Boomers, as we know, it is all connected….

Systemic gender-based violence, like systematic racism, systemic homophobia and systematic transphobia, is about much, much more, than bad or flawed people doing terrible things. It is about how societies are structured to privilege some and disenfranchise others.

Brittany Higgins and systems failure.

In early 2021, Brittany Higgins, a Liberal Party media adviser and junior staff member, alleged that she was raped in a Minister’s office in Australia’s Parliament House. Higgins accused fellow Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann of raping her after a night out drinking with colleagues. The case went to court but the trial was aborted after misconduct by a juror. A retrial was planned for February next year. It was abandoned in early December amid fears the trial would have adversely affected Ms Higgins’s mental health. At the time, it was revealed Higgins was in hospital. The charge against Lehrmann has now been dropped and he maintains his innocence.

Meanwhile, the decision not to proceed with Lehrmann’s retrial has triggered a public fight between the public prosecutor and the police union, with both sides criticising the profession conduct of the other and calling for inquiries into how the case has been handled. Specifically, the chief prosecutor in the trial has complained that police officers engaged in: “… a very clear campaign to pressure him not to prosecute the alleged rape saying he felt investigators clearly aligned with the successful defence of this matter during the trial.”

As recently as Monday, political leaders were warning that unanswered questions about the allegations of interference in the case could have: “a devastating and irreversible erosion of public confidence in our legal system.” And today the story has shifted to how Higgins has reached a confidential settlement with the Commonwealth for sexual harassment, sex discrimination, disability discrimination, negligence, and victimisation.

Brittany Higgins became a lightning rod for those angry about the treatment of women in Australia, about the epidemic of sexual violence and about the failure of the justice system to do anything about it. The case is a painful reminder of how justice systems continue to fail women.

Governance of women by men.

In a liberal nation state such as Australia, women do not enjoy the same rights and the same levels of safety and security that men do for the simple reason that the state was never designed to empower women in the way it empowers men.

Liberal and social contract theories tell us that the liberal state was founded to enable men, and not just the rich, heterosexual and mostly white boffins of the day, to participate in public life. This included running for public office. The governance of women was left to men and not the state. In the 1980s Carole Pateman coined the term ‘government of women by men’.

Rather than being a source of protection and healing, the liberal state has been identified as a major contributor to violence against women and children, and by extension, to LGBTIQ people. The argument goes like this: The liberal state fails to protect women and children from violence, even though the protection of its male citizens is one of the ‘uncontested objectives of the political order of liberal regimes.’ Violence against women cannot end until the relations between men and women are transformed and when such a transformation in relations becomes a central objective of the liberal state. This means that the state must recognise the right to bodily integrity and security and treat all forms of violence against women including intimidation and coercion, as major crimes.

Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ Hate Crimes.

Violence against women, children and LGBTIQ people has occurred throughout human history. It is not an original event with a defined point of emergence but rather is part of the mainstream of human history, based on structural inequalities between genders and between sexualities.

During this time, justice systems have served to persecute and prosecute, not to protect. Also during this time, we have fought back. The most recent example of this is the Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ Hate Crimes, which is investigating unsolved suspected hate crime deaths of LGBTIQ people (or people who were presumed to be LGBTIQ) in New South Wales (NSW), Australia’s largest state, between 1970 and 2010. The genesis of the Special Commission is community activism for redress for the failure of the justice system to protect the lives and rights of queer people. Based on evidence presented to the Special Commission, key areas of concern include why the police were slow to investigate reports of suspected hate crimes, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s; if the police committed some of the suspected hate crimes; and if the police engaged in entrapment to lure gay men into committing crimes.

These murders did not happen in a vacuum and were not isolated events. They were committed against a backdrop of an epidemic of anti-LGBTIQ violence. The larger question is, how many of these lives could have been saved if the police had done their job properly and investigated each reported case of violence.

But the failure of the justice system to protect the rights of queer citizens in NSW runs much deeper than a failure of policing. Up until 1983 it was perfectly legal to discriminate against someone because of their sexuality and up until 1984, to send someone over the age of 18 to jail for practicing it (it was not until 2003, almost two decades later, that NSW equalised the age of consent to 16). Up until 1993 it was perfectly legal to vilify or incite violence against someone because of their sexuality. And up until 2014, it was perfectly reasonable for someone to offer in their defence for killing or assaulting someone, that they had ‘a reasonable fear of homosexuals’. The new law removed the legal foundation for the use of the Homosexual Advance Defence, which was a common-law creation of the partial defence of provocation, in cases involving a non-violent sexual advance.

Meanwhile, the work of the Special Commission is being side-tracked by the antics of the NSW Police. The Special Commission had expressed frustration with how the police are providing evidence. The police have claimed that the burden of responding to the Commission’s requests for information has put a strain on their workforce and financial resources. Such a shoddy approach forced the intervention of the Police Commissioner, Karen Webb, who this week said the police were willing to cooperate with the Special Commission.

Our epidemic of violence and hate is transmitted from one generation to the next.

For most women, and indeed for most queer people, violence begins in childhood and continues for much of their lives. In childhood, girls who see violence perpetrated against the women in their families and communities can come to believe this violence is normal. Boys who see violence perpetrated by the men in their families and communities against women and girls and against each other, can also come to believe this is what boys and men do.

Equally, prejudices are handed down from one generation to the next.

Breaking the intergenerational transmission of violence and hate starts by helping children to understand that violence is not a given and something to accept, or to aspire to, or to inflict upon others. The best way to do this is to have mechanisms in place so that each case of sexual assault, domestic violence or hate violence generates a response whereby justice agencies such as the police (competent, well trained and bias free!), and welfare/protection agencies, whether they be government or civil society, take appropriate action. When children see that violence, prejudice and hate are not the norm, but an unhealthy aberration, intergenerational change becomes possible.

As Jenna Price said in the Sydney Morning Herald: “No reasonable human being would want their daughters or their sons to go through what Brittany Higgins and Bruce Lehrmann have gone through. Not in a million years. Diabolical for both of them.”

Equally, anti-LGBTIQ violence is a stain on our society that no reasonable person can condone. Hopefully, the Special Commission will bring some justice to the victims and their families and some sense of closure.

Ending hate.

Eliminating gender-based violence and hate related violence against LGBTIQ people, as well as racial, and other types of prejudice related violence, is possible. Violence is a human action, which means that an alternative human action to violence is possible, which in turn means that prevention is a smart investment.

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