The Abolition of Sexual Assault

First published on March 29, 2018

We may be living in an historic moment. Of course, we are. We always are.

But there are historic moments, and there are 'moments' where humanity itself moves past something. And 'moments' has its speech marks there, because of course these moments stretch over months, years and generations. 

It can look like slavery ended in a moment. And I still think people take for granted what an enormous and momentous and spectacular achievement that moment was. A practice which had been in evidence for a massive part of the history of our race. So much that it felt or looked incredibly natural - the importance of slavery was a story shared across centuries and continents among millions and millions of people. It would have been almost impossible to understand or even think of a world without it. Good people stood by and watched it happen. Good people had slaves. They must have, unless there were no good people. And now, today, it is almost abolished. We know, you and I, that it isn't quite. That there are people in corners of the world who still suffer slavery. But a bird's eye view of the human race would show us that slavery is gone, it is down to an infinitesimal point at the end of the graph. Almost certainly forever. The values which make this practice abhorrent are so entrenched in society now, that it feels almost impossible that that could be reversed. We are at a collective level of consciousness which knows that slavery is wrong. It looks like slavery was abolished in a moment. But of course it took decades, or in reality centuries of developing collective consciousness. 

And in a few hundred years, people may look back on this time as the 'moment' in history - or part of the moment - where sexual abuse ended. 

It feels we are at a tipping point. When Harvey Weinstein and Barry Bennell are exposed within such a short time of each other, something is changing. A world where former England international footballer Kieran Dyer can share his own story of sexual abuse as openly as he does in this conversation is not the world of a handful of years ago, let alone of fifty years ago. 

We are seeing as this hidden story, these many hidden stories, become a conscious story. We as a society become aware of the actions of the few, and the consequences of those actions. Collective consciousness shifts. Awareness expands. 

Values change: to a place where the behaviour is even more abhorrent to even more people. To a place where these experiences can be spoken of, shared, and partially or fully healed so that the values that allowed this and the torture which led to it are not passed on, generation to generation. To a place where, except perhaps for a few pockets in different corners of the globe, this abhorrent practice, slips from a story which is allowed - by good people - to continue behind the scenes. Where this practice becomes a thing of the past.