Stories about violence against women don’t make an impact – this is why

In the UK, violence against women and girls by men is a national emergency.

Last year alone, over one million crimes against women and girls were recorded in England and Wales. One in four women experience domestic abuse in their lifetime.

It’s terrifying.

The problem is, many of these stories simply aren’t sinking in. While they flash up on our phones and TV, and across our newspapers, they are skimmed or hurried over. 

Put simply, the majority of stories of domestic abuse, rape, and harassment aren’t engaging the public – unless they truly shock us to the core. 

Case in point is the heinous experience of Gisèle Pélicot, the 72-year-old French woman at the centre of a mass rape trial, was one experience that did resonate with the public.

Pélicot was raped by her ex-husband, who admitted to drugging and offering her up to be raped over a 10 year period by an alleged 50 other men. It is so extreme, it became impossible to ignore. 

It was a story that, according to Metro analytics, was six times more engaging than the breaking news story that Mohammad Al Fayed – a well known public figure and Harrods business owner – had been accused of raping five women.

The only other Metro articles about cases of sexual violence that even came close to the engagement of Pélicot’s case were also extreme: the horrifying story of a woman who was raped in a children’s playground by four unknown men and the sickening report on a woman suffering a heart attack after she was repeatedly raped by a stranger on a bench.

However, when Metro ran a first person from a woman who was groomed by a police officer was less engaging – 12 times less so than the Pélicot case. 

So what has numbed us when there was so much outrage after Sarah Everard was kidnapped by Met Officer Wayne Couzens, who used his job to deceive, rape, and murder her? Why has Gisèle Pélicot’s horrific experience moved us more than that of the 6.54 million women in the UK who have been raped?  

‘Extreme circumstances capture attention with more ease than larger stories about systemic issues,’ explains psychotherapist and author Eloise Skinner.  

‘Partly because they’re much easier to consume and understand, and they often don’t feel as if they carry the burden of participating in wider systemic change, or engaging with challenging societal issues.’

But when it comes to violence against women, there is something deeper happening than a simple case of morbid curiosity.

The true crimeification of violence against women

Since the podcast Serial and Netflix documentary Making a Murderer popped up around 10 years ago, we’ve grown an insatiable appetite for true crime, and more often than not the most disturbing, and thus super consumable stories, involve women victims.

Serial’s first series – about the strangulation and murder of student Hae Min Lee during her senior year at Baltimore – hit one million downloads after just five episodes on its release. Now that figure has risen to a huge three million.

According to data by Pew Research Center, true crime podcasts accounted for a quarter of 451 top-rated English-language podcasts in 2022 – and had the biggest slice of the cake than any genre, with politics and government coming in second, engaging 10% of listeners.

While Serial was made by reporters, many true crime documentaries and other media are the work of storytellers, who rehash and sensationalise old stories to make them highly bingeable.

Linda Aitchison is a former crime journalist who reported on the notorious Fred West murders at the time and believes there is a clear line between telling important stories and refashioning traumatic events for entertainment.

‘The best true crime is when there is something new,’ Linda explains, whether that be a new witness, modern science that’s shed light on an old case, or an important update.

‘The cheaper, more sensationalist true crime – whether an article or programme – leaves you with an uncomfortable feeling that this dreadful crime, and pain upon the family and victim, is being exploited for profit by people who copy and paste these reports together.’

Linda believes that if we’re bombarded with story upon story about crime victims, men or women, we become ‘more hardened to it’.

She adds: Because of that, the people who are making their money through true crime are always looking for that shocking angle.’

Just as Pelicot resonated with the public for her grit and honest account of her own trauma – which has put the ‘victim’ centre stage in a world where the spotlight spins to the perpetrator – it’s the personal human suffering of individuals that stays with Linda.

But that’s clearly no longer enough to get people interested when it comes to everyday reports on violence against women. The shock bar has become too high for many to care about just another rape – even when it’s a public figure like Al Fayed behind them.

Violence against women isn’t shocking because it’s simply an extension of the world we live in

On social media, misogyny is everywhere. Around the time of the US election, with the heat turning up on women’s rights subjects such as abortion, a social media post from a far-right political activist went viral.

Nick Fuentes’ X post about abortion, which read: ‘Your body, my choice. Forever’ reached his 444,000 followers and was liked by 52,000 accounts. 

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s free speech approach to social media, which saw Donald Trump’s Twitter ban lifted after the billionaire’s X takeover, has led to incel thinking seeping into mainstream social media. 

However, it isn’t happening just on X. Algorithms across the board are giving a mouthpiece to misogyny. A February 2024 UK study found that after just five days on TikTok there was a four-fold increase in the level of misogynistic content presented on the For You page as entertainment.

The study found these digital echo chambers were overflowing onto the school playground, with the language being used entering mainstream youth culture.

Young people are also being subjected to more violence against women in porn.

The Children’s Commissioner found in a 2023 report that 79% of young people had encountered violent porn before the age of 18. It also discovered that frequent users of porn are more likely to engage in physically aggressive sex acts.

‘We’re seeing rising misogyny that then has an impact on how boys behave,’ explains media psychologist and psychotherapist Dr Charlotte Armitage. ‘So we’re in a horrible position right now where violence against women is everywhere you go. It’s not something unusual anymore.’

As part of Dr Armitage’s job, she screens contestants for reality shows and has seen a worrying shift in the perspectives of male applicants.

‘I’ve really noticed the difference in misogynistic presentations, even subtle ones in the past year, definitely,’ she adds. ‘I blame social media. Without a doubt. Andrew Tate obviously dropped the bomb but I think we’re still dying from the gases.’

Professor Aisha K. Gill, an activist, criminologist, Human Rights defender and Head of Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the University of Bristol has worked on violence against women and girls for 20 years. She tells Metro that this prevalence of misogyny dehumanises women and normalises violence against them, so when the media reports on it, we simply aren’t shocked into engaging with it.

‘We’re talking about violence that is used as a form of entertainment, and this normalises everyday forms of abuse, which encourages violence and harassment,’ she explains

‘These actions have wide ranging consequences in terms of perpetuating cultures of abuse, and it gives licence to replicate that behaviour.

‘Men who feel wronged by women on these online forums also play their part in enabling toxic anti-women, nihilistic violent behaviours.’

The role gender plays in readership

As violence against women is a gender-based issue, studying the genders as separate consumers is also important: a woman who has experienced domestic violence will digest a media report about it differently to a man who thinks it’s never touched his life.

A quarter of women in the UK have been sexually assaulted, so it’s understandable they might draw the line when it comes to engaging with daily news about violence against women.

Dr Armitage notes that reading stories about violence against women may be ‘triggering’ for some people.

‘The really extreme experiences, it’s unlikely we’ve been through them ourselves, so we can watch from a distance and look at it as almost fictional,’ she says.

‘But something too close to home that we feel could happen to us is a little bit scarier, because that means, here we are potentially a victim of these things.’

While news reports of rape and domestic abuse may seem distant for many men, they probably aren’t familiar with the culture of misogyny women face that preludes more serious crimes.

Even men who pride themselves on being socially conscious aren’t aware of the microaggressions women face daily. 

This is perhaps evident in the fact that nearly 1 in 2 Britons (47%, including women) say women’s equality has gone far enough.

There’s a huge amount of ignorance at play, too.

The Crown Prosecution Service conducted a survey in January, in which only a third of respondents correctly identified the fact that women rarely make up rape allegations (just 0.6% of rape reports are false allegations).

If two-thirds of people don’t believe women, then how does that impact their news cycle consumption? 

In this culture of scepticism it’s no wonder rape is the most under reported crime, with 83% of sexual violence cases going unreported annually. Add that to the fact rape prosecutions are at an all time now with just 2.9% of recorded rapes ending in conviction, and it’s bleak out there.

With rapists rarely being punished and increasingly emboldened misogyny staining online spaces, stories of rape aren’t just unshocking – they are almost inevitable.

Where do we go from here?

Across borders, the world is moving against women. Men’s violence against women is a leading cause of the premature death of women globally.

A rapist will once again be President of the United States of America. 

Roe vs Wade is overturned. Andrew Tate is giving incels and misogyny a vocal home.

In Afghanistan the Taliban have banned women from speaking in public.

In Iraq it’s been proposed the age of sexual consent could be lowered to 9 years old, essentially legalising paedophilia and rape.

Over 1 million crimes against women and girls were recorded in England and Wales in 2023, making up 20% of all crimes logged by the police.

‘Where does it end?’ asks Professor Gill. ‘One of the fundamental concerns for me is how we need to really hold our institutions to account.

‘There has to be a shift in the dial in terms of our government playing their part in fostering zero tolerance: Not just talking to talk, but walking the walk. 

‘We’re fed up. Too many women and children are dying in our communities.’

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