Opinion: What has the Georgia Harrison vs Bear fiasco shown us about modern-day misogyny?

During the Georgia Harrison vs Bear conflict that arose during the middle of December, Bear was accused of taking a privately filmed video of himself and Georgia from his CCTV, without her knowledge or consent, and posting it online. On finding out, Georgia was understandably devastated and yet Bear denied the allegations. She tweeted: “If this man is allowed to get away with filming private sex acts in a trusted environment then selling the footage online, victims everywhere will feel like it’s not worth pursuing prosecution. I will do everything to get justice for me and all future victims, male or female.”

Comments on Bear’s tweets, some of which have since been deleted, were posted by a number of men on Twitter that appeared to condone his persistent and provocative objectification of women across his online platforms. With supporters of Georgia commenting their disgust on Bears’ posts, there was an alarming number of contrasting male commenters who appeared to uphold Bears’ actions:

"I'm sorry, I find Bear WAY too damn funny... Everyone in this world is so quick to get offended and upset." - @Jakob_kep97

"She ain't got much back der..." - @Mcinally1967

"Yo tried ya link no working where can I see this" - @johnnyshimmy 

The Georgia-Bear fallout sheds light on only one of a number of similarly distressing stories where men have non-consensually abused women and then flaunted this to gain respect for themselves whilst ruining the female’s reputation. Whether you can list another example featuring a celebrity, someone you know of or even yourself, attitudes towards women and the ownership of their bodies have not changed in some circles as much as we would have liked to hope. Their roots, too, are so entrenched in our cultural soils that it would have been hard to avoid becoming sucked in, at one point or another, to the misogyny that permeated and continues to permeate even children of school age.

The 1990s “lad” culture seeped into the 2000s, and even fifteen to twenty years on, I’m sure most of us can pinpoint at least one time during secondary school where some poor girl’s nudes were leaked, before “sending nudes” was deemed acceptable. Whilst boys’ immaturity was regularly being cited as the reason, it doesn’t seem a stretch to consider that the explanation for the indulgence of the behaviour may be a little more malignant than that.

The ingrained view that women are objects of the male gaze is something that most current university students likely embraced growing up, whether consciously or unconsciously. From as young as ten- or eleven-years-old, young girls start experimenting with makeup and stuffing socks in their bras, to emulate their “high school” (yet actually twenty-something) counterparts they’d watch on programs like “Glee” or “90210”. The obsession with romance that young girls would stereotypically latch onto would mean that in order to try and create their own, they’d watch their fallible TV role models look airbrushed, skinny-yet-curvy and all-round flawless, saunter up to their male classmates and magically the jigsaw pieces would fall into place. Looking “pretty” wasn’t entirely about impressing the boys - there was a certain amount of insecurity and female competitiveness upon which that thrived too - but it definitely played a part.

Just as girls would try and compete to see who had the best boob-to-waist ratio, high school boys would also filter into the dialogue. I can’t remember how many times I’d heard boys describing girls with “pancake tits” or “saggy boobs”, laughing at how orange and overdone one girl’s makeup was, then simultaneously slagging another for not looking good enough without it. Just as girls would discuss their insecurities, boys would pick up on and join in the conversation, making comments on girls’ weights, heights or body hair. And yet, even though we had started off as equals, we rarely hit back. There are always exceptions to the rule, but when did we comment with the same unintentional viciousness about their bodies or their hair or their weight? There definitely was, growing up, and probably still is, for those at school now, an unspoken rule that it was fine to comment upon girls’ actions and appearances, as though we were catalogued items, waiting to be compared and rated.

As we aged, it became more than just comments about appearances. The word “slut” became commonplace, alongside “slag”, “whore” and “easy”. And when were these words ever directed at boys? From an early age, girls fell into the trap, through no fault of their own but that of society, of changing themselves and overstepping their own boundaries to impress males. And soon enough, the ingrained people-pleasing levelled up to become physical. As girls transitioned through these hoops, boys’ attitudes also became more defined; the impact of the porn industry no doubt bolstering their confidence. It would become a standard part of “lad” talk to discuss the sexual experiences they’d had with different girls either amongst themselves, in group chats or just blatantly, with anyone who’d listen. Girls would be discussed as though they were in some snack ranking competition, and with other girls partaking in these exchanges, a culture was maintained that was almost entirely inescapable.

So, with our upbringings insidiously setting the scene for deeply-entrenched internalised misogyny, is it any surprise that, as “woke” as the Western world is becoming, there are still a frightening number of men, and likely women, who continue to subscribe to a discourse that persistently and relentlessly objectifies women? “Revenge porn” became illegal in 2015, with a prison sentence of up to two years, and it encompasses the “non-consensual sharing of any explicit film or photograph showing people engaged in a sexual activity”. However, with sites such as OnlyFans following along a sexual direction, the issue of the use and abuse of online sexually explicit and pornographic images has crossed into arguably murky territories and there are a number of calls for concern regarding the safety of the subjects of these types of images online. Despite the grey areas, with comments that not only condone Bear’s actions but appear to amplify his own twisted understanding of respect in human relationships, it is clear that there remains a huge lack of understanding regarding what is moral and immoral surrounding consent and sex. There remains a lot of work to be done in reshaping our understanding of respect, consent and gender equality.

The Glasgow Guardian - Views