All of us, too

Last week a young woman walked home on a route I regularly used to walk when I lived in that area of London. As we all now know she disappeared, body parts were found and a Metropolitan police officer has been charged with her murder.

Unlike most women I know, I have no respect for no-go areas and I walk where I want when I want. I will not be curfewed or constrained. I have often been told I am brave, or foolish. I have been told that I am bringing danger on myself - which is a little like that quaint old accusation, 'she got herself pregnant'.

But like every other woman I know, I have my antennae alert when I walk. Sometimes I walk with my keys between my fingers, worried that I wouldn't know what to do with my hand if I were set on. Sometimes I keep my hand on my phone in my pocket. I have crossed the road when I've heard footsteps behind me, I have stopped to look at something 'interesting', I have doubled back on myself, I have set up code with friends so that they know I need rescuing if I say certain words, I have contacted people who care about me to say I'm safely home, I have been attacked, both times in daylight. 

When I was first brave enough to tell a mixed-sex group about the sexual harassment I experienced when I was nine, the men in the group were visibly shocked. "Not all men." When I said I wasn't going to ask anyone to disclose but I bet every woman in the room had a similar story to tell they were even more shocked. Every woman nodded. "Yes, all women."

We have taken this as an unchangeable given for all our lives.

Finally it's beginning to look as if enough of us have had enough. Even so, when women gathered peacefully on Clapham Common yesterday evening to mourn Sarah Everard, the police (who you'd think - wouldn't you? - would decide to handle this, of all gatherings, sensitively) manhandled women to the ground. They said it was about Covid safety but they kettled women so that distancing became impossible.

This evening the protest about what happened yesterday was not quiet and subdued. It was outside parliament and loud. The police, belatedly, realised that this is serious and kept their distance.

As it happens, between 10 December 2020 and 19 February 2021 the government held a consultation on violence against women and girls. Yeah, yeah, ask us, we'll tell you and we'll be ignored or belittled or told to stay in or dress differently or ask a man to accompany us or... and nothing will happen. Again. I didn't contribute. But the mood has changed and the consultation was reopened on Friday "to further collect views from those with lived experience of, or views on violence against women and girls". There are about 30 million of us in Wales and England with lived experience and this time it might just be a chance to be heard, even those of us who've grown so very, very tired of stating the obvious. 

The consultation closes at 11:45pm on 26 March. 

See also ceridwen's blip which includes an important take on this that I didn't have room for.