It is easy to picture the scene. Four young 20-something London lads are gathered in a flat for an evening of online gaming. They appear to be playing a football match against web opponents. A fifth guy, “Coops”, arrives to join their banter-fuelled group: “Yes, yes, yes boys!”
Soon, Coops, begins making dim-witted remarks about women and girls. They start out mild enough: “At least we aren’t playing against girls like last week. Pointless, man.” He also asks his friend who “wears the trousers” in his relationship. But as time wears on, his buffoonish blurtings get more and more off-colour. His friends roll their eyes but say nothing.
He jokes about sending a “dick pic” to a woman known to the group. Cupping his hands to his chest, he recalls the size of the breasts of a girl who used to go school with them. Then grinning like an idiot, he suggests ordering “spicy breast” takeout chicken. Coops’s IQ-free inanities go on and on.
The scene – cringey but not implausible – is the centrepiece of a new public campaign by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to combat misogynistic attitudes among young men. Khan draws a direct causal link between low-level sexist comments among men and violent crimes against women.
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“Violence against women and girls starts with words,” insists the office of the Labour mayor. Critics of this school of thought argue that low-level sexist comments may be stupid and unwelcome, but there is no reliable evidence to suggest they are the first step on a ladder that ends with sex crimes and the killing of women.
The wider issue resonates in a city that still trembles from the rape and murder of Sarah Everard during the pandemic by Wayne Couzens, a serving London Metropolitan Police officer. Another Met officer, David Carrick, was jailed for rape earlier this year. His blatantly sexist attitudes were widely known among his colleagues but apparently went unchallenged.
It isn’t just the always-excitable media outlets, such as the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard, that have criticised the campaign for a tone that is seen as patronising
Yet discussion of the central topic since Khan launched his campaign two weeks ago has been overshadowed by an oh-so-London debate over the language it is suggested men use to intervene. The campaign implores young men to “say maaate to a mate” who engages in sexist language.
The contention is that it gives young men a handy phrase with which to nudge their friends without shaming them. Just say “maaate” and he will sheepishly shut up, and you can all keep playing Fifa. The Ogilvy advertising group says the phrase leans on empirical behavioural science that shows words with elongated vowels are effective at conveying disapproval.
London has been plastered with “say maaate” billboards. It follows on from previous campaigns in the city against “intrusive staring of a sexual nature” on the Tube and a previous Khan crusade for men to “have a word” with friends who engage in obviously problematic behaviour.
The scene with Coops is part of an interactive video made for Khan’s office by Ogilvy. At each stage of the dimwit’s chauvinist burbling, the viewer has the option of pressing the “maaate” button to signal intervention.
If you jump in at the first sign of a sexist comment, you are congratulated. If you say “maaate” a little later on, you are thanked for intervening but also chided for not doing so earlier. If you choose to let Coops drone on and on like the imbecile that he is, eventually he turns to camera and confronts the viewer himself: “Mate, are you going to keep letting me carry on like this?”
The campaign has the official support of a media partner, the youth-focused LADBible group, as well as the End Violence Against Women Coalition. Other campaign groups, such as the Fawcett Society, have also welcomed the campaign because it focuses on restraining the behaviour of young men instead of suggesting precautions that should be taken by women.
Yet the campaign has also been swamped with criticism because the “maaate” exhortation is seen as cringey and open to ridicule. It isn’t just the always-excitable media outlets, such as the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard, that have criticised the campaign for a tone that is seen as patronising.
Even the (London) Times, which poses as a sober paragon of grown-up debate, seems extraordinarily irked by the “sanctimonious” maaate campaign, which it insists will not work.
“Mr Khan’s initiative should certainly give Londoners a lot to think about, not least in deciding what the most annoying thing about it is,” the paper thundered in an editorial.
The paper agreed that sexist comments are unwelcome and potentially harmful and that sexism should not be encouraged. “[But] the idea that it will be effectively curbed by micro-managing everyday speech is absurd.”