Opinion

Claire Simpson: Dehumanising people allows greater abuses to happen

Westminster has failed to deal with allegations of sexual harrassment
Westminster has failed to deal with allegations of sexual harrassment Westminster has failed to deal with allegations of sexual harrassment

After a 30-year conflict which killed thousands and left others with devastating physical and psychological injuries, perhaps the proliferation of sectarian graffiti in our towns and cities is a small price to pay for relative peace.

When Sinn Féin councillor Kevin Savage reported a sticker in Banbridge which urged people to ‘kick a fenian in the head’ last week, it didn’t take long before some online commentators essentially told him not to make a fuss.

Never mind that the sticker was a clear reference to the sectarian murder of Catholic man Robert Hamill in Portadown in April 1997, a few keyboard warriors suggested we should all just stop being offended.

Why be disgusted by the KAT graffiti I pass on my way to work every day? Why care about a Taigs Out sign in Clough, a Co Down village near where six people were killed in the Loughinisland atrocity? Does it really matter when poppy wreaths are repeatedly damaged at the site of the IRA’s Narrow Water bombing? None of these crimes are really that serious - are they?

Journalist Ian Hislop suggested as much when discussing the Westminster sex scandals on BBC One’s Have I Got News For You.

Responding to a headline about an MP taking his personal trainer to the cinema, the Private Eye editor said: “Some of this is not high-level crime, is it, compared to Putin or Trump?”

His response seemed to frustrate the show’s guest host, comedian Jo Brand, who had to explain to the all-male panel why sexual harassment should be taken seriously.

“If I can just say – as the only representative of the female gender here today – I know it’s not high-level, but it doesn’t have to be high-level for women to feel under siege in somewhere like the House of Commons,” she said.

“Actually, women, if you’re constantly being harassed, even in a small way, that builds up and that wears you down.”

There’s been much talk over the last few weeks about what actually constitutes sexual harassment. Journalist John Humphrys even asked former Tory leader William Hague if the Westminster allegations meant there was a “danger” that people may become afraid to ask someone out.

Poor old MPs are the true victims in this scenario, rather than the PA forced to buy a sex toy for her Tory boss or the female journalist trying to do her job without former defence secretary Michael Fallon repeatedly putting his hand on her knee.

The truth is there are no grey areas when it comes to sexual harassment, just as there are no grey areas when it comes to sectarianism.

There is a clear difference in being asked out, directly and respectfully, by someone you aren’t interested in, and being accosted on a bus or a bar or in the office canteen by someone who doesn’t comprehend the word no.

Dehumanising women by seeing them purely as the outlet for male sexual fantasies, or dehumanising people by reducing them solely to their religious background, allows greater abuses to happen.

A stray hand, a ‘friendly’ kiss, signs or graffiti in a side street can seem like minor offences - nothing so serious as rape or murder. And it’s true that not every harasser is a rapist or everyone who paints crude sectarian graffiti is a member of a paramilitary group, but sometimes it’s the small things that prove most troubling.

Sectarian harassment in the form of graffiti or signs or, in Banbridge’s case, a sticker at a council-owned recycling centre, can build up and wear people down. It reinforces the idea that those of a different religion aren’t welcome and worse, diminishes them as human beings.

Anyone who takes the trouble to design and print offensive stickers and slap them on a recycling bin is clearly a bigot. The idea that it’s no big deal allows sectarian idiots to go unchallenged, just as the failure to crack down on harassment in workplaces allows that office ‘character’ to assume that his creepy approaches are perfectly acceptable.

Bigots and harassers don’t want their actions to be challenged because then they might actually have to address their own behaviour. It’s so much easier to shoot the messenger than have the self-awareness to realise that if some people took a long hard look at their actions then perhaps others might feel safer in their homes and workplaces. Until then, more power to everyone who calls out offensive behaviour whenever they see it.