Existing as a Woman
On March 3rd, a woman named Sarah Everard went missing while she was walking home from her friend’s house. She didn’t live far and made this walk often. It was dark, but not incredibly late. Her body was found and identified on March 15th, and it has now all come to light that she was kidnapped and then most likely killed by a police officer. Since this all took place in the UK, no news of it made it to the states until a couple of days after International Women’s Day (March 8th) because some people were bashing Sarah days after they had just talked about how amazing women are. Many of the comments revolved around the fact that Sarah should have known better. Since she is a woman, she should have known that walking home at night, even a short distance, would have been unsafe for her. This brought forth a lot of women in the UK and then around the world, sharing their stories about how they have been made to feel unsafe and harassed by men. A statistic then came out in the UK where a study was done and showed that 97% of women in the UK have been harassed, assaulted, followed, and generally just creeped on by men. The same study wasn’t done here but it is safe to say the numbers are in the same realm.
On March 17th, the House voted to renew the Violence Against Women Act after it had lapsed for a couple of years (NPR wrote a great article as to why this happened which I included in my sources) but 172 Republicans voted against it. They all had reasons that were not important because the bill is there to allow women to have assistance when violence is perpetrated against them. The main issue many republicans brought forward was that if someone was convicted of domestic abuse or stalking they would not be allowed to purchase a firearm. Apparently that somehow those people who abuse their partners, and who stalk them deserve more rights than those who were victimized by them do. This all came one day after six Asian women were killed by a white male terrorist in Atlanta. A white man said he had had a bad and was at the end of his rope, so he shot and killed six women. He will still be facing a trial, but the police listened to this and said they would be taking into account that he was just at the end of his rope. Women’s lives and bodies, especially women of color and any race that isn’t plain white, have no value in this society.
With all of this happening, women have been taking to social media to explain that they too have been a victim of men doing what they please with them and not facing any consequences. It has prompted the conversation of “yes all men” because every man is responsible for what happens to us on a daily basis. The man who catcalls is the most at fault, but his friend with him who doesn’t tell him to stop is complicit. The 97% statistic has also sparked a lot of women to come forward to say that it’s probably closer to 100% but not all women want to come forward and talk about their experience. And the reason why? Because they know nothing will be done about it and they will just be labeled as dramatic, a slut, “asking for it”, and so much more. The women coming forward to talk about their experiences will not be helped, they will be shamed and then will get to go free.
There is also no system in place to actually keep women safe. Society and police tell women that if they were raped or sexually assaulted, they need to go get a rape kit done and call the police. But there is such. Backlog of rape kits already that have yet to be tested, that how can anyone trust they will actually get theirs done? When a woman comes forward to the cops, they question her about what she did wrong before they even get to the man who did the assault. The question is always “What did you do to make this man think he could have sex with you, and why did you change your mind?”. And this is all before they even get to the way she is dressed, whether or not she knew the man who attacked her, and whether or not she was drunk. And god forbid she has sex with other men for fun and of her own free will because then she must just a whore who regretted sleeping with a certain man. Aside from the larger, more institutional issues of rape and sexual assault, there is nothing in place to keep women safe from the aggressive advances of men either. There is no way to report that a random man grabbed your butt at a bar and then disappeared into the crowd. There is no way to report that a man followed you back to your house, that a man catcalled you and made you feel unsafe, that your co-worker is making sexually suggestive remarks to you, or that as a woman, you do not feel safe around men most of the time.
Here are just some of the ways women have been told to keep themselves safe they have to walk alone: don’t have your earbuds in, don’t make eye contact with anyone, watch for shadows behind you, listen for footsteps, cross the street if you see someone coming towards you, if you have long hair tuck it in so they don’t know you’re a woman, carry your keys between your fingers, wear shoes you can run in, call a friend or pretend to be on the phone, carry pepper spray, carry a taser, watch your drink, don’t get too drunk, cover-up, and go out with at least one man in the group because men respect other men more than they respect you. This society has taught men that they are royalty and can do what they please and that women are here to please them. So when we don’t do that or want to be treated as humans and not objects, we get shut down and abused for it. If we can ever hope to change the way this society works, there are a couple of things that need to happen; the first being that we need to hold men who abuse, rape, and assault women actually accountable for their actions. We need to quit asking women if they were drunk or wearing a low a cut top and start asking men why they thought it was ok to hit their partner. One reason men seem so cavalier about these things is that they know if they get taken to court they will get out of it with little to no punishment. If the system would actually punish these perpetrators accurately and not defend them all the time, the rest would see there are consequences for their actions. The second thing we need to do is start teaching little boys all the way up to be men that they do not inherently have a right to anyone else’s body and that consent isn’t just “sexy” it’s mandatory. We need to teach them that a woman just existing out in the world is not there for their pleasure. If we ever want things to change we have to come at this from a law-making perspective and from a home perspective.
I could sit here and detail every scary encounter I have had with a man while just trying to exist in the world, but one woman’s interactions will not show the large scope of the issue. So I went on my Instagram and asked my followers to send me in a moment when they had been made to feel unsafe by a man. Just one experience. They all chose to be kept anonymous, so I am going to put their current age at the end of their experience to show the vast range of women who experience these things daily.
This was written by a friend of mine who wanted to stay anonymous. Age 19
“50-year-old men yelling at me as I was walking home at age 14”- 20
“Called me princess in a graduate class after every opinion I offered. No respect.”- 25
“A man harassed me and my friends walking home at night.” -25
“Catcalling. It’s always the worst.” -31
“Putting his hand on the small of my back when I was taking his order at my work.” -27
“Physical abuse.” - 32
“Offered me a ride home, I declined, so he followed me home yelling at me that I was a slut.” - 28
“Grabbed my ass at a bar and then when I yelled at him for doing so, I was the one who got asked to leave by the bouncer.” -23
“He broke my bikini strap on purpose so I would have to be topless at the rest of the beach all day. Called me a bitch for leaving to go home.” -28
“I was raped. He never saw any consequences.” -36
“In high school, a teacher kept making inappropriate remarks to me at and when I told my guidance counselor she told me to wear a longer skirt.” -40
“I went on a date with a guy in college and we went driving around afterward and he kept trying to make out with me and touch me wat more than I was into.” -24
“I dated a very aggressive man for a couple of months a couple of years ago but he was always nice to me so I gave him a shot. He was jealous and cheated on me and was verbally abusive and would throw things at me. I would call him on it and he would yell at me and didn’t like and get mad at me for not sticking up for him when he was being a dick. He was manipulative and even kept me from going into my own house one night and forcing me to stay at a guy’s house I barely knew.” -24
“My boss made advances towards me when I was 16. I’ve never told anyone.” -19
These are just a small sample from my own Instagram following, from a range of women in age, occupation, and where they live. The point is that women have been made to feel unsafe in a variety of ways by all sorts of men and will continue to be in those positions until we force change. So men, if your reading this, think twice about your interaction with women. Treat us with basic human decency and respect and not like a second-class being. In place of work, we actually deserve to be there more than the men because we had to work harder to get there. We should be allowed to walk home a couple of blocks without getting kidnapped and then murdered. We should have a government that cares more about our lives than gun rights. And we should also live in a society that doesn’t place women who have immigrated here at the bottom of the barrel. Every woman’s life is important whether she is Black, gay, cis, trans, Asian, fat, skinny, long hair, short hair, or whatever other standards men want to put on us. Women are amazing, and we deserve so much better from the men around us and from our government.
Madey
Sources:
Cover art by Avery Lynch