On Everyday Sexism


I recently tweeted this:


Now, as someone whose Twitter bubble is usually fairly quiet — my tweets are normally sent out to no response whatsoever — I’m used to being ignored online and am fine with it. When it comes to blogging, too, if anyone actually reads my stuff it’s a bonus; I just like writing. However, this time I knew that with that particular hashtag I was probably going to get some sort of reaction. And so I did. I didn’t get many responses, but the ones I did get were predictable.

It was easy to imagine how other people would respond, too. Older generations, for example (and some younger ones). I can just see them: Germaine Greer would probably roll her eyes and say I’m whinging. Catherine Deneuve and her ilk would doubtless tell me to get over myself and enjoy the attention. Be flattered! Where’s the harm in a bit of light flirting? Don’t be such a fucking victim, toughen up, grow a thicker skin, develop some resilience. Tell ‘em to get lost, knee ‘em in the groin. Younger generations these days, what snowflakes!

Except that, at 44 I’m still young but not that young any more, and these glib responses are as clichéd as the idea of the leering workmen. It’s all still happening, even in 2018, and it’s depressing. As is the fact that so often the real point is missed. As with any tweet, this one only tells a small part of the story. I was on my own, walking down a quiet narrow street. I wasn’t trying to draw attention to myself; I was just going about my life. Yet for some reason these men felt the need to stare, leer, and call out. There was no one else around to see, which of course is how this sort of thing works. They were predators, operating in a pack, exuding an overpowering energy that made me feel uncomfortable, waiting for solitary prey. Young women, older women, it doesn’t make any difference. We’re all fair game because when we’re on our own and they’re not, we’re vulnerable and they have the power. If anyone else had been around nothing would have happened.

Even with added detail, however, I can still hear the protests. “So men can’t even say hello now? FFS, what’s the world coming to? It’s up there with a hand on a knee.” Well, I’m astonished too that I have to spell out something so obvious: there’s hello and there’s hello (just like there’s a hand on a knee and there’s a hand on a knee). Believe it or not, many’s the time when men — both men I know and men I don’t — have said hello to me and it hasn’t been a problem. For what it’s worth, shortly after the occurrence I tweeted about, someone I know — a man — saw me and waved from the other side of the street. And guess what? I waved back! In fact, whenever I see this particular man around town we either wave or say hello without mishap. And it’s possible not just with men I know. Everyday life (dog walking with friends and visits to National Trust properties in particular, I find) offers ample opportunity for saying hello to men I don’t know.

The difference, of course, is the way in which it’s done. This was no ordinary hello. These guys weren’t saying hello in order to greet a fellow human being or start a pleasant conversation. We weren’t about to discuss the weather or last night’s TV. For some reason, my presence amused them. They looked at me as though they’d never seen a woman before. I felt uncomfortable — scared — and it felt wrong.

There’s little room for context or nuance in a tweet, even with the recent increase in the character limit, and there’s certainly not enough room to elaborate on the wider context in which this event took place: that of my life. It’s only recently that it’s dawned on me with any clarity that this sort of thing has been happening to me on a regular (if not daily at some points) basis for most of my life. For decades, from primary school onwards, I’ve been at the receiving end of inappropriate behaviour from men, just for daring to exist as a woman. Rarely have I ever felt allowed to just ‘be’. From the bullying I received when I first started my periods at 9, to the comments, gestures, ogling, shouting, wolf-whistles and cat-calling from passing cars or men across the street, I’ve mostly been viewed in terms of my appearance, the shape of my body, and it’s happened so much it’s become part of the background white noise to life.

And it’s become white noise because I’ve made it so. This minimalisation is a coping mechanism, a form of suppression. As such, a lot of it is hard to remember now. Off the top of my head, however, I recall one time almost 19 years ago when, walking back from the train station after seeing off my husband (who worked in London during the week), I found myself being followed by two men, one of whom said to the other, “I’d like to put my willy up her bottom.” (I made a detour so they didn’t follow me home and see where I lived). Then there was the time when I had my arse grabbed with both hands as I stood looking down at the newspapers and magazines in a crowded WH Smith. Turning round, all I could see was the back of a person disappearing into the crowd. There was also the time when I encountered a group of men while on my way home from work one afternoon. One of them put a pornographic magazine in my hand and the whole group collapsed in hysterics as I looked down and realised what it was (I put it in the nearest bin). Then there was the time in a café when a man, who was sat with his wife, ogled me so much when she wasn’t looking I had to leave. Ooh, and let’s not forget the colleague who daily for months referred to the shape of my body in a dress and how he would like to see me naked (‘banter’ superficially labelled as harmless and complimentary, but actually a form of control and a way of coping with really not knowing how to relate to a woman who he saw as a both a professional and personal threat).

These are just a tiny fraction of the the instances I choose to remember. There’s a whole library I either zoned out shortly afterwards or didn’t notice happening at the time (or my husband did, which frequently happens still. “He was staring at you,” he’ll say, and he’ll stare back at them, sometimes, the violence of the male gazes cancelling each other out (occasionally my gaze will neutralise theirs; mostly it just invites more attention)). I don’t presume to speak for all women, and yet I don’t count myself unique in any of this, either. Every woman has her own stories to tell.

Until recently, however, some women didn’t tell their stories much, instead preferring to ignore or forget. 6 months ago I wouldn’t have dwelt much on the workmen in the street, and I wouldn’t have written this blog post. I’d have wanted to forget because I’d have wanted to get on with my day, and not only does remembering make you relive what happened, it also makes you question yourself; you put yourself on trial. “Holy shit, did that really happen? Did I imagine it? Did I encourage it? Why did I let them put the magazine in my hand? How could I be such a victim? Why on earth didn’t I say something?” And because you’re asking yourself these questions, you know that other people will too. There’s always enough doubt and uncertainty for you to question yourself, and yet it’s these grey areas that allow this sort of thing to continue happening, and for silence to thrive.

And besides, there were times when I did challenge men back, when I did tell men to go fuck themselves, or gave them the finger. When I’m feeling strong, I can do all that. But you get to the stage where the harassment you experience is so relentless it wears you down, you become sick of it, and dealing with it is enough without having to be a warrior every day. If I answer back I’m a sad cow with no sense of humour, and if I walk meekly past, they still get away with it. Either way, they’ve had their fun, so what’s the point?

All of this must partly explain why so much of this has become such a part of life we don’t even bother to notice it or acknowledge it. It has become normalised, part of the paradigm, the water we all swim in. It’s easier to ignore, to pretend it’s not happened, and the silence exists on both sides. Would the workmen, for example, have gone home and said to their significant others, “Today we thought it would be really funny to stare at this woman in the street and laugh at her.” I doubt it.

That’s why we all have to claim our voices. Shine a light on all this and start to call everything out as it happens, including the grey areas. Social media is a good place to start — my tweet was an attempt to claim my voice, own my narrative and start building resilience (and I’ll admit my responses to the trolls who answered my tweet were also what wished I’d said to the workmen, only I was too sacred to do so. Oh to be like Miriam Margolyes (9.00 onwards) and call it out to the world with gusto. Incidentally, how would those stories be received now? Not with quite so much hilarity, I bet)).

And that’s not all. Let’s remember the good men — and there are many. Those with no hidden agenda, who know what harassment is and call it out too, who aren’t threatened by equality, and who can own their own actions. These men are gold and when you find one, value them. In a moment of magnanimity I even tried to show compassion to the workmen, to try and understand where they were coming from. Why did they really do what they did, what was their real intention? To relieve boredom? Possibly. More likely they felt the need to validate their own fragile sense of male worth. Whether they were aware of it or not, they had power. The sad thing was they didn’t know how to use that power. Instead they processed their insecure masculinity by overcompensating. Targeting a woman on her own was a way of temporarily getting attention and gaining some agency in the world.

Of course, there will be people who won’t want you to call anything out. Calling out makes people — men and women — relive experiences they’d rather forget and reflect on their own behaviour. Some people will call you a victim (which has become, sadly, a way of shaming and silencing). There are those who are terrified of equality because they think it takes something away from them.

Who’s protesting and how does it serve them? What do they have to lose by the rest of us calling out? Because many of us have much to gain.

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