Author: Anastasia Pinkse

Editors: Elisah Sauerbier, Kintan van Leeuwen

Boos vs. The Voice of Holland

It was about two months ago when news broke out in the Netherlands regarding the TV show The Voice of Holland, where the jury and band leader were accused of sexual transgressive behaviour. The media circus began when the Youtube channel BOOS announced to the editors of The Voice of Holland that they would broadcast a documentary with the allegations of sexual transgressive behaviour by a number of their employees. A huge number of young females shared their stories of abuse and sexual transgressive behaviour in the broadcast of BOOS, BOOS: THIS IS THE VOICE, on the 20th of January this year (2022). Most of these young females explained that even though the incidents occurred months or years ago, it was only through this particular broadcast that they felt safe to share their stories in unison. An anonymous source who was allegedly raped by Ali B (Dutch rapper and judge on the Voice of Holland) spoke: “I knew that there were more victims, he [Ali B] even told me so. I was never able to find those girls. To stand up by myself against a man with so much money and power, and to report the crime to police without having any substantial evidence, that is a very big step that you can’t just take. I have already spoken with the police, and they explained that it wasn’t a criminal act according to the Dutch law. If someone who isn’t underage has sexual intercourse without any violence involved, it is not considered a crime.”

When Peng Shuai spoke up

Unfortunately, sexual transgressive behaviour similair to what happened behind the scenes of The Voice are a worldwide phenomenon. As took place in Asia last November when the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai shared on Chinese social media app ‘Weibo’’ a 1600 word note, where, according to BBC News, she accused former vice-premier of China Zhang Gaoli that he forced her to have sexual intercourse with him (2021). After Peng Suai posted these allegations on Weibo, it quickly got taken down. Only moments after the shocking post was removed, she vanished for weeks (BBC News, 2019). Her disappearance sparked concerns from her colleagues and the head of the WTA committee, who demanded an investigation into her disappearance. It was only after multiple international organizations got involved, that the Chinese tennis player was seen in public again and did an interview with L’equipe, a French sports magazine. In this interview she suddenly changed her story and said that she never made such a post and couldn’t remember the alleged incident (BBC News, 2019). The reason why Peng Shuai changed her statements remains unknown, but to the public it was widely suspected that another woman had to dim her voice in order to save the reputation of men in power.

The Burning Sun Scandal

However, the case of Peng Shuai is not the only scandalous case in Asia in which women have been taken advantage of. According to the article by Bicker, for BBC News (2019), a huge scandal came to light, which is now known as the Burning Sun scandal (2019). The name of the scandal is related to a club in Seoul, co-owned by k-pop star Seungri, where rich, famous or powerful people, mostly male, would go out and enjoy their lavish lifestyles (Bicker, 2019). According to Bicker, a number of the frequent male visitors of the Burning Sun club were called VVIP’s. These VVIP’s would order staff members of the club to provide them with drunk girls that were partying in the club (2019). These drunk girls were then served with drinks that contained drugs. The drugs had sedative effects, ensuring that the girls would lose consciousness. The VVIP’s would then take the unconscious girls to a closeby motel where they would be raped and secretly filmed by the VVIP’s (Bicker, 2019). These videos would then be shared in group chats by the VVIP’s, thus, a sex ring was created (Bicker, 2019). 

What all these cases show is that sexual transgressive behaviour and sexual abuse is a worldwide phenomenon, regardless of its industry, culture or country. What these cases have in common is the abuse by men in powerful positions. These women experienced traumatic events that held no real consequences to the perpetrators who continue to make more victims. There has been no justice for all of the women stated in the cases above, due to victim-blaming societies and a lack of sufficiency of the law. It also shows that men in powerful positions are enabled to prey on women. Or even on a microscale were never taught to ask for consent.

Why consent matters

The one thing that is prevalent in these stories is not only the invincibility of the assaulters, causing victims to be too scared to go to the police for the repercussions, but also the lack of consent. Finding research or studies done on consent is actually quite hard, most of the research is not very recent and is limited. According to research by Humphreys, it is only recently that consent regarding sexual intercourse has been studied and when it was studied it was mainly focused on verbal communications of consent and never the non-verbal (2007, p.307). This is contradicting, as most of the time consent for sexual intercourse is usually given non-verbally. Interestingly, the act of giving consent is more prevalent during sexual intercourse than it is for kissing or hugging (Humphreys, 2007). Humphreys states in the research that violating someone by pursuing the act of kissing is seen more as complimenting than being denied a kiss, which is the refusal of consent (2007). According to the research: Evidently, it is more acceptable to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission (Humphreys, 2007, p.307). 

This result is shocking to say the least, as it shows that asking for permission is perceived as a threshold which is more difficult to overcome, perhaps due to the shame of verbally expressing your wants and needs. Talking about sex is still taboo and sex education in schools is primarly focused on preventing sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies. Thus it lacks the depth of what sex is about which is love, connection, pleasure and safety of both parties involved. That is why education on consent is such a vital topic in sex education, because without consent sex can never be enjoyable, safe and deeply profound as it should be. 

The countless accusations towards men in the past few years regarding sexual transgressive behaviour, shows that consent is such an important part of sexual relations. That is why at Little Leaders Foundation,  we believe that consent should urgently be included in sex education.