Arabic version: كاتبة تربط ثقافة الألفية الأولى بتأخر المحاسبة

According to The Guardian, columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett says the public reckoning over Russell Brand and allegations concerning David Walliams reflects a media culture that normalised misogyny, objectification and harmful attitudes towards consent. Walliams has denied the allegations against him.

Cosslett writes that Mr Justice Bennathan’s sentencing remarks in Brand’s trial resonated with women who came of age during what she calls the “lad culture” era, dating from the mid-to-late 1990s to the beginning of the #MeToo movement in 2016. She says young women were surrounded by messages that excused coercion, abuse and violence, while blaming women for men’s conduct.

The columnist describes a media landscape shaped by lads’ magazines, tabloids and television, where celebrity power was substantial and rape jokes were treated as routine. She recalls writing The Vagenda with Holly Baxter in 2014, a book examining the media environment and rape culture. The book included examples such as jokes about gang rape, a strip-club correspondent at the Evening Standard, and teenage-magazine reader photographs under the heading “How Sexy Am I?”.

Cosslett argues that this culture helps explain why accounts of alleged predatory behaviour took so long to reach public attention and why many survivors struggled to identify what had happened to them as wrong. She says girls and women often knew they felt sick, shocked or violated, but encountered a wider culture that framed such experiences as normal.

While saying young women today face threats including online grooming, harassment, deepfakes and image blackmail, Cosslett writes that their understanding of consent and boundaries is stronger than it was for her generation. She welcomes the current reckoning and praises women who have brought allegations into public view.