1. Hate speech and sexism
Within North America the term ‘hate speech’ is used more frequently than it is in
the UK. This term refers to speech which is considered in itself as an incitement
to violence and which is offensive enough to constitute violence in its own right.
Thus, if a racist demonstrator had a placard on which was written ‘Death to all
Blacks’ or a sign was written outside a Muslim American’s house which incited
violence against that particular family or against all Muslims, then there is the
possibility that a prosecution would take place. A similar move has taken place
within Britain to prosecute speech which could be considered an incitement
to racial hatred, and in 2006 the British Labour government under Tony Blair
tried to bring in legislation to tighten up the laws around such language. This
was largely due to public and media unease about political demonstrations
where extreme anti-Muslim statements and anti-American statements were
clearly seen on placards. However, the passage of this legislation has been
extremely slow, simply because of the difficulty of defining ‘incitement to racial
hatred’ tightly enough, so that it does not result in, for example, comedians who are critical of extremism being prosecuted for racial hatred. There was
a surprising public and political opposition to such laws as they were often
portrayed as a limitation to freedom of speech (which, of course, is not protected
constitutionally in the UK, as it is in the US). Even in the US, where the
notion of ‘hate speech’ has some legal status, there has been some difficulty
in bringing prosecutions under the current legislation because it needs to be
proved beyond reasonable doubt that the speech in question constituted an
incitement to violence (Butler, 1997).3
It is debatable whether sexism can be seen as a type of hate speech. In
some senses it shares certain characteristics with hate speech in that, in certain
cases (for example the use of lyrics such as ‘smack my bitch up’ in some
gangsta rap, which I discuss later in this chapter), it may be construed as
an incitement to violence against women in general, or as affirming violence
against women as normal. However, that is not to say that it can be easily
proven to have been intended as inciting violence. Sexism seems, even in its
most violent misogynistic manifestations, to be fundamentally different to hate
speech (such as homophobia, anti-Semitism and racism). It could be argued
that this is because of the very different relationship between women and men
within society and the other groups which are subject to discrimination. Racists,
anti-Semites and homophobes generally hate all members of a particular group
and they aim to separate them from the wider society and avoid contact with
them, sometimes to the point of wishing to injure or kill members of the group.
By contrast, society as a whole is based on the notion of the female–male
heterosexual couple who live together in an intimate relationship. That is not
to say that relations between women and men are equal within heterosexual
relationships, because it is clear that in many contexts women are abused and
oppressed within these seemingly intimate relations with men. For example,
recently in the British press there has been great debate about the murder
of an Iraqi Kurdish woman by her family who disapproved of her choice of
boyfriend; sexual violence and murder within heterosexual relationships are
far more common than violence and murder of women outside those relations.
However, it is impossible to imagine that hatred of women as a group would
result in genocide, as it did in the Holocaust, or an apartheid system, as in
South Africa, where women would be exiled to a separate ‘homeland’. Because
of the intimate relations which hold between heterosexual women and men,
misogynistic statements against women are usually made about sub-groups of
women, that is, those who are not behaving in a sufficiently feminineway (those
who are behaving in a strong, self-determining, non-deferent way) or those who
are considered to be behaving in an excessively feminine way (those who are
seen to be overly passive, or overly concerned with their appearance). Thus, throughout this book, I will be discussing hate speech and sexism as separate
phenomena, as although they both discriminate against groups of people, their
histories and the effects of such speech are different.
2. Contexts of sexism
It is clear that it is often confident women in the public sphere who tend to
be attacked through sexist language, where their sexuality or attractiveness is
drawn attention to, as if this disqualifies them from claiming a place in the public
sphere. For example, AnnWiddecombe, a former member of the Tory Shadow
Cabinet in Britain, is often discussed less in terms of her forthright opinions
and more in relation to her appearance and the fact that she is unmarried. In
a similar way, as Walsh (2001) has shown, newspaper reports suggested that
senior Labour Party member Margaret Beckett’s supposed lack of photogenic
qualities ruled her out of the Labour Party leadership elections. Page (2005)
has analysed the way that Cherie Booth/Blair and Hillary Rodham Clinton
have been described in ways that focus on crises in their personal lives rather
than on their professional careers and achievements. It seems as if in order
to attack particular women who have gained prominence within the public
sphere, newspapers can refer to a set of negative characteristics stereotypically
associated with women as a group, such as concern with attractiveness or
emotional crises, in order to undermine them politically or professionally (see
also Chapter 5).
Reference to these stereotypical characteristics has the effect of categorising
the particular woman as only a member of a minority group which does not
belong in the public sphere. To give an example of theway that sexist discourses
are used in this way: two female friends of mine worked as bus drivers for
several years, and both of them left their jobs because of the incessant reference
to supposed incompetence in driving, a quality stereotypically associated with
women as a group, as I mentioned in Chapter 1. Both of these women are
extremely competent drivers, but they stated that the constant jokes about and
reference to such problems in driving ended by undermining their confidence.
For example, on one occasion when a conductor was getting onto the bus that
one of my friends was going to drive, a workmate called out to the conductor,
‘Oh, you’re on with her, watch yourself,’ implying that she might crash the bus.
This is not an overtly sexist statement as such but it does draw on stereotypical
beliefs about women. For both of these women bus drivers, it was the repetitive
and tedious nature of these comments, by both workmates and the general
public, which contributed to their decision to leave. What both of them remarked
upon was the fact that, because the assertions were made with reference to
women as a group, it was not possible to respond to the assertions about their own driving skills or to counter the claims that women are bad drivers.4 These
jobs are primarily male jobs and they are seen to be devalued when women
take them. This may explain the hostility to women which is expressed in
stereotypically sexist comments about women drivers.