|
When I was 17 and had my first proper boyfriend (not counting the one I was technically in a relationship with for two months because I felt guilty that he was in love with me and I didn’t like him back), I read one of those books. Men Are From Mars And Women Are From Venus or whatever. It said that men would always feel a natural urge to sleep on whatever side of the bed was closest to the door. Y’know, because men are so protective of women. Meanwhile bitches always be crazy, because of hormones or the uterus floating around in the body or something. I really wish that all men would start feeling a natural urge to not attack women in the street. This one goes out to all of you, who are tired. I am exhausted. From scrolling through Twitter. It looked something like this: @woman: *traumatic experience to do with being followed home* @nonbinaryperson: *link to article about femicide* @man: Funny how you get salt and pepper but not salt and pepper and poo, amirite? looool. @woman: men, please stop killing us. @man: sometimes boats are big lol @transperson: I know what it’s like to fear for my life. @man: but what was she wearing? I’m exhausted. From watching women, nonbinaries and transpeople share traumatic experiences and beg for protection and understanding. I’ve seen so many women share their locations and phone numbers to let other women in the area know that if they ever someone to walk them home, to just give them a call. Meanwhile, the silence from men is deafening. I’m at the point of frustration where I genuinely think that unless men have something productive to say, they just shouldn’t say anything. Not in the aftermath of this. That’s what I mean by ‘yes, all men’. Yes, all men need to step up and start talking to the men around them about their behaviour. Yes, all men need to get involved with this conversation because it’s not a Women’s Issue, it’s a Men’s Violence Issue. Yes, all men have been raised in a society that is inherently full of misogyny and r*pe culture. So have women — but that just means that women are socialised to become victims and men have been socialised to become predators, so again, a Men Problem. Yes, all men know a woman who has been harassed or assaulted. Yes, all men know a man who has harassed or assaulted a woman. Yes, all men will make a woman scared if he walks behind her at night, regardless of whether or not he’s intending to harm her. A few years back, I had a friend. He was a classic ‘good guy’. East London based creative, trendy glasses, knitted sweaters, Feminist, in touch with his emotions, lots of female friends, the right politics. I would, without a doubt, sleep on his couch and feel no fear. I’d ask him to walk me home. I’d leave my drink with him. I’m sure that every single person who knew him would say the same thing. One evening we started chatting about assault. This was way back before #MeToo and all of that, where it still felt like an untouched subject. He said, ‘Well, all men have a desire to r*pe. It’s just in our nature. But the good guys just don’t act on it.’ I froze, ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, if a guy says he doesn’t want to r*pe, he’s lying because he knows how it sounds. But actually, it’s just part of being a man.’ He had to follow up with, ‘What? Don’t look at me like that, I’m not ever going to do it! Of course not! I would NEVER.’ I was shocked and said, ‘That’s not… a thing.’ And he rolled his eyes and said, ‘It is. Men are just too scared to admit it.’ That was our last conversation. But it’s always in the back of my mind. I’ve asked many men throughout the years to honestly tell me if he was right and of course, he wasn’t. It taught me to be cautious. Of even the good guys with quirky glasses and knitted sweaters. For every man who have assaulted me in one way or the other, there has been at least two of his friends telling me that he’s a good guy. ‘Oh, you must have misunderstood - he’s just a silly, drunk man. He’d never actually harm anyone.’ ‘But he did, he harmed me.’ ‘He probably didn’t know you didn’t want you, he can get a bit much when he’s drunk.’ ‘He was sober.’ - I’m in a local Facebook group, which is always a lovely mix of drama and more drama. Someone in the neighbourhood posted an article about the vigil in Clapham Common and suggested we have one of our own. Of course, there were plenty of men losing their sh*t, shouting ‘not all men’ and victim blamed and so on. But there was also the occasional man saying ‘This is outrageous! I can’t believe it happened! How can we find out why this happened and what can we do to stop it?’. And for some reason, that was the comment that got to me the most throughout all this. How can this man, in 2021, just have discovered that this is an issue? There are hundreds of true crime podcasts and 95% of the episodes are about women being killed by men - or men being killed by men. There are whole books and studies and campaigns about this. #MeToo was years ago. How has this man gone through life without noticing the keys in between women’s fingers? I’m not oblivious to the fact that the same thing keeps happening to the black community - white people ‘suddenly realising’ that racism is a thing because it’s a trending hashtag. Or, as what’s happening at the moment, white people suddenly realising that maybe the police can be baddies sometimes, because of their awful reaction to the vigil. Which is probably why I should have more patience with men. Why I need to be calm and educate them, rather than scream ‘yes, all men’ at them, which might just discourage them from having the conversation again. But it is so endlessly difficult to pack away all the fear and anger and frustration and sadness, in order to be an almost robotically über-human who can educate men that you know are one raised voice away from just saying ‘I feel attacked’ and then disengaging forever. It’s especially difficult, knowing that if a man was having this conversation with them, they’d actually listen. Which is why it’s so frustrating that men are so f*cking quiet right now. When a tragedy like this happens, I don’t ever want to see women tweeting anything. I want to see men’s voices flooding my timeline, as they try to fix this problem; their problem. So we can grieve in peace. So we can sleep on the side of the bed where we can, for once, sleep through the night.
|
