“A Sad Hello to Women in Their 30s, Reflecting on the 2000s: Misogyny and Media Culture”
Historian Hannah Rose Woods took to Twitter to express her dismay after watching In Plain Sight, tweeting, “A sad little hello to women in their 30s having an evening of shit Proustian flashbacks to the mid-2000s.” As one of those women, I couldn’t agree more. While the distressing testimonies featured in the documentary were hard to hear, what hit me the hardest was the clever editing that juxtaposed footage of Russell Brand and others, perfectly capturing the deeply ingrained misogyny of that time. This triggered days of painful reminiscing about the media culture of the 2000s.
While it’s important to hear from those who were part of the institutions and environments that enabled Brand to thrive, I can’t help but feel angry at the complicity of some of them. Brand vehemently denies all allegations made against him in the program, insisting that his relationships have always been consensual. However, clips from his standup sets, TV shows, and radio appearances clearly show his overt misogyny. In all these instances, there were journalists and TV executives who not only facilitated and encouraged this behavior but also failed to challenge the prevailing attitudes towards women. The culture at that time was truly reprehensible, extending from men working on lads’ magazines and making rape jokes on stage to postfeminist women’s magazine journalists who seemed to have forgotten the essence of sisterhood.
Personally, I am more interested in hearing the stories of young women and girls who grew up in that toxic climate and felt powerless within it. Being a teenage girl during that period was horrendous. The frequent objectification, abuse, and ridicule we experienced from boys at school and older men were directly linked to the media landscape that allowed it to flourish. The question of “Why didn’t they go to the police?” is easily answered by anyone who lived under that unhealthy media regime. Challenging any form of sexism or misogyny was quickly shut down, with dissenters being labeled as humorless and undesirable, and subsequently subjected to mockery, bullying, and harassment. It was a time when even expressing a mild preference for bodily autonomy meant inviting vilification. I was once invited to a national TV program to debate whether “bum pinching” was acceptable or not, and I declined. Groping in nightclubs was a regular occurrence. We were fair game. How can one possibly consider going to the police when their physical integrity has been violated?
Over the past few days, many women have shared their experiences with me, triggering a flood of memories. From stories of grooming, rape, and sexual assault to accounts of “fittest freshers” lists being posted on college noticeboards (is there any woman of my age who didn’t have her attractiveness publicly rated?), boys exposing themselves in the classroom, and pornographic university hazing rituals, women of my generation bear the scars of battle. We are still angry and deeply saddened that our formative years were overshadowed by a culture that perpetuated rape and objectification, making it unimaginably difficult to speak out against. One woman succinctly wrote, “Women’s worth and value were determined by how fuckable they were perceived to be. There was truly no escape. I’m still running.”
We are all still running. Watching Brand make jokes on stage about choking women with his penis evoked painful familiarity. It wasn’t until I was attacked by a man in 2010 that I became angry and started challenging these attitudes. On two occasions, I approached male comedians after their shows where they had made jokes about rape and violence against women. I pointed out that statistically, at least one in four women in the audience had experienced sexual assault and would have been triggered by their choice of material. Their responses were condescending and dismissive. A friend of mine once interrupted a “comic” who described wanting to violently assault a woman with bleach, causing her ovaries to melt like Salvador Dalí clocks. I will never forget that sentence, and it still makes me physically sick to think about it as I type these words now.
Being a feminist during that time was incredibly challenging. Speaking out made me an embarrassment and a liability. Expressing discomfort with pornographic images displayed in my student house, for example, resulted not just in being shouted down by male friends but also by “cool girls” who desperately sought validation from those men. When Holly Baxter and I, along with a group of friends, launched the feminist blog, the Vagenda, in 2012, which aimed to challenge media sexism, we were dismissed as silly little girls by almost the entire media establishment. While that reaction was expected from male journalists, it was particularly disheartening coming from female journalists. No one likes being called out for their failures, and perhaps they sensed what we truly thought of them then and still think of them now – that they lacked moral fiber. Nevertheless, it was disheartening to see how few people were actually willing to listen to what we, as young women on the frontlines, were saying.
But we were right. As I revisit the book we wrote, I am reminded of all the issues we tackled – from women’s magazines promoting extreme thinness and the idea of pleasing men at any cost to lads’ mags and toxic websites normalizing rape and objectification. Let’s not forget the tabloids that eagerly counted down the days until teenage girls reached the age of consent. Alongside the individuals behind initiatives like No More Page 3, Everyday Sexism, and numerous other young feminists, I do believe we brought about a change in the mainstream media landscape. However, that doesn’t mean these issues have disappeared. Writers like Laura Bates and Sian Norris continue to shine a light on the rampant misogyny that persists online and offline.
I feel a sense of pride towards the women who came of age in the 2000s, their unwavering commitment to feminism, and their empathy for the victims of rape and abuse. Only we truly understand what it was like to be a young woman during that time and why speaking out was so incredibly difficult. While sexism didn’t originate in the toxic 2000s, that era uniquely manifested it in ways that affected us deeply. The voices that should be heard are those of the victims who endured that culture.
Now that I am a parent, I am acutely aware of how the adults working in television and the media failed to protect women and girls from the abuse and misogyny of predatory men. They failed the victims, and they failed us. The Vagenda always used humor to challenge these attitudes, but when I reflect on those awful years, I find it hard to find any humor now. We knew it was wrong, and many adults who controlled the narrative at the time knew it was wrong too. Some may be soul-searching now, but their inaction at the time speaks volumes. If you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article, we welcome responses of up to 300 words via email for possible publication in our letters section. Click here to submit your response.
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