Sexual assault is not our mess to clean up. And the Russell Brand allegations are just a reminder.

So many things are depressing about the Russell Brand allegations. The behaviour of powerful men towards women in the workplace and every other part of society feels like an infinite onion. Peeling away one toxic layer (Weinstein, Saville etc. etc.) just generates a new updated one - in this case an outlandish dandyesque lover of long syllable words.

For the vast majority of women who have been victims of serious sexual assault and choose not to go to the police and put themselves through the trauma only for the rapist to be found not guilty, watching the recently aired Dispatches documentary they will feel no more triggered than the numerous times rape allegations emerge over and over again. Their own rape stays with them every day and stories such as this simply are a reminder that rape is clearly not going away any time soon. They’ll put their kids coats on today and walk them to school and they’ll momentarily think about their own rape (or rapes) in between thinking about what to cook for dinner and what other mundane chores need doing that day.

They will fleetingly fantasize about prison sentences for their assailants and consider counselling if they can afford it. Such is the depressing nature of being a woman anywhere in the world.

Institutions and culture are still so rigged against women that we either choose to fight and get shafted by expensive lawyers, let the injustice kill us slowly by building up resentment in our kidneys, or simply put it to the back of our minds and go hell bent at living life only to be triggered every now and then.

For middle aged women who made it through the uber toxic nineties and noughties they know that all our institutions from the monarchy through to government through to surgeons in the NHS through to mainstream media through to the comedy circuit…they are all rigged against women. We now know that complete and utter gender equality is unachievable in what remains of our short lives. And it’s depressing. Gen X women were told they could have it all, only to be sexually assaulted by colleagues at events, face domestic abuse at home and get overlooked for promotions in the process. They enter their fifties and there is still zero rebalance. No retribution. No redress for the male student friend who “took advantage” when as a student female you’d drank too much. No prison sentence for the abusive ex-partner. No dismissal for the colleague who made them feel unsafe by phoning thirty times in an evening while you hid in your hotel room on overnight events and then was later found to have assaulted another female colleague that evening.

Bringing it up to the present day UK comedy circuit and following the airing of the documentary, female comedian Vix Leyton writes:-

“It serves more as a depressing indictment of how, despite all the talk about time being up, a lot of people didn’t want to believe women – particularly when they’re accusing people they admire – and only started listening when a man spoke about it. The risk for Daniel Sloss is a lot lower than the women who came forward on Channel 4, and for the incredible female journalists who worked doggedly to get this piece over the line.

“It is a horrible time to be a woman in comedy at the moment, and the depressing part is that when the furore over this specific incident has died down, we know that very little will have changed.”

One glimmer of hope is in the female led journalism in the Dispatches documentary who will no doubt have been unassuming, relentless, painstaking, shrewd, and collective in approach to bring together the body of evidence against Brand. That these women now have a modicum of power finally in what has been a male dominated and then male driven narrative since journalism began is not to be understated.

But we will not put an end to the deep injustices and traumas of being a woman simply going about her day and taking her rightful place in the world until we ALL recognise the size of the issue and do our bit to change it.

What’s striking about the Brand documentary is not how it outlines his alleged behaviour, but the complete and utter lack of senior male voices accounting for what they knew and why they did nothing to stop it. Or more accurately, how they have enabled behaviour such as this knowingly putting women at risk in order to further their own careers and the revenues of Channel Four.

Caroline Nokes, chair of the Women and Equalities Committee has said “For too long we have seen men, and the perpetrators of these sorts of crimes are almost invariably men, not being held to account for their behaviours and their actions.”

She continues, “And frankly, where were his colleagues, where were his male colleagues when he was conducting himself in this absolutely abhorrent way?” she said.

Of course, female colleagues also enabled these alleged crimes. But as marginalised women working within the industry their positions would be more tenuous, so lets put the blame where it needs to be placed. With the men who turn a blind eye and the men who actively enable it. Until these two issues are rooted out and dealt with, it will continue over and over again.

There are obviously more women working in UK media and other spaces than ever before. But you still see men sloping off to the pub together and doing deals. Until men treat female colleagues the same as male colleagues or mates, will men ever really have women's backs? Men in most industries still are the "norm." Shoe on the other foot, would they really be such bystanders for their male colleagues?

Until each industry removes harmful men and women from power it will continue to happen. The groupthink and toxic culture within our institutions arguably outlines a deeper issue of capitalism and paternalism. Until paternalism is held accountable and until the scarcity mindset that is created within us by capitalism is removed, the powerful will always be protected and venerated by those also looking to acquire power.

So, we call once again on the good men, who may have followed Brand due to his left-wing views, to rather than being surprised, or question the motives of the women and the mainstream press, to simply be more alert around their own friends and colleagues and call out bad behaviour when they see it even if it’s just words. In fact, especially when it’s just words as words and language are often at the very root of the problem. In simply just doing that alone, they may simply stop the toxicity, one rape at a time. We call upon the good husbands and boyfriends to believe their wives and girlfriends and not recoil when they need to retell their stories over and over again. We call on them to be angry on their behalf. This must no longer be a problem for women to fix. We call on our good men to call it out. We can’t do this on our own. Its not our mess to clean up.