our children and our society allows it. A well-known quote from Gail Dines comes to mind: If tomorrow, women woke up and decided they really liked their bodies, just think how many industries would go out of business?” We profit on the backs of our women and girls. We profit from creating mental health problems and body issues in our children. 

We do this to such an extent, prioritising and normalising capitalism and dick culture that when you point out that something isn’t ok like pornography or pole dancing kids’ parties, you are named as the problem. We have the phrase “Vanilla Sex” which now means sexual intercourse without physical or verbal abuse or degrading acts – it’s being used as a term to shame someone who doesn’t want abuse and violence as part of sex. This means that the pornography narrative has become normalised and men who make and watch pornography are valued in our society.

If you told a police officer thirty years ago that a man strangled, beat, urinated on, bruised you and you cried throughout, he may have taken the rape allegation seriously. Now the man can claim that he didn’t know that meant she didn’t consent because that’s what is shown in pornography. We have all heard of the rough sex defence but pornography cannot be both a harmless fantasy and a murder defence.

And so, when it comes to how this impacts our children, and I will say children because boys too -because currently the average age of exposure to pornography in the UK is 11 years old, and if our boys are watching pornography they are being told that this is what sexual activity should be, that this is what they should find attractive and want. We talk about positive reinforcement when it comes to getting children to behave in certain ways and I ask you what is more positive reinforcement than an orgasm? And so pornography is teaching our children what to want from others and what to expect of themselves.

Men don’t like hearing this, but they either have self-control or they don’t. They cannot have the self-control to be in charge of our institutions, our governments, our religions and our corporations but then when they see a woman alone in a short skirt they argue… ‘well I cannot control myself’.

The “boys will be boys/she’s asking for it” narrative directly contradicts the “not all men” narrative so which is it, lads? You can’t have both. They get furious when you point this out to them on the internet, by the way, it’s quite fun. This isn’t about women or girls being too sexy, it’s about men avoiding responsibility for their behaviour. It’s like they’re allergic to accountability. If you have so little self-control then we have to take away your strip clubs and pornography and Daily Star and not let you be in charge of anything.

Essentially, we need to get over this ‘not all me’ barrier. Because it’s a lie, as men all admit as soon as they have a teenage daughter when they suddenly agree it is all men and he knows what they’re like. Because it’s irrelevant, it shouldn’t take every single man to recognise the problem before we do something about it.

But also, because until we acknowledge there is a problem with men and their behaviour, we cannot ask why and we cannot prevent it. To continue to ignore this fails our boys and our girls alike. Our children deserve a safe future in which they are respected and they deserve happy and healthy relationships with themselves and each other. If only men’s feelings weren’t the priority perhaps we could do that.

Gemma Aitchison is the founder and director of YES Matters UK an organisation that provides free victim rehabilitation services for children who are victims of sexual violence and exploitation. Working-class radical feminist activist and survivor. Doctor Who fan and really likes cake. If you need help or support from YES Matters UK, please contact them at www.yes-matters.co.uk