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.
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