I had the complete displeasure of growing up during what is now called the ‘Indie Sleaze’ era of the 2000s. Rampant misogyny was normalised.
Comedian and former poster-boy for the era of hedonism, Russell Brand, has been charged by the Metropolitan Police on April 4 with two counts of sexual assault, one count of indecent assault, one count of rape and one count of oral rape over a six-year period, relating to four separate women, and issued a court summons. The alleged incidents took place between 1999 and 2005. He denies these allegations and states he has never engaged in non-consensual activity.
Despite this, Brand says that his behaviour was ‘normal’ in the ‘diabolical culture’ of the early 2000s. At what point do we stop blaming ‘culture’ and begin to ask men to put in the work to keep women safe?
Brand was one of the most popular comedians and actors of the 2000s. He appeared in movies such as St. Trinians, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. But it’s revisiting clips of his stand-up tours that’s triggering. In one, he mocks a woman he is having oral sex with for her mascara running down her face in discomfort. I have a vivid memory of this joke specifically being repeated in my student halls, a crowd of 18-year-old boys laughing.
We didn’t have the language or the awareness to talk about the hyper-misogyny that we were experiencing. If you spoke out to challenge the hyper-misogynistic treatment of yourself or friends, you were deemed a bore. But that’s how it gets you: it’s a collective gaslighting.
Brand now releases videos on a site called Rumble and then shares these onto social media platforms such as Youtube and X. In a video released on April 7, he says that during ‘that’ era he was “captured by a kind of darkness” and was caught up in a “relentless pursuit of pleasure.” He explains that hedonism was “warmly applaud[ed]”. But whose pleasure is prioritised, and further celebrated, when the butt of the joke is the pain and suffering of women?
I was a teenager in the 2000s and experienced first-hand the hyper-misogyny that pervaded every facet of society. My first memory of this is when I was a schoolgirl, an older man commented on my underwear that he could see through my shirt. It was a ‘Little Miss’ bra, but his pointing out of this was deemed a ‘joke’ that I didn’t quite understand the punchline of. Now, I know the punchline was that he was more powerful than me.
And then came what is now called ‘Indie Sleaze’, when men would wear tight jeans and eyeliner (marketed as ‘guy-liner’) to give the affect of safety as these cultural signifiers said “I am in touch with my feminine side, so you don’t have to worry about me”. But we who did not worry paid the price.
On nights out, young women experience wandering hands from strangers as they pass on the dance floor. Sometimes, those hands would find their way into the back of jeans or up skirts. A scream would let them know that consent was not granted. Later in smoking areas, those same young women would be called “no fun”, that they did not understand the joke.
In the late 2000s, women were to blame for the ill-behaviour inflicted on them by men. I would wager that the phrase “She was asking for it” has been heard by every young woman who grew up then. We were given advice on how not to ask for it. Dress demurely, never wear an outfit that reveals both leg and bust.
Women are often told to be cautious of their surroundings, not to drink too much, to always get a registered taxi home, to look out for each other. But what when the danger is hiding in plain sight? What if it’s the bloke you take to be an ally? What then?
I published a novel called Exile in 2024 which is set in 2008 and centres around a young woman not being believed after she is sexually assaulted by a well-liked young man. After my book was released, I had more direct messages on social media from women I knew and some I didn’t yet know to tell me that the experience of living through the 2000s was harrowing. They told me they were not believed, by friends nor police.
They often said that it came down to a “he-said-she-said” debate. A recent Stacey Dooley documentary Rape on Trial explores just this. It’s incredibly difficult for the claimant to prove that a crime has happened when their bodies are the evidence. Brand invokes this when he tells his followers: “Remember for twenty-two and a half years I have been drug and alcohol-free, and I have a pretty good memory of accounts.”
We are in an era when we are now reckoning with the wrongs of the past in a hope of stopping violence against women in the present and the future. This should be unequivocal, but it’s worth saying: women’s suffering should never be a by-product of the pursuit of another’s pleasure.
Brand’s charges come eighteen months after The Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches published an investigation in which serious allegations were made against him. He denies the allegations. Brand is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on May 2.
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