Here it is! The difficult second album that is Two Scoops Issue #2. First of all, thanks to all you lovely people who subscribed first day. We can assure you that each new subscriber notification was met with at least one excited shriek. Today’s issue brings two stories of discourse fatigue: being unable to engage in the big discussions of the day or even follow the news because of the effect it can have on your mental health. In ‘Where do we go from here?’, Millie looks at why conversations surrounding sexual harassment are so exhausting for women and victims of sexual violence – and what men can do to ease the burden. In ‘Preaching to the Exhausted’, Charlie looks at how stepping away from the news can not only be healthy but can also yield new, and often more nuanced, perspectives.
P.S. If you liked anything in this issue please share it with your friends. Proof of a forwarded email may result in baked goods.
Where do we go from here?
Millie Cooke
In the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder, there was an outpouring of hurt and anger. Years of abuse and pain came to the surface and on pages like ‘Everyone’s Invited’ – an anonymous platform which allows people to share their experiences of sexual violence at school – thousands of women and girls came forward.
Countless difficult conversations have been had. Most of them are still taking place. Sharing stories of sexual violence can be cathartic for the victims. It can be a method of reclaiming agency over something that makes many women feel powerless. It binds victims through a sense of community and solidarity, over something that for years has left women feeling isolated. It raises awareness of an issue that so many of us face and teaches us how to cope.
But, it can also be exhausting.
This is often the case when it comes to conversations about privilege and oppression – and it poses issues for how these conversations should be conducted. How does the oppressed group balance their desire to share their experiences against their need to protect their own mental health?
Well, to start with, we need to take the emphasis off the victims.
When faced with allegations of male violence, women are so often reminded of how to protect themselves. They are asked to prove it happened, while young men manage to avoid having difficult conversations on the basis that ‘not all men’ are to blame.
This dynamic has characterised the government’s response to Sarah Everard’s murder. In the immediate aftermath, women were told to stay at home and when Chief Constable Simon Bailey encouraged parents to report their sons to the police if they believed them to be a perpetrator of sexual violence, Boris Johnson’s Education Secretary Gavin Williamson instead told the victims to report their experiences of abuse to the police – rather than posting on an anonymous platform. By pulling the focus away from the abusers and placing it back onto the victims, Williamson had completely missed the point.
The point being this: there is a reason that, when an anonymous platform became available, there was an outpouring of stories of abuse. Almost 97% of women have experienced sexual violence and yet, only around 15% of those report it to the police. Women of all ages have been told over and over again that their stories are not worth telling. They have been told that their experiences were just the norm. Something that they should get used to. “Boys will be boys”, they were told.
They have grown up in a culture that objectifies them, abuses them and then, to add to the joyful experience of identifying as a female, invalidates their experience. Women are sharing their experiences because its empowering, not necessarily because they are trying to prove it happened. That, for many women, is too exhausting. So we need to stop asking them to do it.
But where do we go from here? I would never want to discourage people from having these conversations because they are important and they help us make progress.
But, perhaps, instead of starting the conversation by asking women if they have experienced sexual violence, we should ask men what they did when they saw it happen.
Preaching to the Exhausted
Charlie Cooke
How do you stay informed when the act of turning on the news becomes too much to bear? This question isn’t new, but it does seem more relevant now than ever before. Not only is the news relentlessly grim but - given it intimately affects how we live our day-to-day lives - it is also impossible to escape. I’ve spoken to many people who’ve told me that, at some point in one or all of the three lockdowns, they had to stop watching the news entirely because it was damaging their mental health. And although this following statement may seem counter-intuitive (coming from someone who is hoping you’ll take the time twice a month to read this newsletter) but it’s more than ok to take a step back from following the news. As well as doing wonders for your mental health, it might just give you perspective that is so often lost in the maelstrom of the 24 hour news cycle.
In his book ‘The Black Swan’, the statistician and writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb details a study where two groups of people are shown an image of a fire hydrant, blurred so as to be unrecognisable. One group has the resolution of the image increased slowly in ten steps. The other group gets the image resolution increased faster, but in five steps. Those in the group that saw fewer steps are likely to recognise the hydrant faster. As Taleb puts it: “The more information you give someone, the more hypotheses they will formulate along the way, and the worse off they will be. They see more random noise and mistake it for information”.
The breaking news cycle, for better or worse (and barring a few notable exceptions), presents instant updates, packaged in the most economical form that often lacks historical or social context. In other words, a lot of ‘noise’. So ironically, taking a step back from that dynamic can often be extremely helpful in understanding it and the wider themes at play.
The unhealthy relationship that can be formed with the news cycle is also buoyed by our preconceptions about what constitutes worthiness when it comes to current affairs content. We so often draw a dividing line between news and entertainment; work and fun; vegetables and dessert. Putting aside how much entertainment has increasingly begun to creep into the news (See: the real life soap opera that is Good Morning Britain or the time that CNN head Jeff Zucker admitted that he approaches political coverage as a sport ), its undeniable that the news and current affairs more and more informs our entertainment.
Two of the best pieces of political content I have engaged with during the past year have come from unexpected places. The first is Vittles, a newsletter which recently celebrated its first year anniversary (here’s hoping we make it that far). It is, ostensibly, a newsletter about food. But it uses that entry point to tell necessary and engaging stories about, for example, exploitation in the South African wine industry or the relationship between fish & chips and nationalism.
The other is the podcast Criminal. Each episode details a bizarre or unusual crime but by the end has snuck up on you with something altogether more profound. An edition about a murder at Harvard medical school which starts out as a ghoulish tale of grave robbing ends up being a dissection of how class and status distort justice.
The point being that, when a harrowing film about Guantanamo Bay detainees can become a hit on Amazon’s streaming service and even the latest Disney+ show is exploring themes of national identity, borders and US hegemony, you can afford to take a step away from the 24 hour news cycle. Because sometimes switching off from the non-stop updates and push notifications can not only provide a much-needed respite from the doom and gloom, but might also present you with something altogether new. Something that would otherwise have been drowned out by the noise.