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Some media language trivialises IMF chief attempted rape charges
By Katie Nguyen
LONDON (TrustLaw) - When it comes to women, Britain's coalition government keeps putting its foot in it. Or at least members of the coalition's senior partner, the Conservatives, do.
So far, we've had Universities Minister David Willetts appearing to blame a lack of jobs for aspiring working men on the rise of equal rights for women. "Feminism trumps egalitarianism," Willetts said at a press briefing on the government's social mobility strategy last month.
A few weeks later, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron was accused of being patronising and sexist for telling a female opposition cabinet member to "calm down, dear" during an exchange in the House of Commons.
But the biggest storm was caused last week when Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, yet another (centre-right) Tory, seemed to suggest that "date rape" was not as serious as other kinds of rape. He later clarified his comments, saying he didn't intend to choose words that gave the impression that all rape was not serious.
“In each instance the government's defence was that they were misunderstood -- by accident or design," the left-leaning Guardian newspaper reported. "But some of their female parliamentary colleagues are muttering that perhaps this male-dominated government needs some equal opportunities training."
Writing in the New Statesman magazine, journalist and feminist activist Laurie Penny said Clarke was "asking for it".
"Ken Clarke's repulsive, reactionary comments are part of a culture that still misunderstands consent, punishes female sexual agency, and wilfully ignores the scale and prevalence of rape," she said.
"His views are hardly unusual, and they are grounded on a better understanding of the criminal justice system than many ordinary sexists. Unfortunately, Clarke is no ordinary sexist. He is the Minister for Justice, and as such, should be held to a standard which absolutely precludes the utterance or intimation of such prejudices in public."
The poor choice of words from members of Britain's political elite coincides with the scandal involving former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose arrest in New York on charges of attempting to rape a hotel worker has had commentators picking over everything from the "great seducer's" womanising past to the French way of flirting.
For the discussion of the case to even be framed in these terms has appalled many women's rights activists, and again stirred up the debate about how language is deliberately being used to dismiss, minimise and undermine women's concerns.
"The thing about language is it informs how the issues are discussed, it informs discourse, the dialogue and then the policy decisions and that's why it's important," said Vivienne Hayes, chief executive of the Women's Resource Centre, a UK umbrella group which campaigns and lobbies for key issues in the sector.
"Sometimes people say, 'why get upset again about language?', but it's language that informs what's happening and also, language normalises behaviour which is not acceptable," she told TrustLaw.
"There's a massive difference between a seducer and a rapist and I think we need stop blurring the boundaries."
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