Following the UK’s first conviction for public harassment on the basis of sex, writer Michelle Tant asks what the Church can learn from society’s growing determination to tackle violence against women. Drawing on the story of Tamar, she argues that God calls his people to see, hear and protect women who have been harmed.
In May this year, the first-ever conviction for harassment in public on the basis of a person’s sex was achieved following a change to the Public Order Act. This change is critical for women because it targets the pervasive issue of public sexual harassment. Previously, individuals could be prosecuted for intentionally causing harassment, alarm or distress, but the maximum sentence was six months. The Act introduced a specific sex-based harassment offence with a maximum penalty of up to two years in prison. It targets predatory behaviour and is a long-awaited and long-campaigned-for change.
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Catcalling and unwanted attention from men have long been in the category of things women and girls have just had to put up with, usually put down to so-called harmless ‘banter’ if they dare complain. Women’s discomfort has so often been dismissed and silenced, but now, thanks to this update to the Act, perpetrators can be held accountable. Society is slowly starting to be held to higher standards when it comes to violence against women, and the Church should be paying attention.
The pattern of women not being listened to when it comes to offences against them on the basis of their sex is a tale as old as time.
The pattern of women not being listened to when it comes to offences against them on the basis of their sex is a tale as old as time. In 2 Samuel 13, in an awful account of deception and incest, Tamar is raped by her brother Amnon. To compound the terrible violation, her other brother Absalom tells her not only to “be quiet” but also not to “take it to heart”. It was the ancient Near East version of “it’s just banter”. The story goes on, to some extent, to seemingly centre the feelings of the men in the text, leaving us with a sense that the woman who was the victim becomes even less visible in the narrative. Indeed, our last picture of Tamar is that she is ‘desolate’, and even her father David, angry as he was, did not see fit to punish his son for his crime. Tamar fell victim to a huge cover-up designed to protect the men in the story through the minimising of the crime against her. As a result, the ‘justice’, when it came, was also devoid of her voice.
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These Old Testament stories of violence against women are so difficult for us as women to read.
These Old Testament stories of violence against women are so difficult for us as women to read. It’s not unreasonable to wonder why they are left there when they can be retraumatising for survivors. They can even appear to dehumanise the women in the accounts, affirming the suspicion that women are not valued by God. These are difficult and painful thoughts to navigate. However, thankfully there are breadcrumbs left in the text which point to a different understanding. As early as Genesis, in the story of Hagar, God reveals himself as ‘El Roi’, the one who ‘sees’ the injustices meted out against women. This means that when we read troubling stories such as Tamar’s, we can see them as lighthouses instead, shining a light on the ugly accounts society prefers to hide. Furthermore, those stories were not just intended for a female audience. Men are meant to see them and know that violence against women is not a hidden sin and certainly is never “just banter”. In Judges, the atrocities are preceded by the statement that they “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord”, and so we know that the subsequent violence committed against those women was evil in God’s sight.
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In keeping with ‘El Roi’, our God who sees, churches need to be able to tell the stories of women like Tamar to help us address the question of what to do when a woman, an image-bearer in our community, is harmed by a man in it. We didn’t need new legislation to tell us to humanise women; there is already a strong theological basis for that. But the recent conviction should once again raise the profile of the imperative to ensure that churches are safe places for women. At a time when a UN report shows that most women experience some form of sexual harassment, and one in four women are known to have been assaulted, the Church cannot and must not be complacent.
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