Get Home Safe
For every woman taken from us.
Heads up - this isn’t a usual ‘newsletter’ with the usual stats and facts - this is because I am so crushed at how violent this world is towards women. This is because when I feel hopeless, writing is all I can do.
I used to wear suede knee-high boots, skinny jeans from Topshop and pink hoodies from the local market that sparkled. In the summer I’d wear white vest tops that clung to every curve, pink maxi skirts that would fly upward in the wind, walking in netted sandals with flower sequins dotted across them (what were they called?!). I never questioned why at around the age of 16, my dress sense morphed into something more masculine, loose, boxy, hidden.
It’s because of men. Every woman has a defining moment in their life - the day they realise many men are predators. Every woman I know can tell me a story of being harassed by a grown man when they were in high school. My friends and I would walk down the high street as 15 year olds feeling like young women, and we never thought much of men over the age of 20 regularly stopping us in the street for our phone numbers even though we’d be in our school uniform. Even then, we were careful about how we treated these grown men who approached children in the hopes of committing statutory rape - because even at 15 years old, we knew that a rejected man was dangerous.
It’s funny, isn’t it? When you think about the amount of times you might have been approached on the street by a man who asked for your number. So many of us will say “sorry, I have a boyfriend” when we don’t. Why is that? Because the only way a man can accept rejection without getting angry is if he knows you are owned by another man. You couldn’t possibly say no to a man off your own agency - because to him, you have none. So we say no, sorry, I can’t give you my number, I can’t give you my vagina, because another man is occupying it. I could be attacked for being honest enough to admit that I’m single and simply not interested. It’s too risky.
We learnt quickly to never give a fake number because so often men would ring you on the spot, a slightly threatening smile starting from their eyes at the chance they might have caught you trying to slip away with a fake number. I got used to giving my number, smiling weakly, and blocking them when I was safely home and they tried to call. Every woman I know has been pressured into giving her phone number.
A decade ago I was on my way home from a shopping trip, walking to the bus stop in Brixton to get home. Two men in a white van smeared with dust and dirt slowed down and called out to me from the window, beckoning me to come towards them. I stayed at the bus stop, clenched my fists in my pockets, and jumped on the first bus homebound. I watched the van do a turn in the road and follow my bus, driving behind it with determination. It was dark, and I got anxious. I did the only thing I felt I could do at that time, which was ask another man for help. I called a friend who was able to meet me at the bus stop and when I got off the bus the van slowed down until they saw a 6 foot man coming to greet me, and they sped off. The world seems to be okay with the reality that it is often the case that only another man can save me from male violence.
I began to date this man, this friend who came to my rescue because I had no choice but to be rescued, and he turned out to be a controlling motherfucker. Wear this, do that, put your head down, avert your gaze, cover your body, be a submissive woman, lower your tone. I broke up with him, went to the hairdresser and chopped my hair off - at the time, it was so long it reached my lower back. I asked the hairdresser to cut it to my ears and he gasped, but I insisted, and so he did it. That was the first moment I’d tried to rid myself of femininity that felt like too big a burden to bear. My dress sense changed, too - chunky trainers and leather jackets, blazers that made me feel powerful and lots of black, no more pink. I found so much comfort in surrounding myself almost exclusively with headstrong women, women who were bulls in china shops. It was mutually nourishing and empowering. I didn’t date a man for seven years after that and even when I felt ready to return to dating men again, I knew I’d never let one own me. Ever.
On my last holiday, le bae and I were doing some late night food shopping for our apartment, and we couldn’t find eggs. I’m a savoury breakfast kinda gal, and damn it, I needed my eggs.
I’m also an early riser, and I knew I’d love a sunrise walk at 6am to go and get some eggs. I love being alone, I love the isolation, the reflection you can have when on a solo walk. A morning walk on my own is one of the most therapeutic ways to start the day for me. Especially with some good music playing in my earphones.
My guy wasn’t comfortable with me going to get these eggs alone in a foreign non-English speaking country and in the area we were in, which was essentially a Greek version of West Croydon. I got really angry and he knew it, so he explained his reasons for wanting to accompany me in a very reasonable way. I understood his want to protect me, it was sweet, and I was appreciative that he cares so. But that wasn’t why I was angry. I was angry because we live in a world where the idea that I could get abducted or attacked is accepted as a possibility as casual as the weather, as if it might rain, as if it’s just something you have to prepare for, like buying a fucking umbrella. Safeguarding women is accepted, but what about the perpetrators? Why is male violence accepted as the inevitable?
I just wanted to watch the sunrise and get some eggs to scramble.
As I say, this wasn’t a planned letter to you all - this is something I am writing having had a few hours sleep, because I can’t stop thinking about Sarah Everard, a 33-year old marketing executive who went to walk home one night and never made it back. Women go missing at a rate so alarming I don’t know how the world has tried to fool us into accepting these losses as tragic statistics - I don’t know how we aren’t foaming at the mouth, setting things alight, becoming vigilantes. There was something about the loss of Sarah Everard that impacted women in a way I can’t articulate.
Someone recently said to me that the only thing we can enjoy in this Covid-19 lockdown is a pleasant walk - and we’re not even allowed to do that safely. Maybe it’s that, but no - I can’t put my finger on why this particular murder of a woman just trying to walk home has stopped me from being able to sleep at night. Maybe because it’s close to home - she was similar in age to me, had a similar job, and I know the last route she ever took so well. Sarah was walking home from her friend’s house on Leathwaite Road in Clapham before she went missing, and this road was where a friend of mine lived. As a teenager I used to sneak out of my house and go there, sometimes leaving Leathwaite Road late at night to make it back home before my mum noticed. I can trace Sarah’s steps from Leathwaite Road to Brixton without closing my eyes. I can see it now, crossing the road and walking past the commons where trees overhang and the streetlights are dim, passing Clapham Common underground station and taking a right towards the long road to Brixton. I’ve done that walk so many times, and I felt shaken at the thought that the fact that we are alive is truly as random as rolling a dice - we have no control as to when a man might come along on a dark night and take your life.
There is nothing smart to say today. I’m just so sorry Sarah, and I am so sorry to every woman we’ve lost due to male violence. I am so sorry that we live in a world so accepting of the violence and terror we experience everyday, and I am so sorry that we live in a world so willing to blame the victim, a world so accepting of the fact that women should live in fear.
It feels very bizarre that this week marked International Women’s Day, and as I write this, it is Mother’s Day.
To men reading this - what are you doing to end male violence? What are you doing outside of protecting the women you love? We don’t need protection, we need reform. I’ve long despised the fact that no matter where you go, you can’t escape the patriarchy. It’s worldwide. I long for a matriarchal world - always have done, always will do.
I’m sick of being told I should be afraid of the dark. Of having to worry about my friends until I receive their “home safe” text. I’m sick of being held at the mercy of men who thrive off the fear of women.
It’s literally a matter of life and death - we need to dismantle the patriarchy. It will take a revolution to get us there, and if not now, then when?
Resources for women
Very touching piece, and being a woman very relatable. Its horrible and scary the world we live in.