Trigger Warnings: Murder, Rape, Sexual Assault, Harassment.<\/p>\n
As I scrolled through Twitter today, I couldn\u2019t help but feel extremely overwhelmed and emotional at the tweets filling my screen. Women speaking about their assault, their rape, their experience with harassment, the many situations where a man has made them feel deeply uncomfortable. The Sarah Everard case has awoken something in me which I can no longer contain.<\/p>\n
Everyone woman I know has a story. Every woman. It\u2019s not enough to say \u201cnot all men\u201d are attackers or rapists anymore. We absolutely know it\u2019s not all men \u2013 but which ones is it? Which men can we feel safe getting in a taxi with, or walking past on a street, or being left alone with? How do we know? This case has shown us that women have to be afraid to do everything. Sarah Everard just wanted to walk home, it wasn\u2019t even late, it wasn\u2019t even a quiet area.<\/p>\n
The victim blaming narrative I have seen strung across social media by men in the last few days is tired, for lack of other words. So many men have suggested Sarah should have gotten in a taxi or uber but have yet to understand how unsafe women can feel alone in this situation with an unknown man.<\/p>\n
Personally, I have not once felt safe in a taxi. I have left nightclubs with friends where the first thing we do is take pictures of each other\u2019s taxis, and make sure we text each other when we\u2019re home safe.<\/p>\n
We are preparing for the worst. We live in a society where it is okay to blame a woman for her murder, or assault.<\/p>\n
In Ireland we have seen a rape victim\u2019s underwear shown around the courtroom as evidence that she was asking for it. The lawyer in the trial told the jury: \u201cYou have to look at the way she was dressed. She was wearing a thong with a lace front.”<\/p>\n
The man in that trial was never sentenced. How is this okay?<\/p>\n
Our constitutional rights in Ireland include the right to personal liberty, so why when a rape or murder case is in the public eye are the questions always \u201cwhat was she wearing?\u201d, \u201chow much did she drink?\u201d, or \u201cwhy was she walking alone?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarah Everard did everything women are taught to do to protect themselves. She was covered up not showing skin, she was on the phone to her boyfriend, she walked past CCTV in bright coloured clothing. When is it going to be enough? When is society going to see that it is not women that are the problem?<\/p>\n
I have been taught to fear men my entire life. From the age of around 10 my body has been sexualised. I was 13 when my first recollection of assault occurred.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0I\u2019ve been taught to cover up so I don\u2019t entice men, to be polite to men out of fear of what they might do to me. My grandmother would run through scenarios of what to do if I was approached by a man on a bus, a train, a plane, in the street \u2013 there are simply too many different times she would do this to count.<\/p>\n
As I discussed this case with my mom yesterday, she recalled an incident when I came back from a disco as a teenager and told her about a guy who wouldn\u2019t stop grabbing my ass while I was in the queue. I couldn\u2019t even remember this.<\/p>\n
There have been so many men that they start to blur together. Only in recent months after listening to so many stories from other women detailing their assault have I realised that I have been sexually assaulted, probably many times, but I didn\u2019t connect the dots to realise that\u2019s what it was.<\/p>\n
It was normal sure wasn\u2019t I just meant to do what a guy told me to? Wasn\u2019t that guy at the bar just drunk and handsy? That\u2019s what we\u2019re told constantly as women so who was I to question it.<\/p>\n
The harassment has only escalated since going out as a queer woman. Men do not leave you alone. They stare, for uncomfortably long periods of time, even if you are visibly uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
I have been grabbed without consent when with women. Men have put their arms around us and thought we would all have a great laugh about it. They seem shocked when you don\u2019t enjoy them touching you.<\/p>\n
Men have gathered around it crowds to watch us kiss. They have asked to \u201cjoin in\u201d, with one man I recall asking if it \u201cmakes it any better\u201d that he was bisexual.<\/p>\n
One night my girlfriend and I were coming home from a night out and got out of a taxi across the road from my house. We were walking holding hands when a man passed us and said hi. He continued to stare at us the whole time while we crossed the road, went in my gate, opened and locked the front door behind me.<\/p>\n
I have never been so terrified that he was going to follow us or come back. My girlfriend is shorter and lighter than me which means I have spent so much time going over how to defend us in my head.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know life could be any more terrifying as a woman, until I was dating one.<\/p>\n
One woman is killed by a man in the UK every 3 days. One in three young Irish women of college age are raped. 97% of 18 \u2013 24 year old women in the UK experience sexual assault.<\/p>\n
90% of these women know their attacker. The Global Study on Homicide by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (2013) reports that women are highly more likely to be killed by an intimate partner or family member in their own home.<\/p>\n
Yet no man seems to know a rapist, or an attacker. This is not half of the population lying, there are too many stories out there to possibly say that we are.<\/p>\n
And yes, it is not all men, but it is too many. There are too many men that stand idly by and do nothing while their friends grope a woman in a queue. There are too many men that still think its funny to make rape jokes when they are more than likely to be in the presence of a woman who has been raped or assaulted.<\/p>\n
The dialogue needs to be opened. Men need to start talking about this as well as woman because we are exhausted. We are exhausted of living in fear and of not knowing what men we can trust. We are exhausted from having to defend ourselves when an incident like this happens.<\/p>\n
Men need to start having this conversation with their friends, they need to stop defending their friends\u2019 predatory behaviour, they need to start accepting that they will never understand how terrifying it is to be a woman in this world. We can\u2019t scream into an empty void anymore, we need change.<\/p>\n
So, the next time you go to tweet #notallmen just think about the situation you\u2019re putting women in. It is #toomanywomen, far too many.<\/p>\n
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