Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Caroline Criado-Perez and the Twitter trolls: rape threats or teenage taunts?



Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me...

So we were told as children when we finally plucked up the courage to tell Mum why we had come home sullen and tearful.

'Mary said something horrid.'

'What did she say?'

We'd mutter and stammer and fiddle with our hair; anything rather than repeat the hurtful words. We knew our mums loved us and that they'd be on our side. But it was still difficult to come out with it. The insults reflected on us, not on Mary or whoever else had uttered them. There must be something wrong with us that our best friends found us so repugnant.

We have a name for it now: victim blaming. Most of us realise that someone who is beaten, raped or stabbed probably wasn't 'asking for it' or 'deserved it'.

But words are trickier.

The notion that the pen is mightier than the sword has been expressed in one form or another by great writers and leaders for five centuries. Words can liberate. They can imprison. They can delight. They can wound.

If it is hard to repeat an insult to our mother in the kitchen at home, how much harder is it to put it out there in public view for millions to see?

We therefore have cause to admire and be grateful to Caroline Criado-Perez for her courage in standing up to the Twitter trolls.

Criado-Perez had for three months been running a high-profile campaign to have a woman on a banknote. Some agreed with her that it was an important issue, others - including feminists and this blog - that it didn't matter much. Criado-Perez was not particularly welcoming of the contrary view, but she didn't declare war on those who disagreed with her.

Last Wednesday afternoon she told the Twitter world


She was  showered in congratulations from her many followers and tweeted 'thank you, thank you, thank you..' dozens of times. All seemed well.

But then appeared a tweet asking if she was the 'sad bitch' behind the campaign. She did not respond until the next morning, but when she did, the tone became decidedly darker:



Looking closely at her Twitter timeline, it seems that at first she joked about it with friends. But then she became fierce. She was not going to block offenders and pretend they weren't there. Nor was she going to change her account or leave Twitter to avoid the attacks. She was going to speak up - or rather shout the **** back. Forget the advice not to 'feed the trolls', she was going to ram the food down their necks as though they were foie gras geese.

She was also going to get the police involved and to urge Twitter to do something to protect users from  'rape threats'. Many twinkling stars of the Twitterati - including Stephen Fry, Dara O Briain, Caitlin Moran and fellow columnists Suzanne Moore, India Knight and Gaby Hinsliff - cheered her on and offered support. John Prescott and the Labour MP Stella Creasy also piled in, as did the historian Mary Beard, who has had more than her fair share of antisocial media insults.

Professor Beard was,of course, the Twitter star of the weekend with this little enterprise:


Twitter's head of news and journalism was bombarded with demands that the trolls be silenced  and when he locked down his account the chorus of dissent grew louder.  The mechanisms for reporting abuse on Twitter were too complicated - and too hidden.

A petition was set up to demand a simple 'report abuse' button and for changes to the definitions of violent language. It had a thousand signatures within an hour, ten thousand overnight and now stands at about sixty-five thousand. Within a day, the UK head of Twitter had set up a makeshift button for mobile apps and promised further investigation.

Meanwhile, Criado-Perez was tweeting incessantly, barely pausing to appear on radio and television, write for the New Statesman and the Independent, and give an interview to the Huffington Post, to which she contributes.

She described a 'tidal wave' of abuse and her tweets counted off the hours of her ordeal: 'ten hours of rape threats' turned into eleven, twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-eight hours and, today,  into 'the 6th day of rape threats'.

This is a taste of what has been thrown at her:

                                                                                               
 

In spite of all she had had to put up with, she was gracious and grateful to supporters, and encouraging to other women who said that she had inspired them to fight back rather than turn away from the trolls.

Some pretty hair-raising stories emerged, as did some robust discussions, notably between EK McAlpine (@whatkatie_did) and the Independent columnist Owen Jones (@owenjones84), about whether people were taking notice only because Criado-Perez was white Oxbridge and apparently middle-class.

Moran, who suggested that all the pleasant people' should boycott Twitter next Sunday and play with Google instead, drew on her experience to emphasise the scale of the abuse that could be encountered on Twitter:

A couple of hours later Jones weighed in:
Death threats? Where did they come from? Criado-Perez, who had been urging supporters to take screen shots of tweets that she might have missed,  was brought up short.

On Monday this appeared:

It was by then common currency that she was receiving 50 rape and death threats an hour.

Masked? Well, given the avatars of some of the trolls, she may have had a point. Criedo-Perez was by now talking about the threats coming in 'every second'. It probably felt like that, though the volume is not clear from her timeline,  especially as much (and probably the worst) of the abuse has doubtless been taken down.

The trolling tweets that remain are deeply unpleasant, some are obscene, but whether they constitute serious physical threats is debatable. Criado-Perez clearly thinks that they do - they would certainly unnerve me - and she is impatient with those who suggest otherwise.

 












Nor does she have much time for men who try to point out that they aren't all rapist trolls.

Anyone, male or female, who dares to suggest that Criado-Perez is taking it all  too seriously or too personally is swatted away with a brisk 'you're blocked'. The women supporting her are fervid and uncompromising, giving short shrift to anyone who comes up with what looks like a dumb question. You can only feel for Alice in this little scene:

                  

Criado-Perez is seen by some as self-serving and attention-seeking. Hardly self-serving but, as we saw in the banknote campaign, she doesn't shun the limelight. There's no sin in that - especially if it benefits a wider cause. And that is what we must hope for next.

There is a radical feminist feel to the tweets around her and in one exchange she describes herself (ironically, i hope) as a misandrist. But she does recognise male support and also that she has found herself fighting not just against misogyny but against all kinds of abuse.

Others have taken up the cudgel for free speech, and this is the issue that needs wider examination. Indeed, the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee intends to invite Criedo-Perez to give evidence to its inquiry into social media after the summer recess.

Have the petitioners considered the consequences of a 'report abuse' button that could bring the suspension or exclusion of more people from Twitter or other such sites? Criado-Perez and her entourage, for example,  could collude to blackball gainsayers. But so, too, could  misogynists, racists, Eurosceptics, unicycle artistes, Arsenal fans.  Debate on all aspects of life on social media sites could be stifled and possibly snuffed out; no one would be able to speak up or out.

Do we want Twitter and Facebook et al to decide what can or can't be said, any more than we want Parliament to control what we print? There are laws to deal with excessive behaviour and we shall in time discover whether the tweets to Criado-Perez were so egregious as to warrant criminal charges. She will doubtless have been frightened, but has she ever been in real danger of rape or murder? We must be careful not to muddle these cyber attacks with the real violence suffered by real women in the real world every day.

Two men have been arrested, one on suspicion of threatening Criado-Perez and the other in connection with tweets to the Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy, who has been vocal in her support of Criado-Perez.

Reading Creasy's timeline is harrowing; the threats are explicit and numerous. The Tory MP Clare Perry has also reportedly been threatened because of her stance on internet pornography. The vile tweets directed at Laura Bates of Everyday Sexism were unambiguous. Abuse is now being directed at dozens, scores, if not hundreds of people - though it's not clear whether this is copycat activity or stuff that has always been going on and has only now come to light.

So has this Twitter storm blown in benefits or just more misery? Is it a real story at all or just a bit of start-of-the-silly-season nonsense? At the moment it doesn't look promising. Middle-class journalists fretting because some oiks have invaded their playground, MPs jumping on the bandwagon. There are genuine public interest issues here, but whether they will survive the sunshine and rain through to October depends on how seriously and strongly the mainstream media and the third sector take this problem. The last thing we need at the moment is David Cameron pontificating.

Caroline Criado-Perez had around 20,000 followers last week; she now has nearly 24,000.  But that is tiny compared with the Morans, the Moores, the India Knights, the Owen Joneses. These are columnists whose stock in trade is to air controversial opinions. They all know about the trolls and the hurt they can cause - as Moran says, there can be 50 tweets an hour on a bad day. Take that up through the celestial hierarchy to the likes of Stephen Fry with his six million followers and you can imagine how much bile and vitriol there is out there.

Yet none of those people, with their ready-made platforms, had stood up and said 'Enough. I'm fighting back.' None of them had seen the connection between the abuse they suffer and the cyber-bullying that drives vulnerable teenagers to suicide and proclaimed: 'We should stop this.'

No,  it is just an occupational hazard,  a matter of professional pride to put up with it and say nothing. They are as polite as they can manage before they reach for the blocking button, sigh and carry on tweeting. Any one of the footballers, pop stars, politicians and pundits could have brought the virulance and the volume of this behaviour out into the open. But they didn't.

Caroline Criado-Perez did. Her stand has made it possible for others less driven and less articulate to have their voices heard.

Sometimes it is right to raise your head and say ‘I’m a victim.’

Please check out these previous SubSist posts:

 Women of Note
Three modern heroines of third-generation feminism
Twitter tigress takes on the trolls

Worth a read on this subject




Jem has also written a thoughtful piece on men's rights on his Quite Irregular blog (www.quiteirregular.wordpress.com).

  • Flashboy
  • What counts as abuse or harassment? Is it direct threats of violence only, or more general cruelty and unpleasantness? How will this be determined? What’s the boundary for legitimate argument and criticism? How should Twitter’s policies work in relation to legal frameworks; and which legal frameworks? Will moderation policies be different in different jurisdictions? Which jurisdiction has precedence when users live in different countries?
  • http://flashboy.tumblr.com



More links to follow later...










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Saturday, July 27, 2013

The Twitter tigress takes on the trolls

Homage to suffragists overshadowed by barrage of rape abuse



On July 26, 1913, fifty thousand women congregated in Hyde Park to try to persuade the public and the government that women should be given the vote.

They had set out from all corners of the country up to a month before, and had held meetings and handed out pamphlets in towns and villages along the way. Some forty thousand people were in Hyde Park to greet them and listen courteously to what they had to say. A score of platforms were set up around the park and speakers, male and female, found willing converts to their cause. There were no disturbances.

On July 26, 2013, two women appeared on the radio to try to persuade the public and the government that women should be entitled to respect and to have their place in society recognised.

They had been fighting their separate campaigns - one successful, one ongoing - not in village halls, but in the new community meeting place: Twitter. Hundreds of thousands of people tuned in to the programmes, but not all wanted to hear what they had to say. One of them had to deal with some gentle mockery at the time. Later there were serious disturbances for both.

This afternoon women have again gathered in Hyde Park to celebrate that pilgrimage of a century ago. They include some who have spent the past week walking from Brighton. Others will have taken part in shorter walks around the country to show their solidarity and respect. As in 1913, there will be speakers - one of them the very woman who was mocked on the radio yesterday.

SubSist wrote yesterday that the feminist cause seemed to have regressed half a century. Why should women still have to put up with being hassled and groped as they go about their daily business?

Reading reports of the 1913 rally and the Twitter feeds of 2013,  it is clear that we have regressed not back to the 1960s, but to the dark ages.

Laura Bates had appeared on the Jeremy Vine Show to discuss her Everyday Sexism Project, which encourages people - not only women - to register verbal and physical attacks. It was particularly relevant as the day marked the end of an inspiring week-long operation in conjunction with the British Transport Police aimed out at stamping unacceptable sexual behaviour on buses and trains.

The initiative for Project Guardian had come from the BTP, in conjunction with Scotland Yard and Transport for London. Officers were trained up and ready to listen and understand and take action where necessary. It was a true landmark day and their efforts were much appreciated by women who had previously  held back from reporting incidents for fear of being fobbed off - or of making an unwarranted fuss.


Sadly, the Jeremy Vine interview did not mention that project. It quickly got bogged down in skirmishes about whether a man could approach a woman he didn't know and pay her a compliment, or kiss a woman he'd just met on the cheek in a show of gratitude. Vine seemed more concerned about establishing the boundary of what was acceptable - for the benefit of men - than about moving to the more serious issues of physical interference in the crush on the Tube.

Bates remained calm throughout.

Caroline Criado-Perez had given a number of radio interviews over the previous couple of days in which she sought to explain why she was so concerned that women should appear on British banknotes and to celebrate the confirmation that Jane Austen would be the face of the next £10 note.

Criado-Perez seems a little more volatile.

Yesterday's SubSist post pointed out the benefits of social media in getting a message across to great numbers of people quickly - as evidenced by the Everyday Sexism Project, by End Victim Blaming and by Project Guardian.

These just happen to relate to feminist issues. Twitter is also helpful in putting people who - for any one of countless reasons - are in need of support in touch with each other and with appropriate experts. Charities understand its importance and make good use of it. Leaders of the world from Obama and Putin to the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury tweet.

And so do the bad guys. Or, if the above four aren't to your political taste, the really bad guys.

The first set of tweets below, sent during the radio programme, are relatively mild.


But Bates has also received others that are far more menacing:





Bates appears to have ignored or blocked the aggressors. Criado-Perez fights back like a tigress. A foul-mouthed tweet is liable to illicit an equally foul-mouthed withering reply. As she says, she doesn't do silence; she will 'shout the **** back'.

Criado-Perez reports that she has been subjected to three days of rape threats and abuse since the Jane Austen £10 note decision was announced. She has contacted the police, tried to rouse Twitter authorities, and written about the experience for New Statesman, in a blogpost and apparently for tomorrow's Independent on Sunday.

It is not necessary to reproduce the tweets here, as some were in the previous post and others can be seen in the links above. Whether this aggressive abuse constitutes rape threats is a matter of debate. What is certain is that it goes way beyond 'trolling'.

This isn't a question of censorship or freedom of speech. We wouldn't tolerate tweets saying 'that nigger should be strung up on a tree' (I apologise even for writing such a thing) even if the author had no intention of doing anything other than be provocative or draw attention to themselves. So it is with the vile abuse addressed at Criado-Perez. It may be idle baiting or late-night drink talking, but it is still inciting hatred. That is against British criminal law and common sense says that it should also be outlawed by Twitter.

It is possible to set up a Twitter account so that a user receives an email or text notification whenever they are mentioned. The email messages have a panel at the bottom saying 'If you believe xxx is engaging in abusive behaviour on Twitter you may report xxx for spam.' The last four words are a hyperlink that automatically block the user.

If you do not receive such notifications, there is no easy way to report abuse. Last night Criado-Perez and many of her followers tried to contact Mark S. Luckie, Twitter's manager of journalism and news, but he sealed his account. A petition was swiftly set up calling for Twitter to incorporate a 'report abuse' button on every feed and now has some ten thousand signatures.

By this morning, the outrage had grown, with even John Prescott joining in the outcry. Half an hour or so ago the UK head of Twitter finally put his head above the parapet with this tweet:


It took seven days for Facebook to capitulate to Bates's campaign over violent images last month. It can't be hard to add a 'report abuse' element to the 'more' button that allows users to email or embed a tweet, so it will be interesting to see if Twitter - until now regarded as more user-friendly of the two giants - acts as quickly.






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Friday, July 26, 2013

Three modern heroines of third-wave feminism


  
Forget Kate and her brace of  kings-in-waiting for a moment. These are the women who are already helping to shape our future society. And the great news is that there are plenty more like them, with brains, instinct, imagination and determination, who are unwilling to accept the status quo or to be fobbed off by officialdom.

Laura Bates (left, in a BBC picture) is the founder of the Everyday Sexism website that is cataloguing examples of casual abuse and harassment by men who see nothing wrong with eyeing up a teenager or thrusting themselves onto complete strangers on the Tube.

Jo (centre, anonymous for reasons that will become obvious) is behind the End Victim Blaming site, which aims to help people who have suffered violence to stop feeling guilty - and to change the media vocabulary to end the use of what she calls the language of perpetrators.

Caroline Criado-Perez (right, in a photograph by the Independent) spearheaded the campaign to retain a woman on British banknotes after Sir Mervyn (now Lord) King announced that Churchill would be replacing Elizabeth Fry on our fivers in the next year or so. She has spent the past 48 hours doing the radio rounds, welcoming the confirmation that Jane Austen would be the face of the £10 note from 2017.

These women are key players in the latest incarnation of third-wave feminism. And they are so energetic and driven that - at last - it is possible to believe that there may be no need for a fourth.

To a relic of the second wave, the world they are encountering is shocking. Whatever happened to the 'new men' of the 80s? Were they just a chimera?

Somehow we have regressed to the gender stereotyping of half a century ago. How did we come to this point, with the pinkification of everything for girls and the primacy of the cupcake?

Do we blame the ladettes? The wannabe TV programmes? Overpaid footballers and their WAGS? The weight-obsessed celebrity mags that feel it's their right and duty to pronounce on the shape of every woman in the public eye? (This Kelly Brook bikini shot was in fact on the cover of six magazines on one newsstand last month - and inside another two).



And of course, the cover below has provoked predictable outrage. It does beggar belief. But when you are in the market of being rude to celebs (or lauding them to the heavens as some part of multithousand-pound wedding deal), it is sometimes hard to remember that getting too familiar with the royals won't please your readers. Especially if you follow up with thoughtless tweets.



Back in the real world, it may not matter much that builders are still wolf-whistling, but if a woman can't use public transport to get to work without arriving with semen running down the back of her leg, there is something wrong.

If social workers regard a 28-year-old man abusing a 13-year-old girl in care as her 'boyfriend', there is something wrong.

And if the Bank of England didn't realise that it wasn't a good idea to ignore half the population when deciding who to put on notes used by everyone, there is something wrong.

Writing in the Guardian yesterday, Zoe Williams hailed Criado-Perez, Bates and the No More Page 3 group as proving that modern campaigners were packing a punch. Let's hope that's true. What they are certainly doing is exposing how little we have travelled since the 60s; how misogyny has not simply survived, but thrived over the past half-century.

The Commonwealth had agreed (reluctantly in some quarters) that if little Prince George had been little Princess Georgina she would succeed her father to the throne, even if she had a dozen younger brothers. Progress. But women bishops? We're still waiting. Join an elite golf club? No chance - Muirfield members say they'd rather not stage the Open than allow women to join.

Women are under-represented in almost every walk of life, other than in the most menial of tasks or those traditionally regarded as 'women's work'. We all know about the glass ceilings, but what is even more worrying is the way that white men in their 30s and 40s are again dominating all aspects of our country and culture: the Government, the media, business, the Church. Women who advanced up the ranks ten or twenty years ago are suddenly nowhere to be seen.

It is bad not simply for women, but for everyone. It is sending the wrong message to today's young men and suppressing the able women who are emerging from school or university. This would not be of such huge concern were it not for the fact that girls are routinely outperforming boys right through from primary school to university. We are squandering talent in every sphere.

Why? How could this have happened? What caused the reinforcement of gender stereotyping? When did everything turn so pink? Who decided that girls shouldn't, after all, want to play with scientific toys?

Do people with any influence or power realise how far our society has retreated? How unacceptable behaviour has been accepted? Do we need Ken Loach to spell it out for everyone?

Let's go back to our heroic trio.

Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism


Bates, a 26-year-old Cambridge graduate, started the Everyday Sexism Project 14 months ago 'to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women from on a day-to-day basis. They may be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that you don't feel able to protest'. More than 40,000 people have sent in their stories and a book is in the pipeline. But this week the programme notched up a gear.

The British Transport Police combined with the Met and Transport for London to set up Project Guardian to monitor cases of harassment on buses and trains after reports showed that most people who suffered unwanted sexual behaviour did not report it.

They linked up with Everyday Sexism to tap into their expertise for guidelines on how to encourage victims - male or female - to report their experiences, no matter how apparently insignificant or how long ago they took place.

Two thousand officers have been given special training in sexual offences, with particular emphasis on the first contact with victims. An extra 135 officers, both in uniform and plainclothes, have been supplementing the regular force every day this week and the BTP have been taking part in live Twitter chats and responding to tweets describing unwelcome incidents - even events going back weeks or months.

It was as heartening to see the BTP geared up for the enterprise as it was dispiriting to read what women commuting to work have to put up with.  Take a look at this Twitter thread:






Enough!

Far more encouraging was the response of the police, who took every incident seriously, gave out numbers for people to text or telephone and urged individuals to take their complaints further.

It was wonderful, after too many years of stories of cops' insensitivity and dismissivenenss,  to see a police force so pro-active and apparently understanding of what they were dealing with -  and they were rewarded with many complients from tweeters, as in this case:


The overwhelming response to the initiative has been one of surprise and delight and the BTP will be issuing some statistics on the project on Monday.



The transport project is Bates's second triumph within two months, for she was also behind the campaign that forced Facebook to stop people posting images encouraging rape and other violence against women.

Everyday Sexism pointed out that pictures of breastfeeding or of woman who had had mastectomies were banned, while those of women trussed up or children with black eyes were allowed.Bates combined with the Americans Soraya Chemalnd Jaclyn Friedman in an email and Twitter campaign aimed at advertisers such as Dove and Pringles. Fifteen suspended their accounts with FB.

Within a week FB had admitted that it had failed to identify and remove 'hate speech' from the site and promised that it would review and update its moderating procedures.

Perhaps the next step is to get mainstream advertisers to get real. These appeared on a newsfeed only the other day:


Jo, Ending Victimisation


Unfunny jokes about 'get back to the ironing' and the casual disrespect and contempt displayed by the Tube gropers are probably the most visible examples of sexism. Ending Victimisation is seeking to tackle public attitudes to bigger sins. To try finally to get across the message that a rape victim is not 'asking for it' because she's wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes and a strappy bodice on a hot day; that a woman being beaten black and blue by her partner is not just 'a domestic'.

The website is the brainchild of Jo, who describes herself as a working-class northerner in her mid-thirties. She says she had the idea in May, started to build the website on the 21st and went live on the 24th. It is run by a women's collective and, eight weeks on, is already getting 30,000 uniques a day.

The objective is to stop people blaming victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse - and to help the victims to stop thinking that they somehow brought their injuries on themselves.  She says it is outrageous that women are expected to change their behaviour or their wardrobes to avoid being assaulted.

Jo is particularly keen to change the 'problematic' language used by journalists, by social workers and in the family courts, and to develop a new vocabulary that makes plain who the guilty party is. 'Child porn', for example, is easy shorthand and everyone knows what is meant. But it is inaccurate. Pornography is produced by willing participants for a willing audience. Pictures of children cannot fall into this category. 'Child porn' is in fact evidence of child abuse.

Jo believes that domestic violence is not taken seriously enough by the courts -  to the extent that men who have killed children have been described by lawyers as 'good fathers', while magistrates have criminalised women attacked by gang members.

Here are some of the examples that have been posted on her site this month:

My father is a violent alcoholic who allowed my brother to be abused and then beat him because ‘ you deserve it'

Marte Deborah Dalelv was on a business trip to Dubai. She was raped after a night out with colleagues and went to the police who imprisoned her and, four days later, charged HER with three crimes, including having sex outside of marriage. She was convicted and  sentenced to 16 months in prison for having the temerity to report her assault, compared with the 13 months that her alleged rapist received. 
To add insult to injury, reports now suggest that she has been sacked because of her  'unacceptable and improper behaviour'. 

 'A jilted man allegedly fatally stabbed his ex-wife with a kitchen knife after seeing her in the company of her new lover over the weekend.' 
As ever, the defence for male violence occurs within the first sentence; this time it was the second word. Linda Akim is dead because she  'jilted' her husband. Not because her ex-husband was violent. Not because Kudakwashe Mushandira chose to stab Akim to death. It is Akim’s fault for ending her relationship.

I was walking to a nightclub with a friend, when we were stopped by policemen who asked our age. I was in a PVC miniskirt and black fishnet top and I thought they were just mocking us 'goths'.  When I became indignant that they were hassling us and making us late for meeting our friends I was told be nice to policemen and not be so cocky as dressed the way I was it would be my own fault if I got 'raped down an alley' and where would they be then? I said that I would hope the police would help me and they just laughed.
Utterly horrible. I spent the night hiding under my coat as I was suddenly very aware of my outfit not as an expression of my individuality, but as a signal to potential rapists.

Jo hopes to set up a free service for the media, children's services, social services and the justice system offering guidance on language that does not make the victim feel or appear guilty. As we can see here from this submission by a youth justice worker, it is much needed.

In many of the multi agency meetings, child sexual exploitation meetings and other professional meetings I have chaired or attended, the blame for the trauma lies firmly with the girl. Below are a selection of examples:

She needs to start making the right choices

She’s out of control

She loves him. There’s nothing we can do

She needs to take more responsibility

I just don’t understand why she behaves like this. She knows she’s going to get into trouble but she carries on

She’s storing weapons in her room. We’re letting the police deal with her now

We can’t stop her going out to meet him. She makes her own choices

I told her he was bad news but she wouldn’t listen and now look what’s happened


A crop top and a pair of Daisy Dukes
are not an invitation to rape


Caroline Criado-Perez, The Women's Room




This is a 1937 Austin 10. The car, which first went into production in 1932 and continued until 1947, was the Austin Motor Company's most popular model.



This is the 2017 Austen 10. The note may well prove to be the Bank of England's most popular currency.

We know about this new note so long before it is due to be introduced thanks to the efforts of Caroline Criado-Perez, a 28-year-old Oxford graduate now studying for a masters in gender studies at the LSE.

The announcement that Churchill was to adorn the next £5 note, leaving the currency without any female presence besides the Queen, was greeted with dismay by women all over the country. Criado-Perez was not one for grumbling acceptance; she decided to challenge the decision.

She took the Bank Governor to task in a series of letters, started a petition to support her case and threatened to take Sir Mervyn to court for breaches of the 2010 Equality Act. But she got no further than the hint that Jane Austen was 'waiting in the wings'.

The papers picked up on her petition, which secured 35,000 signatures, and many ran features asking 'Which woman would you want to see on a banknote?'

SubSist was sceptical about the campaign and remained sceptical this week as Criado-Perez's supporters went wild on Twitter, claiming a great victory after Mark Carney's formal announcement that Austen would indeed be the face on the £10 note from 2017.

This doesn't seem to me to be a huge triumph, since the decision was probably made some time ago. Churchill will still be on the fiver and there will still be no woman on any banknote for a year or so. SubSist also questioned the tone of the campaign, which smacked of tokenism. 'We want a woman. We don't care who it is. We want a woman.'

But that doesn't mean that the issue was not important, nor detract from the fact that Criado-Perez was the one person to do something about it.

The Bank missed a trick in not putting Mrs Pankhurst on the next note as the centenary of the Suffragette movement provided an obvious peg. Indeed, had Wellington been to coincide with the bicentenary of Waterloo, that would have been understandable. To pick Churchill, who could have made his appearance at almost any time over the next thousand years, only served to emphasise the male-oriented culture of the Bank.

Criado-Perez's real success in this campaign -  as she pointed out yesterday -  was to secure a promise that the system for choosing subjects for the notes would be reviewed.

This alone does not make her a feminist heroine. She achieved that status last year when she set up The Women's Room, a database of female experts on anything from farming to civil engineering.

She was inspired by two items about contraception for teenage girls and breast cancer on the Today programme last October. The discussion panel on each occasion was all-male because, the BBC said, it had been unable to find any female experts.

Criado-Perez formed a plan and, like Jo, immediately swung into action. She tweeted a request for women who were experts in any field to register with The Women's Room and the site was live within days. It now lists about 700 experts.

And to complete her hat-trick, the third of our third-wave feminist heroines also runs the Week Woman blog, motto: A pox on the patriarchy.





A final thought: These women have all acted quickly on longstanding issues and have all achieved rapid recognition and success. This is almost entirely thanks to the influence of social media, and in particular Twitter.

We know that Twitter was an important factor in the Arab Spring and, equally, that news emanating from it is likely to be unsubstantiated and sometimes unreliable. For projects such as these, however, it is ideal. People are coming forward to share their concerns in a way they would not do person-to-person or to mainstream newspapers and broadcasters.

Our trio are therefore helping not only the feminist cause, but wider society by exposing truths that would probably have remained uncovered. The scale of sexual assault and harassment on public transport, for example. Until now, we have had only official statistics to go by and so long as women were loath to report incidents for fear of being brushed off or regarded as over-reacting, the true picture could never emerge. And until we have that, no one can take appropriate steps to tackle the problem.

Anecdotal evidence can go only so far, but when there is enough of it, it can make people sit up and take notice -  as the British Transport Police have, to their great credit, done this week.

The down side, however, is that the trolls have had a field day. Bates appeared on the Jeremy Vine Show at lunchtime today. The callers were all male and almost all hostile. She held her own, but by the time she had got home the trolls had bombarded her Twitter timeline.

The same applied to Criado-Perez, whose language grew increasingly ripe through the evening as she fought back against neanderthals whose solution to uppity women was to give them 'a good rogering'.

We still have an awful long way to go. These women are not going to be right about everything. To some, they will appear to be man-hating extremists. But, hey, wouldn't you if you were confronted with something like this:












Still, at least @MrBLawton proves that not all men are bastards. Which most of us knew all along.
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