Rape Culture in Schools and Tackling Sexual Violence Amongst Young People with Sophie Whitehead | Transcript
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Hannah Witton
Hi everyone. Welcome back to Doing It, the sex and relationships podcast where sex has never been so nerdy with me, your host, Hannah Witton. In this week's episode, I am joined by Sophie Whitehead. Sophie is a writer, researcher, and sex educator. She's currently working on her PhD at King's College London, where she's researching the nature of teen rape culture in the online era, and the experiences of young people at the intersection of this. And she also works with the School of Sex Ed on using sex education to combat rape culture in schools. I really wanted to speak to Sophie as addressing sexual violence and rape culture within school environments is so important, and so wanted to share more of her expertise and advice on the topic.
Sophie and I spoke all about what rape culture in schools actually looks like, and how teachers can counteract this by embedding principles of consent and empathy in all aspects of school. We discussed the delicate nuance of addressing instances of sexual violence in school in a way that takes care of the survivor, but also works towards educating and reintegrating the perpetrator. We also talked about how to avoid the trap of alienating LGBTQ+ students, and reinforcing gender stereotypes when discussing sexual assault in sex ed, what Sophie thinks about single versus mixed gender sex education, and why assemblies are a terrible way to address sexual violence or any matters of sex ed. I found this chat so useful in understanding more about the impact of online exposure on young people, and how schools can be doing more to address peer on peer sexual violence.
Please note, we talk about rape, culture and sexual violence throughout this episode, so please do look after yourself.
And as usual, you can find more info and links to everything that we talked about in this episode in the show notes over at DoingItPodcast.co.uk, and please let us know what you think over on our Twitter or Instagram, which is @DoingItPodcast. If you'd like this episode, please give us a rating and review over on iTunes and Spotify, it's really appreciated. And without further ado, here's my conversation with the brilliant Sophie Whitehead.
Hannah Witton
Sophie, welcome to Doing It. I am so pleased to have you on. I'm really excited to have this chat. I think it's gonna get like quite deep, exploring a topic that I haven't really like dived into before, but I think it's very important. So first off, do you want to kind of briefly explain your PhD research for our listeners?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, sure. So the project is about rape culture and young people on the internet basically. And it's kind of drawing on the way that our current moment has this heightened sense of awareness around sexual violence and sexual harassment, following the me too campaign as a few years ago, and then also more recent, horrific events like the death of Sarah Everard, and Sabina Nessa, and various other issues that have been in the media about sexual violence and harassment. And it's kind of looking at the way that that intersects with this sort of deep smartphone connectivity that we currently have, in the way that we live, and look at those things through the case study of the Everyone's Invited website, which for anyone who hasn't come across it is a website, which is intended as a space for people to anonymously submit testimonies about their experiences of sexual violence or sexual harassment.
Hannah Witton
Is that just for young people, or for any age?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, it's for any age, but the majority of people, as far as I know, have been young people like teenagers at school or university, and that's where it became, that's why it became really popular, I guess, because, basically, around the time of the Sara Everard news story was, was the time when it gained a lot of media attention, because I think people hadn't really considered the extent of sexual abuse amongst teenagers, until it was sort of discussed in the media, and then there was a big sort of policy and government response to it. So yeah, in short, the research is looking at that case study, and sort of the things that facilitated it, why it needed to happen, and also where it might go next.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Why do you think it is so hard for like people to hear and also talk about, like sexual violence when it comes to young people, especially teenagers? And like you said, there was this big government response and stuff to it, so like, you know, is it like, what kind of impact is that going to have? Is it too little, too late kind of thing? Like, why, why is this all happening now? And why do we find it so hard?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, I think part of why I find it so hard. It's because it's such a complex, multifaceted issue, and it's historical issue. Like it's emerged in the media in the last couple of years and so we've become aware of it collectively. But it's not a new issue necessarily. It's just that the internet has provided this platform for people to talk about it and tell their stories in a way that hasn't been available before. And I think the reason why it's difficult to talk about is just because, like, where, where do we begin with this huge cultural societal issue? Obviously, there are lots of different kind of tangents to how we address it, and education is one of them and that's the kind of angle that I come at this from, from working in sex education, but then there are just so many different other issues that feed into this, and it's such a big, historical, cultural issue, that it's difficult to kind of pinpoint, and map out an approach to actually even coming close to resolving this without thinking about like, huge, huge kind of structural changes to the way that we live.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. What does that look like in schools then? Because obviously, like in terms of tackling sexual violence in society, like you said, it's so multifaceted, there's all of these different parts of it that we need to address in order to address sexual violence. But if we narrow in on schools, what is going on there? And can you talk a bit about what rape culture in schools can look like? And maybe kind of like some things that are happening in schools that maybe we wouldn't recognise as rape culture, but actually it is.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, for sure. So I think in terms of what rape culture actually looks like, I suppose rape culture is the term that describes any kind of behaviour, however, however small or seemingly insignificant, that contributes to this broader issue of kind of normalising or even condoning different forms of sexual violence or sexual harassment. And in terms of like school specific things, I think it could be things like uniform codes, for example. Like we hear so many stories about girls, especially in schools, who are told repeatedly to keep their skirts at certain length, and to avoid wearing shirts that are see through so that you can't see bra straps, and just so many tiny things like that
Hannah Witton
I mean, don't have white shirts. This is a stone I will die on, just don't have white shirts as uniform.
Sophie Whitehead
Yes. Yeah, definitely. So they're kind of things like that, that seem like fairly innocuous to some people, but feed into this general messaging around how everyone's always got their eyes on these kind of girls and women's bodies, basically, and they're always being policed in some way. And that contributes, in some small way, to kind of bigger victim blaming discourses, I suppose about, you know, what people wear as contributing to sexual violence when obviously, that's nonsense. But it's small things like that, and, and, you know, the odd comment from a teacher, that's not to kind of deride teachers in any way, a lot of teachers do amazing work with young people on things like this. But I think all of those kind of minor things contribute to just a general attitude, I suppose, which in a lot of ways mirrors, like we said before, the issues in society more broadly. But yeah, I think in schools there, there really has to be a kind of concerted effort to try to challenge those things.
Hannah Witton
Mm hmm. And what are some ways that they can do this? Obviously, like relationships and sex education is like a huge opportunity. But outside of that, like for a lot of schools, it's still very much is this like tick box exercise of like, we did the sex ed. So how can it be this more kind of like, cultural change in schools to address rape culture and sexual violence?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, definitely. It's a really important question. I think things like, the whole school approach or the way that they deal with speaking with children, or asking children to do things, or working with children. Like for example, in our sex education work when, we sometimes do teacher training as well, because I work with School of Sexuality Education, I know some of my colleagues have chatted with you before about some of this stuff.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Sophie Whitehead
But modelling the things that we expect to see in our relationships in the relationships between staff and students is really important as well, even if it's just things like, like, things to do with consent and modelling that you don't kind of take someone's stuff, or demand that someone does something, or touch someone if they don't want to be touched, and kind of embedding those principles within the way that different people interact within the school. And embedding a kind of, I know it sounds very abstract, but trying to work back from the abstract into something more tangible, thinking about how schools can embed a certain kind of empathy and kind of communication in the day to day running of the school, even if it's just things like being able to communicate exactly why the expectations in a certain school are a certain way. Or just being able to kind of speak to students on a level that acknowledges that they are human beings, and not just sort of figures that should be doing what they're told by the sort of the staff within the building, I suppose. Which all, they all sound like, kind of abstract or disconnected from the issue, but I think they feed into a bigger, a bigger thing, which is connected to the issue, which is just about sort of boundaries and respect.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And young people feeling empowered in their school environment to be able to, like, speak up and say, like, when they think that something like shouldn't be happening.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, for sure.
Hannah Witton
Whether that's with, like, amongst their peers, as well, like, yeah, for sure. So part of your research is about like, the internet, and like you said, our smartphones and stuff. And I'm so fascinated by this part of it, because I feel like a lot of a lot of teachers are like, around my age, and I consider like, at least like, like my generation, like millennials, like, you know, we're known to be like, on our phones and like, you know, we grew, we grew up with the internet, and we kind of we saw a lot of those changes. However, what young people have access to now, as teenagers, is so different to like, what, and I don't know how old you are, but I feel like similar age to me, like what we had access to in school. Like, I didn't get my first smartphone until I was 20. But I still had the internet, but I had to go home and sit at a computer to access MSN, it wasn't like in my back pocket at all times. And I'm just really curious as to like, what kind of, what kind of impact is that having on young people in terms of their relationships? And like, how they're learning and thinking about sex? But then also, like, I don't know, like, is it a bad thing? But that, I mean, it's never as simple as like this thing good, this thing bad. But like, yeah, what are some of the things that we should be aware of that? Like, is the like the experience of off that like having a smartphone when you're in school, like, what is that like? I don't know.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's a minefield, honestly. I think, like you say, it's never as simple as this is the good thing, this is a bad thing. But I think that if we were to kind of separate it into those categories, for the sake of working through the different topics, I guess the issue, the issue of image based sexual abuse, for example, which comes up at various points in, in my research, and online sexual harassment and stuff. And obviously, all of those different things are facilitated by technology, and smartphone use, and so on. That's not to say that they're necessarily the fault of those things, they're, in some ways, just the kind of conduits that those different forms of harassment or abuse happen in, and they're not exclusive to technology. So it's a kind of new way of experiencing sexual harassment, which obviously is awful. But also, it's not, it's not the only way that we experienced that, it's just a kind of modern, kind of new form of it.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, one of the things I think about in terms of like, the tech specific things that come up is how, like, little control you have over something once it's out there, and the permanence of things on the on the internet, which like we wouldn't have necessarily had before without that, and I think add does add, like this extra layer, but is very, like our current like, tech communication revolution that we're going through, now specific.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, I think there's, I mean, there are some kind of ways that it that it can be addressed. So for example, there's a body called the Internet Watch Foundation, which I think works in collaboration with the police, but I think also does independent work. And I mean, that might not be accurate, I can't remember, but they basically work to remove any kind of content that's harmful for young people. So if, for example, a 16 year old sent a nude to whoever they were dating, and that person posted it online, then they could contact the Internet Watch Foundation, and the Internet Watch Foundation would hopefully be able to remove it from the platform that it's been uploaded to. And that's not a foolproof solution because if something is shared, like on Snapchat, or over WhatsApp or whatever, then that's different, because it's not like on a website, and so it can't be tracked down as easily.
Hannah Witton
Right, okay, yeah.
Sophie Whitehead
I suppose it's one way of assuaging the fears that a lot of people have about something like, quote unquote, being on the internet forever, it might sort of circulate forever between, like it could do via text, for example, which can't be kind of traced in the same way. But it's not like someone will be able to Google your name and find that picture. Because it wouldn't be on sort of URL internet access.
Hannah Witton
And it wouldn't necessarily be connected to your name or like, or even like, on the first page of results.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah. So yeah, but it is really difficult. I think it's also an issue where like, something I find really interesting to navigate with all of this stuff is that we kind of link a lot of these issues, to, to the law and to kind of legal frameworks, which that's part of the issue with this, that even though the law is really important, we know from evidence that the law has historically not good at dealing with sexual violence, and the criminal justice system does not have a good track record of dealing with any kind of sexual violence. And that's really compounded -
Hannah Witton
Or stuff to do with the internet as well.
Sophie Whitehead
Exactly. So when, so when you're, when you're trying to address issues of sexual violence that are like technologically mediated in some way, it's just like, such a lack of faith, honestly, in the criminal justice system to address it, which is really quite bleak. But I guess, I mean, that's part of what this projects looking at. So my, in my research stuff, because this website has been created for young people, any people, to tell their stories, presumably, because a lot of them haven't had that channel to tell the stories elsewhere through the sort of formal mechanisms that are in place, supposedly, to offer the the opportunity for kind of victims to come forward. But but a lot of victims don't, whether it's an online experience of sexual violence or not, just because, you know, the track record of those things being addressed isn't good, like I said.
Hannah Witton
So when instances of like peer to peer sexual violence like have occurred in in schools, like what are some of the ways that you've seen maybe schools address this or like, best practices for addressing it where it like, takes into account the harm that has been done and prioritises the survivor, but then also like, allows the perpetrator to still kind of like, be held accountable, but then reintegrated into that school community, and doesn't just completely like ostracise them or or demonise them? Have you seen, like how a school's like handling this when accusations come up, that aren't like, on an anonymous website, when they're like actually happening in the school?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really difficult for schools to address, especially when they have to do so within the kind of their legal requirements to do with safeguarding, which means that if certain things are, if they're told certain things, then they're legally obliged to take them to the police in some instances, or to local authorities. So that can create kind of difficulties for some teachers, I've certainly spoken to a couple of teachers who have found that that's meant that they haven't been able to have the sort of conversations that they've wanted to with young people, because it's ended up having to be sort of transferred to an issue that the police, or the local authorities, are dealing with. And so the teachers are sort of limited in what they can say or do. But in in the cases where that hasn't occurred, I think just kind of ensuring that the school offers kind of places for both students to talk about what's happened and maybe, if appropriate, to create some kind of sort of reconciliation type framework between the two, not necessarily where they have to kind of sit around and talk to each other and hash it out until whatever has happened has been resolved, but like, at least given the opportunity for them to have the space to have those conversations, and I think speaking to the children not just as individuals as well, but as collective year groups, or as a whole school, and address these things.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, because these things get found out amongst peers as well, and they're going to affect anyone really in that group.
Sophie Whitehead
Definitely. I think one thing that time and time again, we hear young people say they don't want when these issues occur is assemblies for the whole school to sit and listen. Even thought, I swear, most teachers now are aware that an assembly is just not the way to address like a sexual violence problem within a year group. Still they persist. So, that's like what not to do.
Hannah Witton
I love that as a really practical tip. Like your school has a chlamydia outbreak, let's not don't do an assembly about chlamydia, that's not the way forward.
Sophie Whitehead
Whenever I speak to young people about this and ask what their thoughts are on sex education, or dealing with issues of sexual harassment, honestly, most of the time, the first thing they say is, well, we had this assembly and it was oh my god, it was so so much, please no more.
Hannah Witton
Oh my God. Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah. Cuz it often is just like, okay, we need to address this, we need to address this en masse. And, like, I do feel for teachers in terms of like the lack of time and resources that they have in order to be able to like, do the curriculum.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
And then also like all of this stuff around students' general health and well being.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
And you're just like -
Sophie Whitehead
it's an impossible task.
Hannah Witton
It's a lot. It really is a lot. I wanted to talk a bit about like RSE and the the role of that in this whole conversation, and just wanted to hear your thoughts on what does trauma-informed RSE mean? And how can teachers try and like, implement that in the sex ed that they're delivering?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, definitely. That's such an important question. I guess it's basically just about being aware of the different kind of literature, or research, or experience, that we can draw upon to make sure that sex education isn't only about the sort of, well, I think we've got past hopefully, the point of sex education being focused on kind of biology or reproductive systems, but even when we stretch it out to be focused on relationships, and we think about consent as well, that kind of, the trauma informed angle is still sort of absent in a lot of cases. And I think that, to incorporate that is basically just to kind of, almost to, to, to humanise it in some way, because it kind of, I think can obviously contribute like very straightforward knowledge about the experience of trauma in relation to sexual violence, but also, I think, remind students and staff when talking about these issues, that we're talking about experiences that in some cases are really kind of horrific and impactful for people and have long lasting impacts, and it's important to be aware of those things. And it also plays a role of sort of reminding the people in the room, whether that's a member of staff delivering the sex education, or the students in the group, that these aren't necessarily abstract and removed topics that we're talking about. They're issues that likely have affected people in the room, and it's really crucial that we're kind of sensitive to that, which I think is an important thing to bear in mind with trauma informed practice, but also when we speak about all kinds of other things in sex education as well, like sometimes there can be a tendency to talk about different sort of gender identities, or different sexualities, or all kinds of different experiences, as though it's like an over that isn't in the room. And I think it's generally fairly good practice in sex education, maybe in education in general, to kind of never assume that the thing that you're discussing is just completely absent from the group that's there.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, that's so true, because you can often like have a, like a sex ed lesson where you're talking about, like, how to prevent sexual violence, or like how to how to spot red flags in unhealthy relationships, as if that's something that maybe those students will have to do in the future, without acknowledging that it's like maybe in their present, or something that they've experienced previously.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Hannah Witton
And it's just like, well, how is this help gonna help me now? Like, I already went through this. So like now what, you know
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, it can be important as well, from a sort of pedagogical point of view, to get the students on board with what you're talking about. Because hopefully, when you teach in that way, or you speak about these topics in that way, it kind of conveys the fact that like, something is at stake here. Like we're talking about people's lives. We're not talking about this like, imagined thing and a few years time, but isn't relevant to us right now. Yeah, I think I veered slightly off topic from your question, but.
Hannah Witton
No, no, it's all good. You mentioned about kind of like also the talking about, like different sexualities and genders as if like, again, it's like, not in the room without acknowledging the fact that, you know, plenty of students will be LGBTQ+. And so I was wondering, like, how do you create an inclusive approach to talking about like rape culture and sexual violence in schools? Because whilst I do think it's really important to acknowledge that sexual violence is incredibly gendered, I do think that we can sometimes fall into this trap of then only discussing that, and then LGBTQ+ students either feeling like, it's not about them, or then also like perpetuating like, harmful ideas around like men not being - like men can't be sexually harassed, or sexually assaulted, and things like that. So I was just wondering how like, you see these conversations happening, where they are, like, where they are LGBTQ+ inclusive as well?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah. So when, with School of Sex Ed when we teach about sexual violence, or we talk about it in the classroom, we tend to start off by thinking about the sort of the gender binary and the expectations that are placed on the kind of the figures of the gender binary of the kind of ideal or stereotypical man or woman, and then try to extrapolate from those things. So for example, like, quote unquote, dominant man, passive woman, and try to sort of extrapolate from those the the harmful ideas that contribute to rape culture, and sexual violence, and then think about how, if someone doesn't conform to those things, whether it's because they're not heterosexual, or because they are a man who doesn't fit that kind of dominant stereotype, or a woman who doesn't fit whatever the expectations are of that kind of stereotypical woman figure, or someone who defies the gender binary and doesn't want to be categorised as man or woman, like we tried to think about how all of those different experiences of not conforming to expectation can also contribute to, not contribute to but can also be part of an experience of sexual violence, like if someone isn't conforming in some way, then that can contribute to an experience of of abuse or of kind of isolation. So yeah, I guess we think about it in those terms.
And then also just speak about it overtly. I mean, like you say, it is important to acknowledge that sexual violence is a gendered issue, and that it's often tied up with a kind of misogynistic attitude, and the concept of rape culture has that kind of history of being associated with feminist activism against gender based violence, but also that there are all kinds of people who have experiences of sexual violence, and in some cases, especially with men or gender non conforming people, there can be this sort of, I mean, shame is just such such a horrific part of experiences of sexual violence for a lot of people, but I think there's that added layer of kind of shame for people who don't, I guess, identify with what what we may be expected a victim of sexual violence to be.
Hannah Witton
There's like a narrative of like, of sexual violence of like this kind of person as a perpetrator and this kind of person as a victim and yeah, then there's like the added shame on top of that of like, well, this wasn't supposed to have happened to me.
Sophie Whitehead
Exactly. And also like, yeah, even that kind of dichotomy of victim and perpetrator. Even though it's sometimes necessary to think in those terms to kind of deduce what, what the nature of the situation is, even that can also be sort of, it's never as simple right, as they're just being the victim and the perpetrator, or it's rarely that simple. Like, often, someone who is a perpetrator of sexual violence will themselves have a history of some kind of abuse, not necessarily always, but that that can be the case. And so someone is likely to be both victim and perpetrator, maybe not within the same situation, but if we look at that kind of overall experiences. So yeah, it's really complex. And I think, in terms of education, and dealing with that, we just tried to emphasise that complexity, I suppose, and try to kind of encourage students to, to think about those different kinds of factors and and challenge that the narrative like you say, of who we expect these people to be.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. I'm really curious as to like how you see this playing out in single sex schools, like do students who attend single sex schools have like a different experience with peer to peer sexual violence and a different like relationship to that. But then also, how can we still have those conversations in those schools? Because once the out in the big bad world, like, then, you know, that surrounded by everybody, so yeah, how is that different in a way?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's different in the context of classroom because there is inevitably a slightly different dynamic when you're teaching a mixed group, rather than when you're teaching a group in a single sex school. But even the students who go to those schools, at the weekend will socialise with all different kids from all different schools, often with the students from their kind of corresponding school, but the girls or boys side. So I suppose, like, the the issues that are addressed, when we're thinking about sexual violence and sexual harassment, are often things that don't necessarily occur on the school grounds. Like, there'll be things that happen at parties at the weekend, maybe, or over social media, in some cases, it happens in school and they're certainly kind of stories related to school specific settings. But I think the topics that we discuss, in my own experience anyway, are often fairly similar across those different contexts. I guess maybe what's different is the nature of the conversation, like, I sometimes find that in girls groups especially, it can sometimes be easier for girls to have these conversations when they are just with a group of girls. But that's probably the main observation that I have. I don't think that necessarily the experiences themselves are wildly different.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, no, that's a good point that a lot of it is it's not happening at school. It's, it's kind of it's happening with maybe people they go to school with, but it's, like, on their phones, at the weekends, like you said. Kind of shifting gears a bit, back to kind of like talking about the internet, and media, and stuff, what about good old porn? Our friendly, neighbourhood porn.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, where do we begin?
Hannah Witton
I know. I'm just curious. Like, I feel like one of the more reductive narratives that I hear a lot around porn, is that like, porn is making young people sexually violent. And that, to me, just doesn't like, doesn't get to what is going to become a useful conversation. And I was, yeah, I was wondering, like, what are some of the best ways for for schools in general, and then also, like in RSE to approach the topic of pornography?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Specifically talking about I guess, like mainstream, free, pornography.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, definitely. So I think you're totally right. Like, it's, it's just reductive and probably unhelpful to be like, porn is bad, and is teaching all the young people to be violent. I mean, that said, I think that there's a kind of, there's a middle ground to be found between being non judgmental, and not shaming anyone for not shaming any students or teenagers for what's inevitably a part of their kind of adolescent curiosity about sex, and bodies, and so on. But also kind of engaging them in critical conversations about the issues that people might have with porn, because like you say, if we're thinking specifically about mainstream, freely available porn, often it does kind of show tropes of racism, and misogyny, and in some cases, sexual violence, or sexualization of minors in some cases. So there are plenty of issues that we could unpack with mainstream porn. I think one way that, one way that we think about it is thinking about media more broadly.
So porn as one example of the way that sex is shown to us through media, but also thinking about the way that we understand sex and relationships through like mainstream Hollywood media as well, which even though it's not as overt, obviously, it's often, like slightly more disguised, or we might not see people's bodies as clearly as we might on porn. But there's so there's often a kind of similarity or overlap in the way that certain narratives are conveyed about the role of different people within different relationships, and also expectations of different people, depending on gender, and race, and background, and I think we can kind of take an objective, or maybe not necessary objective, maybe it doesn't have to be objective, but we can critique these things without putting this kind of mass, I guess, criticism and shaming label onto them.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, it's like, you're no longer allowed to enjoy rom coms. Yeah, that's just not, that's just not gonna happen. Yeah, yeah. It is often about like, thinking critically about these things whilst also, yeah, not shaming just the fact that like, hey, I loved that, that was great. You know, but I'm also aware that it's not real life.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's, that's it, like in education, obviously, there are other angles that people might come at this out on my thinking about critiquing porn and the porn industry, but in education capacity, when you're speaking to like 14 year olds, about what they understand about sex or about relationships from the porn that they say, or from the media that they consume, what you really want us to just get them thinking like, we're not there to deliver some kind of dogma about what they should or shouldn't do. We just want the kind of seeds of thought to develop, I suppose, and then, and then they can kind of make their own choices, but we're just equipping them with, I guess, like some kind of critical ability to be able to do that.
Hannah Witton
Mm hmm. Yeah. No, that makes absolute sense. We have some questions from folks on Instagram. Somebody asked, in your research, how do you define rape as it means different things to different people?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, that's, that's a really good question. So I actually don't necessarily - I define rape culture more than I define rape. And I define rape culture as this kind of insidious collection of attitudes and behaviours that normalises or even in some cases, encourages harmful, harmful behaviours that contribute to sexual harassment and sexual violence. I think I don't, I don't speak overtly about rape, I guess because the the experiences of the people that I'm thinking about, and the testimonies that I'm thinking about, are really broad and go beyond any definition of rape. But it's more that they're all different versions of things that in some way, kind of link to this, that link to different rape definitions, I suppose.
Hannah Witton
Somebody asked, how to handle discussion with someone who doesn't believe rape culture exists? I feel like this is something that a lot of us have come up against and then when you're like, in that when you're on the spot, like, oh, God, how do I like prove to you that this thing exists that is just so embedded in my lived experience? And yet you're like, nah.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, that's so hard. I mean, I feel like the best way to to convey anything links to this is just through like, actual accounts of people's experiences - not necessarily that this person should have to justify their belief in rape culture to this rape culture denier with our own personal stories, but I think, I think we can see through I mean, I encourage this person who denies rape culture to go and read the testimonies on the Everyone's Invited website, and then have a conversation about it, because maybe, maybe that would make them reflect a little bit.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And like everyday sexism as well, is another great one to kind of, it's all it's all, like, from big to like, really small, like you said, like, just those things that we often just like pass off as just like, oh, that's just that's normal. Because it has been completely normalised.
Sophie Whitehead
Definitely, I think that's it. Yeah, just kind of being able to draw the connections and understanding that when people talk about rape culture, they're not talking about a culture where rape is ubiquitous, and the most severe forms of sexual violence are commonplace, even though they're much more commonplace than they should be, obviously. That's not what rape culture means. It means those examples are linked to the smaller, subtler, more frequent instances of harassment or, or just kind of uncomfortable situations, or comments, or attitudes that contribute to a culture where those more severe examples, I suppose, continue to proliferate. And I think the issue in someone who is resistant to the concept of rape culture, is that there isn't that, there isn't that willingness to draw the links between those two things?
Hannah Witton
Yeah, you can see a lot of resistance sometimes from people who are like, well, how does this joke in scare quotes, how does this joke link to an extreme form of sexual violence? Like where - like not being able to, like see that connection.
Sophie Whitehead
And it's difficult, because part of me thinks that, it's useful to think, like, I don't know whether you've seen it, but there are like graphics that exist of a pyramid, where at the bottom of the pyramid, there are examples, like jokes that you say, or kind of wolf whistling or comments, and then it goes up the pyramid and the pinnacle of the pyramid is like rape and severe sexual violence. And, and I think, in some ways, that's maybe useful for someone who's really resistant to the concept, to see the build-up and the connections between those things. But I equally think that in some cases, that can be really harmful to use that kind of thing as an example, because then it kind of creates this idea that there's a sort of hierarchy of sexual violence and sexual harassment, which is really murky territory. And I think is an idea that should definitely be treated with a lot of caution. Because obviously, we don't want to, we don't want to frame things in terms of kind of one person's experience being worse or more painful than another because then like, what, where do we end up?
Hannah Witton
Yeah, and also people's responses to things are so varied and different as well. So like, you know, in this hierarchical pyramid, you might have somebody who's experienced something that's like further to the top, but because of like luck in terms of their personality, or access to support and therapy, is like not impacting them in the same way that something that's like, lower down this pyramid might affect, someone from a different background, with less access to resources and things like that.
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, for sure. I think there's, there's just too much of a risk, I suppose, of all of those complexities that you've just mentioned, being kind of reduced to an infographic when we tried to think about sexual violence, purely on a spectrum. But, in some cases, as a starting point of a conversation, if we can acknowledge the many flaws of thinking about it as a spectrum, or as a pyramid, sometimes it can be helpful to kind of just visually demonstrate the connections between the jokes and rape.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, exactly. I'm curious if you have any thoughts about this person's question. They've said, what more can be done in primary schools around this work? Are there even any conversations currently happening about like trying to address this stuff as early as in primary school?
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, there's definitely conversation happening about it. And I know that in the kind of Ofsted review and the government kind of parliamentary debates and discussions that have come out of that, there's been, I suppose an acceptance of the fact that young people, and educators, and experts, are fairly unanimous in saying that this needs to happen earlier. This being sex education and relationship education. So I hope that as a result of that there is kind of change being made in terms of curriculum plans, and so on. And I don't personally ever really go into primary schools to do any of this work. I think that's partly because a lot of primary schools don't, don't tend to get external providers in for this kind of thing in the same way that secondary schools do. Because their classroom teachers will spend all day with them in the way that in secondary school people have all different teachers for different subjects. But there are definitely resources out there for teachers who are interested in kind of changing things for the better with this.
And I think similar to with secondary schools, to be honest, just sort of establishing those principles of consent, and giving voice to young people, and being able to open up about conversations and really basic things like making sure that young people know the anatomical names for parts of their body, and they can, because like, they can't talk about something that's happened to them if they can't name it. And sometimes when there's a bit of sort of taboo around teaching young children about genitals and so on, it just is so frustrating, because it's such a fundamental part of keeping them safe, making sure that they know how to talk about things, if anything were to happened to them. And so I think just just equipping them with the language so that they can talk about things if they need to, and trying to encourage in every way that you can in the school or classroom environment to kind of make sure that students feel able to talk about things and that no topic and no question is off limits, I suppose.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, that's so true. Sophie, thank you so much for joining me and answered all these questions
Sophie Whitehead
Thanks for having me
Hannah Witton
And sharing, sharing everything. Where can people find more about you, and the work that you do, and your research
Sophie Whitehead
So my, my handle on social media, very embarrassingly, is @bonbourbons
Hannah Witton
I mean, I love bourbans
Sophie Whitehead
Yeah, me too. It's yeah, it's long story, but I also love bourbons. And probably on Twitter is the place that I do more PhD stuff, and I also work with School of Sex Ed. So yeah, yeah, can can head over to their Instagram as well, which is much more interesting than mine.
Hannah Witton
Big fans of School of Sex Ed on this podcast.
Sophie Whitehead
Yes. Yes. Likewise, we're big fans of you.
Hannah Witton
Well, thank you so much, and thank you all so much for listening. Bye