"It was just banter!" | Group Chats and Sexual Violence | Nicole Wilson | TEDxWarwick

so i read a book recently for an essay i was writing for a gender studies module last semester and it was called reclaiming the f word feminism today so there are a few chapters in this book that really stood out to me but one sentence that really struck home violence against women can take many forms forced abortions female infanticide female genital mutilation child sexual abuse acid throwing forced prostitution and sadly the list goes on quite a while longer as you can imagine so i read this list a couple times over out loud but then i realized that this list was missing something really personal to my life and my friends lives violence against women can include violent banter on lads group chats so you say the words the warwick rape group chat to any student at this university and it's the same story with each person the social anxiety takes over the student doesn't know what to say they're really uncomfortable talking about it because the topic slips the back of their minds i'm not going to lie i don't blame them any person in this audience who was on this campus both times the group group chat scandal kicked off will know how exactly how polarizing this event was for everyone who witnessed it don't get me wrong i don't want to stand here and drag the story out even further and make you feel sorry for me all over again no but in the age of hashtag me too there is a much greater discussion to be had and this this group chat scandal plays a key role in this and we cannot let this scandal slide under the carpet the way it already has but i'm sure there are some of you here who don't actually have a clue about what i'm talking about and lucky for you lovely people i'm really desensitised to talking about what i went through in this ordeal but there's a time limit on this talk so i'll give you the brief version so we get to uni we're in a big basic group of keen freshers boys and girls alike come second year we've made some incredible memories together but already there are some really worrying and violent rumors about some of the men in this friendship group floating around and then next thing you know a couple of these girls discover this disgusting group chat now there's all sorts of nonsense on there as you can imagine with lads chats like edgy memes or football football manager talk what really seemed to be the hot and popular topic were the sheer amounts of threats of rape and acts of violence against us women who were supposed to be their best friends so when the two women discovered this chap naturally they were shook to the core of what they were seeing and who can blame them they couldn't they couldn't keep quiet about it so when they went to the men the worst perpetrators the ringleaders of this chat and demanded answers they weren't given answers instead these men thought it would be really clever to use the contents of the chat and threaten the women with it in order to keep their silence but they couldn't keep quiet as i said so then the rest of us found out to myself and a couple of other women involved we didn't want to believe any of it at first in fact we were in complete denial i myself i tried rationalizing everything i tried making excuses for these men because i told myself these are my best friends i know them better than this but then it became clear that the worst of these men were not sorry they didn't even see them wrong in what they had done in fact some of them told us that we should have taken it as a compliment that we were being talked about in this way and then it became clear that as i said that these men were not sorry but what remains so scary and so terrifying about the very aspect the very essence of this group chat was how normalized this violent attitude towards women was within the chat the way the men constantly egged each other on to make worse and worse and more violent and violent threats about us women who were supposed to be their friends and some of the men i must say there were some men who witnessed the chat and they were on it but they never they never participated they never joined in any of the jokes and i never got to say this before but when we confronted these men and begged for them to help us get to the bottom of the situation these men they really helped us get clarity on things they were completely transparent and completely honest and those men they know who they are i just want to say we always always be grateful for the help and the help in getting to the bottom of things so come june 2019 the warwick run newspaper the warwick ball wrote the story on the group chat so everyone on campus knew about this the two girls who found out about the chat put informal complaints to the university and then the necessary punishments were dealt with so in that time between june 2018 and going into final year so i was going on a year abroad some of the other girls were too and the rest of the women involved were trying to get on with their lives and complete their degrees but in that time the university just kept seeming to find new ways to mess the situation up so for example in the summer holidays of that year the two women who put in the complaints to university in their investigations with the uni they were constantly being dragged back and forth onto campus through endless meetings but in those meetings there was a complete lack of clarity and transparency about what the hell was actually going on not to mention they were constantly gaslit about the validity of their own testimonies their own truths not to mention the fact that they were actually made to read the countless messages that these men were sending about them they were made to relive their trauma over and over again might also add in the fact that one of the women actually had to sit a final year exam in the same room as one of the men from the group chat so come january 2019 i'm fully immersed in my year abroad those of you who know me well know how much i loved my year abroad i do not stop talking about it ever but what you people don't know is i was actually suffering a severe relapse in my anxiety and depression and i developed bulimia as a result of this trauma so come january 2019 last year i get text from my friends saying oh my god nicole have you seen this and again another article by the warwick board saying that the university were actually planning on allowing two of the worst perpetrators two of the ringleaders from this disgusting group chat to return to campus the next academic year the very same year that myself and several other of the victims were supposed to be returning to complete our degrees now i'm not going to lie i remember reading that i didn't know what to say i remember running to the toilets of friday on a versatile berlin and throwing up everywhere apologies to the cleaner still but then what i also noticed on social media was one of the other women victimized in this group chat was taking to twitter going on a big run as you will but she was taking to twitter to voice her anger at this act of injustice and what remained so poignant about her anger was the fact that she wasn't going to be returning to campus the next year no she would have graduated so in essence she wouldn't have had to come back and face these men like the rest of us were but that didn't stop her from speaking up and protecting the rest of us women so i saw that i knew i couldn't be a bystander any longer and that's when the rest of us took action and spoke up and the rest is history as you can imagine i mean you don't need to imagine it's literally on the university's wikipedia page so come december last term there was the ucu strike going on campus i was walking along the picket lines along it not crossing it in the metaphorical sense of course and there was a particular picket that caught my eye hashtag uni story on a faculty board a head of faculty said that the facebook chat was a one-off unfortunate event well whoever said that whoever head of faculty whoever you are you clearly have not been reading the news very well now have you need i mentioned a similar disgusting group chat by the coventry uni men's cricket team or the sheffield med student who made disgusting comments about women on a group chat with 200 plus members or the very lovely infamous exeter group chat that showed the very same brand of racism and obsession with rape that our own lovely group chat did need i talk about the cambridge university professor who was allowed to return to his teaching position in spite of several allegations of sexual assault made against him by his very own students so i looked at these headlines and i realized that this was all part of a much wider phenomenon that seems to plague uk university campuses what is this phenomenon rape culture now what is rape culture some of you might be asking yourselves you've seen it in headlines and articles on your news feed and whilst it is easy to point your fingers at the perpetrators alone since they are the one after all causing the pain and hurt this phenomenon is way way bigger this phenomenon goes way way further than a bunch of silly lads on a little group chat trying to one-up each other with their edgy jokes no rape culture are the laws that hold women responsible for aborting a baby that was conceived as the result of her rape rape culture is taking advantage of someone on a night out who is clearly too inebriated to make any rational decision about their own body rape culture is saying that a girl is asking for it when she wears something that you consider to be too revealing rape culture is pressuring your partner into having sex with you but telling them it's okay because you love them and you would never really hurt them rape culture is listing the girls in your friendship group in the order that you would like to pin them down in as if it's a sport you can get a medal for rape culture is the dark corners of popular online forums like 4chan where incels fantasize about all the ways they love to hurt and humiliate women rape culture is the institutions that allow perpetrators to continue their violent behavior in atmospheres where victims should be the priority and where victims should be safe and as my favorite gender studies writer kristen solay puts it rape culture is the rape joke and the audience that laughs along now to be honest i could stand here and go on for days about what i think rape culture is but everydayfeminism.com provides a really really extensive list and what they think it is and to be honest i think you all should give it a read especially you university students i wouldn't be surprised if you witnessed some of these aspects every day in your university experience especially on this campus so as if the extent of institutional bias wasn't apparent enough to me in my life already last summer i got to work for a really important organization i remember getting there on my first day and i was a complete awe of all the feminist posters the think tanks and networks everything that was at my disposal to make me feel safe i remember sitting down i thought to myself oh this is sick isn't it you know what everything that happened in my past i can forget about it maybe there is hope for women like me just to get on with our lives in peace in the workplace in the in the professional world then next thing you know my best friend from work tina starts getting harassed by a male co-worker so first it started off as kind of like your playful flirting we all thought he'll get the hint he'll get that she's not interested he'll leave her alone but what started off as playful flirting became making fetishization comments about her skin color and her race it became making sexual advances to water in the office it even became making homophobic comments in front of our gay co-worker and one day at lunch we just sat you know trying to eat our sandwiches talking about the weather and what he thought would be a good idea to try and touch her up so as you can imagine she she couldn't stand for this any longer she was so uncomfortable so we told her you know what let's just go to the managers they'll sort out i remember telling her tina these are the big boys of the uk they'll sort it right out this is a safe space so when she sat down with one of the managers to voice her concerns over this man and i overheard this entire conversation well eavesdropped i overheard this entire thing that's what matters but then my friend was continually blamed for the actions of this man that made her so uncomfortable she couldn't come back into work for a few days she was actually asked things like why didn't you report it sooner it's not like he pushed you into a corner and forced himself on you now did he now just just imagine this just imagine this was a woman asking my friend these questions this was a woman blaming my friends and accusing her for the behaviors of this man that had no respect for her had no respect for any of us in this workplace and this was a woman making her feel like she deserved to be treated in this way this shows how people from all backgrounds cultures identities anyone can be a perpetrator of rape culture but this shows how this rape culture is crystallized even in the highest ranks of our society so the people who run our state our media our economy they're all capable of being perpetrators and in fact this rule bending is so pervasive that keeping victims quiet and accusing them and holding them to blame is actually the easier more desirable option than holding the perpetrators to account because you know what it's just a bit it's quite a lot of paperwork to fill out at the end of the day isn't it so as i said i overheard this entire conversation and i sat there and i thought this is all a bit creepy now i've been here before and i won't be surprised if many of you thought the same for example how many of you in this audience have been harassed or made to feel uncomfortable by someone you know a co-worker a flatmate a colleague and then you told yourself i don't want to cause anyone trouble i don't want to make an issue out of nothing nothing happened i can live with it it's fine and sadly my friend ended up doubting herself in this very way because of this woman who made her feel guilty so as i said i sat there i thought this is all a bit creepy now i've been here before i've seen this before i immediately thought of the way my two friends who put in the complaints to university they were asking their investigations things like have you ever been in a relationship with any of the men from the group chat i was asked this in a counselling session back in 2018. just imagine this speaking on live radio this time last year a female presenter actually had the nerve to ask me on live radio whether or not i'd had sex with any of the men from the group chat as if our choice in romantic and sexual relations meant we deserve to go through any of that as if it meant we deserve to have our best friends make these disgusting threats about us behind our back as if we deserve to go through any of that so yeah and that's when it became clear to me how widespread this problem is i was even asked things at the time when i first discovered the chat where the people were closest to me the people who were supposed to have loved me i was asked things like you don't think they would ever really hurt you now do you i was asked things like it's not like they went through with anything they said on the group chat did they this all shows the systematic violence that exists and the systematic violence that forces victim victims and women into submission and into keeping quiet accusing victims and holding them to blame for the actions of a perpetrator is only ever going to remove accountability from the people who've caused this pain in the first place and we wonder why so many victims are so terrified of speaking up about their experiences it explains why so many by so many of us women victimizing this group chat were so reluctant to talk about this for the longest time especially when like i said the people closest to me were asking me things like this i even have people online asking me these kind of questions too and that's that kind of stuff is difficult to ignore but what these people will never ever understand what they can even never even imagine in fact what they can what they will never experience the same way us women did was the fear that we had to live with the fear that we were expected just to deal with and just get on with and having our best friends turn out to be monsters like this behind our backs and having people we trusted just turned out to be just liars for example i nearly missed a final year german exam a second year german exam sorry because i was too scared i was terrified to make the five minute walk from my flat to the bus stop because i was terrified of the chance that i would have bumped into any of these men i was terrified of the retaliation i would have faced because i spoke up you know what there are people out there there are people at this university who i still have to face every day who hate me and hate my friends and hold grudges against all of us because we took on the system and spoke up and that small minority you know who you are i have just one thing to say to you you can keep your anger i hope it makes you very very happy in life but you're part of the problem of rape culture too and i hope that makes you very proud of yourselves now don't get me wrong social media was where this whole problem began it's where everything kicked off it's what started this thing in the first place but social media also helped bring our problems to light social media had our voices heard in the age of hashtag me too we're living in it now as i said unsurprisingly people were going to be angry once we had our story put out there once people heard our story my two friends my two very brave friends who took on the university they never gave up in their effort they never gave up in trying to protect us not just us but every other victim on this campus and then i saw my friend taking to social media and that's when i knew i couldn't be a bystander any longer so then my best friend heather and i went on twitter going on our usual twitter rants as you do and started throwing around the hashtag shame on new warwick as a joke what we did not expect was to wake up the next morning and see that our story had gone viral the hashtag had thousands of uses my mentions were blowing up my dms were flooded which doesn't happen often at all mind you and i had victoria derbyshire's assistant herself on the phone begging me to speak on live tv and share my experience now i'm not gonna lie i look back and none of it feels real i can't even replicate the kind of feelings i had back then i can't even imagine what i was going through it feels more like a black hole i was sucked into without any control over what was going on everything was just happening in front of my eyes and i just had no power over it the university had made their decision to abandon us and let these men return to campus and put us in danger and we were expected just to live with it just to act as if nothing happened but for the first time people were angry for us and people were angry with us people were actually listening to us now you have no idea how amazing that type of validation feels when for the longest time you've been made to feel like as if you had no right to feel the things you did you've been made to doubt the validity of your own truth you've been made to doubt yourself and people just start to listen people start to care you can't imagine how amazing that felt for us back then because as victims stood together and spoke up people actually listened and people noticed and people paid attention social media was used as a tool to humiliate us and degrade us in private but it also became our very saving grace in public but don't get me wrong i was terrified at first so i spoke on the radio and tv under the alias sarah and i shared my story i was still terrified i was terrified of the backlash of the retaliation i could face but i was also terrified of the powerful legal teams and the money that protected some of these men especially the men that had more violent severe allegations floating around about them but when i spoke on tv and radio i knew i wasn't just speaking for myself anymore but i was speaking for any other woman that those vile men hurt both on the group chat and in real life and then something else also became clear to me i wasn't just doing this for us anymore but i was speaking up for any other victim of sexual violence at this university who have been failed by this institution and that became clear when the protests went ahead on campus now i remember sitting on the back of a bus in berlin crying just at my phone looking like a bit of a weirdo to be honest i remember just sitting there crying because i saw all the hundreds of people who turned up to show support for us the students the staff alumni even parents or some of my friends turned up to show their support and voice their anger with us everything that happened in that time walk back then showed what can be achieved when people stop silencing victims and actually just start listening and it also showed what can be achieved when victims stand by one another in solidarity and speak up together and share their truth now don't get me wrong this this ordeal was destroyed two years of what should have been the best four years of my life and i'm not gonna lie i can't wait to leave this place but am i gonna let this violent experience define me for the rest of my life no fair enough it has made me who i am today it's shaped the woman i've become but i'm not going to let it define who i want to be going forward in life no instead i think the lessons i've learned from this experience are going to be what i take forward and to be honest i think we all have something really valuable we can learn from the right group chat scandal yes the system is flawed it's so incredibly flawed it's so flawed i could do another ted talk about it frankly but we have to continue to hold it to account we have to continue to challenge it we challenged the system once before when the system was determined to see us fail and when the system abandoned us and since then the university have committed to change they have committed to protecting their students better in future we've we've already started to see that promise come to light but we have to continue to hold them to that promise now don't get me wrong i am not an authority on how to promote positive intersectional care politics at university i do not have a gender studies degree i don't have a degree actually at all but what i will say at the very least what we can actually just start doing something so simple what we can start doing is actually just listening to one another instead of just trying to brush each other under the carpet instead of just ignoring each other people listening to us women back then made all the difference in our lives when all hopes seemed lost and the system abandoned us if we listen to each other more in the future maybe these systematic failures might never ever happen again thank you for coming to my ted talk [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 10,076

Rating: 4.9020977 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Global Issues, Culture, Sex, Social Media, Students, Technology

Id: CiprQC0e-xo

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2020