Enablers & Enabling Behaviours: Why They Matter

Through wilful blindness, inaction or overt support, enablers of dysfunction & abuse give permission for abuses to continue.

Every abuser needs enablers. The individuals who excuse or are blind to what is happening or who cannot read the signs, as well as those who actively support or cheer on abusers, particularly narcissistic ones, the flying monkeys who go and do their dirty work for them. Organisations who, on an institutional level, conspire with or otherwise embed or magnify, the supposed innocence of the perpetrator and the alleged guilt of victims, and help punish victims further. Enablers are those, too, who create false narratives to explain away their own complicity. This includes the media and academic organisations who then “teach” their false narrative to others and ensure it gets disseminated as widely as possible, making it harder and harder for targets to refute or even get a fair hearing.

Enablers are the family members, “friends” and acquaintances who’ll tell a woman that her abuser is lovely, a "great guy," that she's being “over the top”, that it's her, not him and ask her to examine herself and her shortcomings for blame whenever he treats her badly. Enablers are the ones who will prioritise the abuser at all times, whether it's the parent who's only glad their daughter's not one of those awful “man-haters” languishing on the shelf, and terrified she'll let go of the only man who's ever been prepared to take her on, or the “friend” who mysteriously makes herself available as a shoulder to cry on for him, to discuss his partners shortcomings, and “accidentally” sleeps with him at the same time, because obviously, that’s a woman’s job and all men deserve comfort. Enablers are the ones who say the target must have done something, like his friends who'll laugh along as he slags her off, discusses her sexually with them, demeans and puts her down, dehumanises her by calling her "it", talks about her weight or domestic imperfections, or her failures to be exactly like what he thinks a “real woman” should be.  And enablers will cover for him when he hurts her physically or worse.

Enablers are the organisations and corporates who share false information and statistics and spout mantras in lazy virtue-signalling attempts to be more “inclusive” - while barely noticing that in doing so they are contributing to gaslighting and often excluding those they are specifically set up to support. Enablers are former women’s organisations like the Fawcett Society who trip over themselves to prioritise the men who wish to be women, and punish or berate the women who point out, for instance, that you might want to question what “your lovely transwoman friend” might be doing in your menopause discussion group, and what he might be trying to gain from being there.

Enablers are the management teams of rape crisis centres, who ignore equality law, bypass basic safeguarding and checks in order to, for instance, promote to CEO males with no GRC, whose clear priority is their own validation and the opportunity to “re-educate” rape victims out of the “bigotry” of recognising maleness or not wanting to be around males as they recover from a male-induced trauma. Enablers are those in senior positions who gleefully exclude and berate and sometimes even abuse female rape victims for having the temerity to not want males in their therapy or trauma support groups, or stage flounces when rape victims say they have the right to choose the sex of their intimate post-trauma examiners.

Enablers are the fawning interviewers, including those upper middle class women who plump up the cushions, promote said CEOs, and join them in sneering loftily at those they view as the unenlightened, uneducated fishwives who correctly point out, "Erm, that's a man." The fishwives who know from experience what abusive, narcissistic frog-boiling behaviour looks like, when the supposedly intellectually superior interviewer seems oblivious. The smug self identifying “left wing” journalists who write pityingly of women who don’t see sex work as “empowering” and snigger at the sheer uncoolness of those they portray as grim-faced, past-it old pearl-clutchers still wanting to retain single sex spaces. The “pearl-clutchers” so tragically taken in by “Daily Mail scaremongering” and “manufactured culture wars”, who, unlike the overwhelmingly privileged who have never been on the sharp end of anything, would question if the ivory tower self-described “feminists” or theories in today’s Gender Studies departments have much of value or even basic intelligence to offer feminism or the women of this world, and can see that they are now busily engaged in promoting the very misogyny and patriarchal views they claim to be dismantling. (It helps, too, when enablers can gaslight themselves out of understanding what terms like misogyny and patriarchal actually mean out in the real world.)

Enablers are the politicians and political parties whose elected members spout false statistics and give misleading, manipulative information in public, berate and sneer at members of the public with far greater knowledge than themselves and claim such members of the public need “political re-education” unless they succumb to the same false narratives and mantras the politicians are pushing. Enablers are politicians who run away from discussion, ignore their constituents, tell lies about what they've been asked “on the doorstep”, or tell members of the public that what they want to discuss about their own lives is so heinously offensive that it "should not be talked about". Enablers are the governments that force through abuser’s charter legislation despite the glaring flaws, the misogyny, the implications and impacts, despite being advised against it by the EHRC, the clear lack of popularity with the majority of their public, or all the former supporters said government has managed to lose through its inexplicable focus on the demands of misogynist fetishist men being met or else.

Enablers are the politicians who actively prioritise the fetishes of white middle class men over disabled, working class women and women of colour but claim that in doing so they are 'highlighting the plight of the vulnerable," including on days specifically set out for the vulnerable, while those people are ignored and their issues and needs handwaved away. Enablers are those who gush about remembering the largely non-existent UK deaths of “trans victims of bigotry”** while largely staying silent about the WEEKLY deaths of UK women subject to misogynistic hatred and violence. Enablers are local councillors who proudly prioritise public allegiance to the sex stereotype flag representing the quasi religious belief system they have signed up to over the safety and needs of say, disabled and partially sighted road users, and who fail to bother doing impact assessments before painting over standard safety road markings with their beloved pink and blue. Or those, like Norwich council below, who proudly announce under the auspices of that Sex Stereotype Flag, that women who disagree with them about its tenets and who will not repeat their mantras are “extremists” who will “not be welcome” in their city.

Enablers are the newspaper editors who allow their staff to conduct bullying campaigns hounding out dissenting and experienced female columnists who write about facts relating to women that don't fit the false male-prioritising narrative they wish them to espouse. Those newspaper editors who allow immature, narcissistic male columnists free reign to spread misinformation and propaganda, launch  poorly informed, misogynist, ageist and lesbophobic social media campaigns against women (and teenage girls) in the public eye they don't like, and defame others without any censure whatsoever. Enablers are supposedly "left wing" media outlets which distort facts and refuse to report any stories where the facts don't fit their preferred narrative. When women of colour speak out against an obvious sex offender in their spa, for instance, enablers in the media outfits publish outraged stories about 'transphobia', the “right wing” and “moral panic”, yet omit to report the eventual reveal of the obvious sex offender as, well, an actual known sex offender. As for the women and girls... well, #Blacklivesmatter, but only male ones, of course, and only the right kind of Black lives, especially the kind who are good and obedient and will do what they're told by superior wealthy white liberals, for whom signalling one's virtue is infinitely more important than actually possessing any, or integrity either.

Enablers are the self righteous '“activists” who wilfully excuse attacks on vulnerable or marginalised people such as women in prison, and those that defend them in the name of “equality”, “diversity” and “kindness”, and especially those who fail utterly to call them out while themselves preaching kindness. Enablers are the employers and organisations who stand by and permit spiteful, jealous colleagues to hound women out of employment, and then apologise to the hounders. Enablers are the senior academics who issue syrupy, handwringing apologies to the “brightest and best” students at prestigious universities for the horror of allowing them to have to share a campus or be presented with an individual who robustly disagrees with them, or whose views they may find challenging.

Enablers are the tech companies who systematically ban women from expressing their views about their own legal rights or reality, allow bullies to publish women's home addresses in order that crowds can gather outside their homes, or the police can be sent to visit and “check their thinking”, while allowing paedophiles, misogynists and rape-fantasists to spout hatred and freely indulge porn-driven, often violent sexual fantasies on their platforms. Enablers are the 'unions' a and supposed "socialists" who choose to support the privileged student hounders of employees rather than the employees themselves. Enablers are the largely white, wealthy publishing and media class who gleefully sign “open letter” denunciations against women who speak of facts and evidence, and convince themselves their ignorance means they're both superior and “kind”. Enablers are those who organise "Women's Prizes" for writing to redress a balance, then promote male writers of violent, regressive misogyny as “women”, only to complain they're being “bullied by nasty people” when other women point out what they're doing. Enablers are the chairpeople of writers’ unions and their acolytes, who excuse and minimise mass hatred , propaganda and misinformation campaigns, lies and violent threats against those they envy or dislike, say nothing about putrid misogynistic hate campaigns or the attack on freedom of expression, and then pretend they are themselves the victims when others call them out.

Enablers are the celebrities and others who ignore and push under the carpet multiple violent threats, including death and rape threats, by claiming these are "consequences" that should be expected for a woman not agreeing she is a second class citizen and for answering back in a way a man or his handmaiden doesn't like. Enablers are the people who angrily defend such disparity for headpats and seem to truly believe that they are being good people. Well, I'm sure those citizens who participated in the naming torture, drowning, burning and hanging of elderly female neighbours they didn't like in the craze to seek out witches thought they were being “goodly” too. I’ve no doubt those who cheered on the persecution and murders of their fellow humans in the name of their country’s “return to greatness” thought they were being good and righteous, as did those who dutifully reported wrongthinkers to the secret police to get them sent to gulags or be tortured in prisons. The students clutching Mao's Little Red Book when beating and murdering their teachers in the pursuit of Cultural Revolution: I'm sure they imagined they were being The Good People too.

Why does it matter? Because every abuser needs enablers to absolve themselves of responsibility, to make excuses for them, to allow them to continue their abusive behaviour unchecked. People with abusive intent will seek out and feed off those who allow it, and there are depressingly plenty ready to jump into that role feet first, eyes shining with the glory of their own saintliness. But they’re allowing themselves to become accomplices; willingly complicit in campaigns of hate, falsehood, abuse and punishment, happily helping dismantle other peoples’ fundamental human rights and basic democratic process, while often seemingly believing they’re doing the opposite. This has made entire systems dysfunctional, made prevention impossible, dragged out the time abuse and poor behaviour has continued and people have been hurt. Enabling is dysfunctional behaviour in itself, allowing poison to get spread at every level. Abusers’ gonna abuse, as they say, but it’s the systems and blocks we have in place to STOP them that make all the difference.  It's never kind or righteous to be a stranger to truth and integrity. It’s morally feeble, supplicant, easily manipulated and led. Abusers everywhere delight in the support of those who choose to allow them to continue, and make no mistake; these people have been complicit. I can only hope they will all one day be held to account for what their failures and choice to turn a blind eye has done.

**This piece was written before the horrific murder of teenager Brianna Ghey by two teenage bullies, one of several teenage stabbing murders in the same week. Brianna’s was the first murder of a trans identifying person in the UK in four years. Sadly, gender zealots seemed quick to mysteriously apportion blame for the murder on adult women who believe sex is real, ignoring any questions around the prevalence of knife crime among teenagers, or that the police currently have an open mind around a motive.