But it is all women…
The fundamental rule you must follow to write a good... well, anything, is to know exactly what point you're making. If your piece is a call to action, it should also offer a tangible action point, not leave arguments in an abstract state.
In trying to distill my whole life experience as a woman, and the sprawling nature of emotions I have towards this topic, I don't know if I've managed to follow those rules. That being said, if I had to elevator pitch it, maybe I would reduce it to this: because of my gender, I have been acutely aware of the risk to my safety from childhood, and instinctively fearful of the way society objectifies my body to the extent that I may not be valued beyond it. The sexualisation of women has led to me being both undermined and unsafe.
In trying to assert my right to be recognised as equal to men, I have had to engage in so much emotional labour it has at times been debilitating. Trying to navigate to a comfortable place in a patriarchal society is a life's work. For me, at an everyday level, it looks like:
Wrestling with intrusive thoughts about my body and the shame of being weak and caving to such a shallow and narrow way of valuing myself.
Taking up so much mental space it detracts from my ability to focus on other skills that are external to developing mental resilience.
A necessary evil for female presenting people to address, so as not to feel we are imagining it all. Or worse, to ensure we don’t become vulnerable to the worst outcomes of misogyny. Illuminating red flags to peers; asking difficult questions; desonstructing toxic messages pushed by the press; challenging abysmal rape prosectution statistics…
I personally feel part of an echo chamber, something many feminists experience, and it makes me understand two things very clearly:
I am unsafe because of my gender.
I lack confidence because of my gender.
Which leads to this conclusion, I have less ability to focus on cultivating my career, or passions while living like this. Horrifyingly, it is even worse for my disabled or trans sisters, and those from minority ethnic groups, as they are also oppressed in other ways, concurrently to the ways in which they are oppressed for being female presenting.
If this sounds dramatic to you, I am inviting you to remain patient with me for now… I take no pleasure in writing this, it is written off the back of two things:
The lack of sleep I've had since the disappearance of Sarah Everard.
The overwhelmingly triggering response across social media from other women, who like myself, want to reclaim the night and the streets.
Secondly, I'm writing this as a woman who has not been raped, because for those who have, they shouldn't have to spell this out too:
Believe us.
Help us.
Change society with and for us.
I am writing this because society needs to be safer for women.
I write this as a woman who has never been a drinker, never taken drugs, and I say this, because it means I have rarely had to get public transport or a taxi in the dark (since I could drive at 21). I say this, as a woman who has been able to afford to drive since she was 21, and has rarely had to commute to work using public transport or a taxi. Bear that in mind when you read the rest of this, because I know for a fact that this has been somewhat of a protective barrier for me.
Now, I'm going to outline a list of things that have made me feel unsafe or lack confidence as a woman in my life, this is not exhaustive but it is reflective of each stage/facet of my life, so I will split it up accordingly, starting with…
During high school:
It was normal to be beeped at, and have things shouted at me, while waiting at the bus stop (alone in the mornings) in my school uniform, from the time I was 11 years old to the time I finished, at 16.
Before we even knew what it meant, my female friends and I would be asked if we spat or swallowed by boys many years older than us. Then judged and laughed at based on our answers or obvious confusion.
Boys would randomly undo our bras, bragging they could do it single-handedly.
I was given a mark out of 10 for my desirability.
A boy I didn't want a date sent me a poem, in which he described me as an “unwrapped present and an empty eggshell”. Because he couldn't get what he wanted, he felt entitled to let me know I was worthless.
I was followed home by a group of boys when I was 12, I was in my school uniform and they were all on bikes in normal clothes (leading me to think they were old enough to have already left school) they kept circling me and asking me if I was a virgin. I got away from them by hiding in a shop and then running home through a lane.
During sex education there was no mention of female ejaculation or pleasure. (Plenty of women don’t even know about female ejaculation, even in the internet age)
Teenage conversations about sex involved a base system, interestingly oral sex was only ranked in relation to the penis. As an adult it's easy to see that this system wasn't inclusive to gay kids either, but honestly, at the time, it felt like sex was those things and anything outside of that was kinda deviant, or slutty, so in some way shameful.
My first serious boyfriend was so possessive he insisted I became his blood brother so he could always have a part of me with him. We got voted cutest couple in our year book, and I honestly thought it might be one of my life's greatest achievements!
That same boyfriend and I, had very differing views on recreational drug use. It was a bone of contention. When he went to his older brother’s for the weekend, I’d made him promise not to get fucked up with him, but obviously he decided to drop acid and didn’t speak to me for the whole weekend. When I finally did get the call, he sounded so miserable I ended up just trying to keep him calm, which is lucky because the next day he told me he would have killed himself if I hadn't been nice to him. Yep, because his come down was so bad.
Incidentally, I really couldn't then explain how I felt about it all to him, because I was so worried about his wellbeing. I think this is something a lot of women will recognise, I would argue that the “boys will be boys” message pumped in the media and frequently by parents and other adults, insidiously creeps into the feminine psyche, leading us to nurturing men and ignoring our own feelings, or only sharing them with other women.One of my friends tried to break up with her boyfriend, who hadn’t treated her very nicely, and he wouldn't accept it and kept bombarding her with calls. she felt obliged to continue going out with him once he told her he had drunk bleach because he was “so fucked up without her”.
Girls were constantly judged on whether they were a virgin or not.
I was walking the dog in the park opposite my house at 13, with my little brother, and a man tried to encourage us into the back of his van. It was 4pm, in broad daylight.
During college and university:
I had a lot of male friends, and when I wanted to go on holiday with them, as the only girl, I was categorically not allowed unless I shared a room with another girl. Either it wouldn’t look right or I wasn’t safe, either rationalisation is not really ok.
One of my best male friends and I had a bit of a ‘will-they-won’t-they’ thing going on, which is totally normal for teens, except that after 3 years of friendship he still told his closest friend he wanted to “get the chastity belt off my knickers”. I feel dirty just writing it, because, even now, I can feel the prickle of humiliation it caused… I’d thought we had something much more than that. But it was just the long game.
During our initiation to our halls of residence, the people that had volunteered to organise our Freshers Week made bets on how many of the girls they could pull. As I had a boyfriend, some of them didn't even speak to me.
I was on an all-girls corridor in my halls of residence, one night a boy from a different floor let in some lads he'd met at a club and they came banging on all of our doors, and kicking at them, they pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall to hit them with, all because they wanted us to, “come out and have some fun.”
I was mugged while walking with three friends, I was literally dragged off the street into a park by my bag. It was dark, but not late, maybe 8:30pm, it was a very busy area of Birmingham and I was screaming at my assailants. Nobody came to help, including many suited men who were walking past. I was 20 at the time, I would guess the two boys were 15 or younger... I refused to let go of the bag, one of them kept pulling until it broke and he could run away with it. I strained every muscle in my arm resisting, plus, I was shouting at them both to get off me, screaming that they had no right, and it made no difference at all. It still makes me panic when I imagine the force of a grown man.
When I gave my statement to the police about the mugging, a male police officer told me that I had been really stupid to hold onto the bag, affronted I asked him why I would give away my own possessions willingly? He told me I had a pretty face and if I wanted it to stay that way next time I would, because he's seen girls like me with their face slashed open, girls like me dragged along by cars as a mugger grabs their bag through a wound down window.
My friend had her drink spiked in a club, and when she collapsed I went in the ambulance with her to the hospital. The male doctor refused to treat her because he said she was drunk, even though I was completely sober and telling him she had had two drinks. Even when I told him the bouncers said it was a nightly occurrence, he wouldn't listen and left me completely alone with her. My friend spent long periods seemingly unconscious, and would then be suddenly lucid and have panicked conversations with me about where we were and what was happening, only to seemingly pass out again. This experience made it terrifyingly clear to me why victims of the date rape drug will later get flashbacks of what has happened to them.
A self-professed feminist male friend of mine told me, when he was really drunk, how he’d “shelved” me for marriage material because I was a “good girl”.
I had a part-time job at Pizza Hut, one of my female managers asked me to travel to Cheltenham to pick up some important papers they needed from the area manager, for an audit they were having. I was meant to be collected at the station and taken to the local branch and then dropped back at the station with the papers. But, when I got there the male manager took me to his flat, where he had a bottle of wine waiting on the table with 2 glasses.
When I refused to have any, and made it clear that I needed to go because it was urgent, he said he just needed to finish the papers. He drank the whole bottle of wine himself, and I realised I was in a strange city and hadn’t paid attention to where I was (as he’d surprised me by parking in a residential area). It turned out ok, but only because I played really nice but firm about how I needed to get back to a firework display with my uni friends and they were already hassling me about why I wasn’t back. On returning to the branch, the group of staff I dropped the papers to just smirked and asked if I had had fun. I obviously gave up the job immediately.
I got a horrendous UTI and when I went for an examination, which I was already terrified about, the male doctor told me I obviously had an STD and should have safe sex. He wouldn’t listen when I explained I had only had one sexual partner and said uni students were all the same. It took longer for me to get a proper diagnosis as I had to go again when the STD results came back as negative.
Remember that first boyfriend from school? We were still on and off when I went to uni, and he called me 6 months after we’d last had sex to tell me he had Chlamydia and I should get checked. I was absolutely mortified, and scared I’d be infertile. He never called me on the day of the test or to find out what result I got.
I found out some guys had a bet on who could sleep with me.
A female friend and I went on a trip to Warsaw, Poland, and the taxi driver didn't take us to our hotel, instead he took us to a really dark and run-down looking area of town and then wanted to charge us more to take us to our hotel. Obviously, this was a tried and tested scam and we needed to get out of that area and were in an unsafe position, so despite trying to argue we agreed. My friend tries to avoid conflict at all costs, but once we were nearer our building, and at some main road traffic lights, pulled us both out of the car and we ran away.
In work, as a teacher:
The first high school I worked in, I had a kid that kept calling me his girlfriend. He did it to the point where the rest of the boys would call me, “Ahmed’s Girl” when they walked past me, sneering. He secretly took photos of me in class on his phone. I reported this and nothing happened. In the end, I called the boy's Dad and it stopped, but it turned out it was only because his dad was an Iraqi immigrant who found it deeply embarrassing and had battered his son.
At the same school boys would sometimes stand in front of my car when I tried to leave the premises at the end of the day, to intimidate me.
I was spat on by a boy in school.
I've had my mobile phone stolen by a boy at school.
I was locked in a cupboard by a boy at school.
I was threatened, “I’ll gut you like a fish” by a boy.
A boy kicked in my classroom window because he didn’t like it when I told him he couldn’t answer the phone in my lesson.
I have been advised to be, “more motherly” in my role as a teacher, despite the fact I am not actually a mother in my own life, and this would not be expected of the male teachers.
I have seen boys at high school listen to pretty girls when they have nothing interesting to say and ignore articulate things said by girls they don’t find attractive.
In many schools the football pitch is still the domain of the boys.
Miscellaneous:
Being groped in clubs. Called a “slag/bitch/stuck-up/ugly” when rejecting unwanted physical advances by strangers. Had alcoholic drinks bought for me when I’ve explicitly said I don’t drink and been told to “have some fun” by strangers. Told to smile by men in the street, on the bus, in clubs. Had boys on bikes purposefully screech to a stop in front of me. Men stamp in front of me, shouting things and laughing at my scared response.
A guy I was friends with stopped speaking to me when I got into a relationship… He had never even told me he liked me! Then he bumped into me after I got married and told me it was my fault he cheated on the mother of his two kids… Apparently, I’d been so happy the last time he saw me, before my wedding, he just wanted to hurt something, so slept with a random girl the same night.
Had it blamed on the drink.
Had it forgotten because of the drink.
Had boyfriends go to strip clubs even when I’ve explicitly said I don’t feel comfortable about it, and then found out they had private lap dances because “it’s a rite of passage”. Been told to “relax” more times than I can count. Been called bossy, loud, aggressive and emotional when I’ve been assertive. I’ve been told my legs would look better in heels. I’ve heard friends and boys at school talk about how female pubic hair should look and what underwear is desirable. Gone to a boy’s house and been greeted with pictures of naked women on the walls. Been encouraged to go on the pill repeatedly by doctors without them ever mentioning how detrimental it can be to women. I have been told to wear make-up to prove I take care of myself.
I’ve been told countless times, by men, that they like it when women play hard to get, as if rejection is a game.
These things are part of the fabric of female life. All people have low lights. I have also made mistakes and will have offended and hurt people. Women can be horrendous to their romantic partners too, this isn’t about poor little me, or pretending all women are inherently angelic. But, I do believe what I’m sharing here indicates misogyny is alive and well, and a lot to contend with alongside everyday trials and tribulations and personal ineptitudes. It is mostly completely unnecessary and shouldn’t be a part of normal life. But it is. Insidiously so.
Sometimes I feel like my body is a battleground. Worse, I want to please with it, in spite of having said all this. I wish I didn’t, but I do.
Aesthetically, I want to please as much as my former students, who show off the sort of slender frames on Instagram that keep me awake wondering whether they eat. Wondering whether I could have done more to make them feel above that?
Sarah Everard is unfortunately, just one of many. When Meghan Markle has her statements about feeling suicidal rebuffed as manipulative or hysterical, she is unfortunately, just one of many. When I carry keys between my fingers in the dark, or let my friend’s know I’m home safely, I am unfortunately, just one of many.
When they say not all men, I just wonder if they know that it is all women though. Which means it must be quite a lot of men… You just aren’t paying attention because the status quo doesn’t upset you like it does me.
Do you see?
