Deliberately missing the point.

I almost didn’t write this because really, who needs to hear from yet another average white man? But often writing about things helps me examine my perspective and organise my thoughts a little better. So here I am.

Since the rape and murder of Sarah Everard in London, women have been sharing experiences over social media of the many many times they’ve been made to feel unsafe or endured some form of harassment. Sharing that fear of never knowing if the men making remarks to them are going to stop at remarks, or go further, or as in Sarah Everard’s case, ensure they don’t make it home alive.

It’s distressing to hear and read of so many accounts of this. But then men started to shout up. ‘Not all men’ they say. Frankly, that’s about as useful as ‘all lives matter’, and as with that ridiculous response to Black Lives Matter, it is deliberately missing the point. No, not all men are rapists and murderers. That does go without saying. But can every man honestly say that he’s never with the things he’s said to a woman, or by the way he’s stood too close to a woman, or stared for a little too long, that he’s never made a woman feel uncomfortable? Or scared, unsure if this time will be merely another invasion of personal space to endure, or will end up being something more final? Or pulled up one of his friends when he sees them do it?

I’d like to think not, but when I was younger I wasn’t so aware of the problem as I am now, so I don’t think I could say for sure. So, maybe in some ways it is all men? There were also comments made about how duh, women shouldn’t go out alone after dark, obviously it’s not safe, that’s just common sense. Why is it? Why should women be prevented from being outside after dark, when the danger comes from men? Why not keep men in after dark in that case?

I’m quite pleased I’m older now so don’t really find myself in situations where this could happen, but I do recall an incident from a night out a few years ago now. I’d had a really good night out with a few friends who were part of a wider group, and during the night we’d met up with and started chatting with another group of women. One of the women was plastered (if I recall one of her friends had said she’d not long gone through a bad break up). One of the men from my extended group had been with her for much of the night. Near the end of the night when some of her friends had tried to separate them, he hadn’t taken kindly to that, and I believe he had hit one of them.

Outside they were trying to bundle her into a cab to get her away from him, but he was trying to follow her. As the closest male witness to it all I was asked to intervene. I didn’t know what to say, so instead of challenging him directly I simply stood in front of him allowing her friends to get her and themselves away and hoped he didn’t get more violent. He didn’t and after a few minutes after they’d left, he’d wondered off to I don’t know where.

The thing is, I’m an abject coward and try my best to avoid confrontations, so putting myself in front of this man trying to force his way into a cab genuinely terrified me. But there’s the rub. As a man, I don’t have to feel that fear every time I’m out after dark. If I did, if I had to spend my life on high alert like that, I think I’d be very angry indeed. I think it wouldn’t be unreasonable to demand change. Or a moment to stand in solidarity with another woman who lost her life just because of a man acting on his basest instincts. And if that vigil was interrupted by another group of violent men, I would want nothing less than to burn the whole system that keeps me in this unending cycle to ashes.

Men are useless and women should inherit the earth.

Good…and bad.

I feel like some days I might be two different people in one ragged overweight shell. I feel like some days I’ve been trying to hold two realities in my head at once; both equally true, yet both very different. The personal and the external.

My life is going ok generally. Yes, there is an awful lot of extra stress at the moment from being stuck at home a lot. There is boredom from not being able to see friends and colleagues socially, or to take my kids to the local swimming pool or to the cinema or even to my local for an overpriced mediocre meal. But the rest of it’s going well.

Staying at home isn’t so bad because I’ve managed (with help – still impossible to do without help) to buy a house, and it’s a house that we love. I still have a job when so many others are struggling. I live with my family. You know, I’m not king of the world or a millionaire, but generally things are going well.

As long as I don’t widen that viewpoint, things are fine. If I look up beyond my own personal circumstances things get bleaker. Corruption and dishonesty in plain view from those tasked with governing us both at home and overseas, with a media that instead of holding them to account, spends its time trying to distract us with racist hit-pieces on members of the royal family they don’t like, a collective lack of effort to mitigate the numerous and linked challenges facing us in the near future, decisions made to increase, rather than reduce, the grave imbalance between the ultra-rich and the destitute, still refusing to pay staff on the front lines of this fight against the pandemic what they’re worth, paying them instead with claps.

The existential nature of the fear and the threat of climate change-caused ecological breakdown and how it will affect every part of our lives with increasing extremity, coupled with the fact that those tasked with preparing society to face it are chained to the will of those still profiting from fuelling the breakdown and the way most of us face the situation with apathy.

All of that causes a weird feeling in me some days. The peace I feel at home from the generally positive place I’m in personally feels unearned and somehow disrespectful when the wider view of the world imposes itself on me. Some days I think the cognitive dissonance is enough to make me crumble to dust and just stop doing anything.

It's a strange thing.

Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):

The Doors: Strange Days: “Strange days have found us, strange days have tracked us down. They’re going to destroy our casual joys.”