29 October, 2011 | Leave a Comment
Today Vincent Tabak was convicted of murdering Joanna Yeates. This is a case that has gripped Britain, though I imagine most of my non-British readers will be unfamiliar with it. I’ve been following the case with interest and the conclusion of the trial today has really upset me for reasons I will discuss in this post, which is a long one. Beware.
To recap the crime: About a week before Christmas last year, 25-year-old landscape architect Jo Yeates went missing. She simply vanished without a trace. On Christmas Day, her frozen corpse was found on the side of the road by a couple walking their dog. She had been strangled, but not raped. Jo’s 60-something landlord was arrested for her murder, crucified in the press and then it turned out that, whoops, he was 100% innocent. Fast forward a few weeks later and Jo’s neighbor, 33-year-old Dutchman Vincent Tabak, was arrested for her murder. Tabak, a seemingly smart, normal and mild-mannered guy, has a PhD, had a professional job, a live-in girlfriend and no criminal record. You can read a timeline of the crime here. Tabak’s arrest was shocking, since he was not some creepy sex offender type, but just seemed to be a regular guy — the guy next door, literally.
Today Vincent Tabak’s trial concluded. He had already admitted to killing Jo, so there was no mystery there. It was for the jury to decide whether it was manslaughter, as Vincent Tabak claimed, or murder, as the prosecution claimed. Tabak made up some ludicrous story that Yeates had invited him into her apartment, flirted with him, he misread the situation and tried to kiss her, she screamed, he put his hand over her mouth, another hand around her throat and voila…20 seconds later she was dead, all by accident. After this horrible accident, he put Jo’s body in the trunk of his car, texted his girlfriend to say he was bored and went to Asda to buy potato chips. Unbelievably, two complete morons on the jury actually bought this theory that he never intended to kill or even seriously harm Jo, despite the fact that strangling someone takes great effort and determination unlike, say, stabbing someone. Also, Jo had many other bruises and injuries on her body that are not explained by Tabak’s explanation of events. Today’s verdict in favor of murder was actually 10 to 2, but the judge accepted it and sentenced Tabak to “life” in prison, which means a minimum term of 20 years. [Don't even get me started on that.]
The main problem with the prosecution’s case was that Tabak seemed to have no motive. Jo was not raped or sexually abused, as one would expect in a case of strangulation such as this. Tabak’s DNA was found on her breasts, but experts could not conclude what this DNA was from. It is of course strange for someone to go to his next-door neighbor’s apartment and strangle her for no reason, but the prosecution was not required to prove motive and the other evidence was enough to convict him. After all, he had confessed. The prosecution hinted that Tabak may have strangled her because he derived a sexual thrill from it, but they presented no evidence to support this.
After Tabak’s conviction today, literally within seconds of it, the media began to report what they had been barred from reporting during the trial. The judge had excluded evidence that showed Vincent Tabak was obsessed with violent and sadistic pornography. He liked to watch pornography that showed men’s hands around women’s necks — and worse.
From the Guardian:
After his arrest in January, analysts delved deep into four computers Tabak had access to and found disturbing material. Police discovered images and films showing women bound, gagged, degraded and controlled by men. They also found a film in which two women were bundled into a car boot.
[...]
Detectives were particularly interested by three images of a slight, blonde-haired woman resembling Yeates who in one shot was pulling up her pink top to expose her breasts. When Yeates’s body was found three miles from her Bristol flat, her pink top was pulled up exposing her bra and part of one breast. Tabak’s DNA was found on her chest.
[...]
Police found that on the morning of the killing, 17 December last year, Tabak had accessed a pornographic website, although it is not clear if he viewed any films. He “certainly” had pornography on his mind, said Lickley.
And after Yeates’s death Tabak switched between looking at online articles relating to Yeates and watching pornographic films. On one day within two minutes he went from researching the Yeates inquiry to viewing pornographic films, some of which contained images of women being held by the throat. In a film viewed at this time a woman tells a man: “Choke me.”
Lickley argued that the pornography found on Tabak’s computer could indicate that on 17 December he graduated from being a viewer of violent images to a “participant”.
In addition to his obsession with pornography, Tabak also frequented prostitutes as part of his secret life.
The judge did not allow any of this evidence into the trial, since he said that it would prove too prejudicial. As I have written before, we too readily think that what sexually excites a person should be considered their “private life,” as if it has no connection to their core values, attitudes and beliefs. As someone wrote on Twitter this afternoon, when a person is discovered to have child porn, there is the automatic assumption that this person is a threat to children and it is used as evidence against them. However, we’re supposed to believe that porn featuring adults apparently doesn’t influence people. There is apparently no link between a man who repeatedly masturbates while watching women being (pretend) strangled and him enacting this on his victim. It’s mere coincidence.
I had long suspected that Tabak liked violent porn, but I had read nothing about it in the press and it was not mentioned in the trial, so I assumed there was no evidence of it. I often forget that Britain and America have very different rules regarding press freedom and it didn’t occur to me that the media was withholding information about Tabak until today. This outpouring of sordid details was really overwhelming. For me, this has been particularly upsetting because I have spent a lot of time during my PhD over the past four years researching pornography and how it normalizes violence and degradation of women, contributes to rape culture and dehumanizes and objectifies women. To see this play out so explicitly in the Jo Yeates trial, which I had been following, was really disturbing.
Mainstream heterosexual porn, i.e. the most popular kinds of pornography, is built upon the foundation of women’s submission to and domination by men. This kind of pornography features, as a matter of routine, violence and degradation of women. This is not extreme pornography – this is mainstream. Anyone who knows anything about pornography knows that users quickly become desensitized to the images they see and so they must seek out more thrills. Since there are a limited number of ways that penises can go into vaginas, mouths and anuses, the stakes must be raised another way, which comes via degradation and violence. It is the only way to provide an escalation of thrills. This is a major theme of Robert Jensen’s book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, which I highly recommend.
All of what I have outlined in the previous paragraph is considered fairly taboo to say in liberal and academic feminist circles. Pornography and prostitution are championed by many on the left for a variety of reasons. First, as an issue of free speech. Anyone who criticizes pornography as I have just done is immediately accused of favoring censorship and book burning, yet as you will notice, I have made no mention of censorship. Second, anything that involves sexual pleasure cannot be criticized. If something gets you off, you get a free pass. So while you may not buy products that were made in a sweatshop, and pat yourself on the back for that, watching pornography that was made in a sexual sweatshop is fine, because you get off on it. Do you see how these moral gymnastics work? Anyone who criticizes you is judgmental and anti-sex and just not cool. From the perspective of so-called “sex positive” feminists, anyone who criticizes porn is a prude and a slut-shamer because porn is so edgy and fun and liberating and it’s my choice! Etc. Etc. I could go on with this list, but it would be a mile long.
This may seem far-fetched to some of you, but I have been literally shunned by people in academic circles because of my views on pornography, some of them influential people. I’ve been at conferences where porn is talked about uncritically and where BDSM is considered a great form of feminist empowerment. Everyone is just supposed to tow the line. Needless to say, these people live in an ivory tower (despite how many of them fancy themselves to be political radicals and outsiders) and they have no real connection to the reality of mainstream pornography and prostitution, despite their championing of it. A recent study showed that men who buy sex exhibit misogynist attitudes and commit more crimes and violence against women compared to men who don’t buy sex (duh). How can prostitution ever be considered feminist if most men buying sex from women HATE women? Questions like this remain unanswered by the liberal champions of prostitution.
Now, this brings me back to Vincent Tabak. One of the reasons that the news about him today upset me so much is because it’s a reminder that these are not academic issues — they affect all of us in the real world and have real-world consequences. I’ve long recognized this and have sometimes been vilified for expressing such views. The disclosure that Tabak was obsessed with strangulation porn and then strangled a woman to death is going to cause a shitstorm on the internet, one that has already started. Porn apologists, assorted academics and sex-pos feminists will be out in force to dispute any link whatsoever between pornography and Vincent Tabak, who will be painted as a random psycho who would have killed Joanna Yeates no matter what. After all, according to these people, violent porn has absolutely no effect on anyone. Repeatedly watching women being strangled, beaten and raped is no different from watching kittens play with a ball of yarn.
Maybe Vincent Tabak would have killed Jo Yeates even if he had never seen this pornography. It’s quite possible. On the flip side, maybe Jo Yeates would still be alive if Tabak had not had access to graphic porn showing women being strangled in a sexualized way. We’ll simply never know. What’s likely, from my point of view, is that Vincent Tabak has issues with women, sexuality and violent fantasies. Finding pornography that showed the enactment of his fantasies, and watching this over and over again in a sexualized format, dehumanized women and desensitized him to the horrific nature of these acts. The pornography was no longer enough – he needed to enact this on a flesh and blood woman. Does the influence of pornography take away his responsibility? Absolutely not. But the proliferation of this vile, misogynist pornography reflects a desire to see this material on a widespread basis, while also normalizing such brutality.
In response to this issue, Julie Bindel’s article in the Guardian today received the usual arguments from apologists in the comments:
*They say: There is no proof of a causal link between pornography and violence.
No, there isn’t, because that would be impossible to prove. Human behavior is not that simplistic. It also cannot be proved that pornography doesn’t influence people. There are studies that show that pornography increases violence and sexual aggression, such as this one and this one, just to share two. It’s the rare child molester or rapist who doesn’t have a stash of porn.
*They say: Not everyone who watches violent porn commits rape or murder.
Well, duh. If everyone who watched violent porn committed murder, the streets would be littered with corpses. It’s possible that violent pornography (or any other type of media) may influence certain people and not others. Human psychology is endlessly complex. We’re not robots. While not everyone who watches violent porn commits violence, I would wager that the overwhelming majority of rapists and sexualized killers like Tabak like violent porn and use it to feed their sick fantasies.
It is my hope that this case, one of the most high-profile in Britain (and perhaps the Netherlands as well), will bring about a discussion of these issues. The proliferation of pornography via the internet is a serious issue for many reasons, particularly for the status and safety of women. Perhaps the murder of Joanna Yeates will help break the conspiracy of silence around pornography.
Anglofille said @ 12:33 am | Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Possibly one of your best blog posts – excellently written and raising very valid arguments. One can’t be conclusive, but I think it is safe to say that watching violent porn ‘galvanised’ Tabak’s actions on that terrible night. I just feel so sorry for Jo Yeates – a woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and whose biggest mistake was letting Tabak into her apartment, one she paid for with her life.
I find it really creepy to come onto your site at the moment – what with that big picture of that creepy guy looking at you all of a sudden… I hope you’ll write a new blogpost soon
But your article’s great of course !
Thanks very much, PHD. I just had such strong feelings about this that I had to write them down. It was the only way to process what I was thinking and feeling. I’m glad it resonated with you.
Dorothy…I know. That photo is really creepy. The interesting thing is that this photo was only released after his conviction. I had never seen it before and then as soon as he was convicted, this photo flooded into the media. I suppose it is his mugshot. They must have withheld it till after the trial.