I haven’t written an article in a while, but I’ve been
thinking about this subject a lot lately, from following the Amber Heard/Johnny
Depp trial and talking to friends, who seemed split on which side of the story
they believed. The trial was also interesting from a ‘celebrity’ point of view
and what that means; do you have a normal life if you’re that much in the
public eye; can you have any privacy at all; is there more pressure on a
relationship? We all want anonymity after all and to have a private life. Celebrities
such as Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Alba have fallen victim to having naked
photos stolen through hacking and shared online.
The Heard/Depp trial seemed to show that it isn’t enough to have photographs of bruises. We are so used to an online world where everything is streamed and we see everything that it seems not enough to hear testimony; do people want to actually view it to believe it? In the end, it was a case of who do you believe?
Will the determination in Depp’s favour deter women from stepping forward and reporting domestic violence? I hope not. Women should feel safe in their own home.
I experienced domestic violence in two relationships when I was in my 20s. Far too young to handle it. This was quite a while ago, so I’d like to think that reporting it and action being taken is better today – but is it? I remember, in my experience, that a neighbour rang the police to report a disturbance during one incident and the police knocked at the door. My boyfriend shut me in the bedroom and answered the door. He told the police everything was fine and the police left. They didn’t ask to speak to me. If they’d seen me, they would have known immediately that everything was not fine. One of his friends witnessed another incident and looked the other way. In the end, you have to find the strength in yourself to get yourself out of such situations. You have to run. But a lot of women get stuck in the relationship and find it takes quite a while to be able to leave.
Domestic abuse doesn’t just involve violence. It can involve jealousy if you talk to another man or nightly interrogations, where you’re woken up and asked where you’ve been, who you’ve been seeing and disbelieved. It can involve being followed to something you’ve been invited to, because your partner doesn’t trust you to go, only to be humiliated by them once you’re there. It can be being called a cheat and a whore when you have no thought of cheating. It can involve being bullied, put down, being isolated from friends and family, and being made to feel worthless or needy, or many other things. It can start very small and escalates. And the person can switch into loving mode, which creates confusion. You might try to change yourself or the other person, but neither works. The only safe thing to do is leave.
Then women will try to protect themselves going forwards and try to recognise patterns of behaviour, so they can’t possibly end up in the same predicament, which might mean they put up walls or have impossible standards, but they’re all armour. This might make future relationships more difficult.
There’s been a lot of talk about whether to make violence against women a hate crime as misogyny. I agree with this. Women should be able to go jogging at any time of the day or night, wearing or not wearing headphones and be safe, but we all know that it isn’t safe. All we have to do is look at a UK news website and usually a woman has been attacked or murdered. It isn’t safe to walk across a darkly lit park at night, it isn’t safe to go into a forest alone, it isn’t safe to talk to strangers and do what boys can do (we’re told from an early age), it isn’t safe to walk home after getting off the night bus.
I lost count of the number of times I used to get harassed in the street on the way home from a night out and it doesn’t matter what you wear. A friend used to change into jeans for her journey home. It happened to me whether I was wearing a skirt or jeans and a long coat. When living at Seven Sisters about a decade ago, it would always happen between getting off the nightbus, going into the shop for food and crossing the main road. You’d have to put up with the ‘hey baby’, ‘hey darling’, kiss noises or worse. And act like it didn’t bother you, so you didn’t get any trouble from anyone. However well-meaning the men may have been, it’s just intimidating to get that at night on the way home. At one point, my boyfriend used to stay up and meet me off the night bus.
I think that followed an incident where a man became very aggressive when I wouldn’t give him a crisp after he chased me across the road. It might sound crazy or even funny, but it happened. There was a club in the area, closer to home, that I’d pass. People would be kicking out and you’d get friendly hellos and nods, so it wasn’t that everyone in the area at night was acting scary.
The intimidating stuff that happened, you’d end up thinking it’s the price you have to pay for going out late in London and meeting friends, and going dancing. The number of times it happened… I can’t tell you… I lost count… sometimes it was every time I went out. And friends had similar stories if they travelled home alone. I remember another time crossing the road by a petrol station and a man in a van with dark windows stopped and asked if I’d like a lift. Very intimidating. I ran. This was in an area I thought was safe. But it wasn’t. I never had a problem on the actual bus, except for the time I fell asleep and someone stole my bag. I never fell asleep again.
Not quite as scary as the man who followed me home one night at 5am after I got off the Night Tube. I stopped and let him go by, but then he sat and waited at the bus stop and started asking me lots of personal questions when I reached him. I said politely that I just wanted to go home and not talk, and he started judging me, saying I thought I was too good for him, and this degenerated into aggression and name calling, and I found myself in a situation where I thought I was going to get hit. In the end I had to run to a stranger’s house. I had tried to wave down a car for help, which didn’t stop. I rang the police the next day and gave a description because he had been so aggressive that I thought he might hurt someone else. But I’m getting off the point.
Women should feel safe on the streets and in their own homes.
I didn’t notice any problems like this until I was 18. I went to meet a friend at the Empire cinema in Leicester Square. I was standing there waiting. A much older man came up to me, walked around me and then asked me how much money I wanted for his company. I was so shocked and confused. I walked away. When a second man approached, I went to the security guard and told him. He was shocked and told me to stand next to him, and he’d look after me. So I did. I was wearing jeans, a jeans jacket, flat shoes, barely any makeup, and looked young for my age as I always got asked for ID. I probably looked about 15. Later, when I went to university, I heard how one friend had been offered money in the street by a man who asked her to go to the park with him for sex. Another friend was offered money on a train platform for the same thing.
This should not be happening to women and young girls.
At university, we were told a woman was attacked on campus in the toilets the previous year and to be careful. The first place I lived in was a hall of women. There were often reports and warnings of men getting into the grounds and looking into women’s windows at night. We were told to keep windows closed and to draw the curtains if you were on the ground floor. One night, me and 3 friends went to the college union and walked home. We were followed by a man who kept appearing and disappearing on the other side of the road, but seemed to be trailing us. When we got home he was there before us, waiting outside the building. He was about 50. He exposed himself and started masturbating at us. Two of us reported it to the police and were interviewed, and told we would be called back to look at photos and stuff. The police didn’t call us and dropped it. It carried on that men were seen in the grounds. The guy who followed us might have done this a lot or even been a rapist, but the police didn’t seem interested.
Also at university, it happened on several occasions that I’d be waiting at the bus stop opposite Uni after going to the club there, and a man would drive up in a car and try to talk me into getting into the car. You’d be polite, so he didn’t get angry or get out, but all the time you’d be planning in your head where you’d run if he got out. I was about 19-20. Once I ran out in front of the night bus to get away, and got told off by the driver. Another time I ran out in front of a black cab. I told him what had happened and he drove me home for free, worried for my safety.
After I left Uni, a friend was still living near that area with her friend. One night a man broke into their flat and attacked the friend in her bed. She managed to fight him off, but he was never caught. The police reckoned he’d been stalking her at night when she came home from work, to check when she’d be home and with who, etc, and climbed in through a second-floor window.
Some people say you're asking for trouble if you go out at night wearing the 'wrong thing' (I'm not sure who judges these things), as if you shouldn't be allowed to wear a short skirt or high heels or makeup or whatever you're wearing. But this happens to the majority, if not all, women at some time in their life. It doesn't matter what you look like. I'm average. It doesn't matter what you wear. You could be wearing a full-length coat and it happens. It's just the fact you're female and alone. It's okay for a man to walk topless down the street in the summer. He won't feel vulnerable.
Women should feel safe on the street.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. I can't fit every experience into this article or every experience that a friend has told me about over the years.
For me, this came to a head last year when I was threatened on more than one occasion. One of these times involved me being called a whore. I feared for my life. Now I don’t get the night bus home alone and I rarely go out any later than midnight. I’ve given myself a curfew and I don’t feel safe walking around at night.
I count myself lucky because I have some great male friends. They’re very supportive and look out for you, and view women as equals. Hopefully, they’re not reading this as they’d be shocked. But I don’t think they read my blog anyway! Perhaps if we talk about this subject more, women won’t feel embarrassed or ashamed or scared of speaking up. And if we tell our male friends about it, they can see what we experience. One of my male friends was beaten up in his home area by strangers for no reason. He was saved by a woman who came out of her house and shouted. So it’s not only women who are at risk, but I can only write from a female perspective.
There are lots of apps available to help women feel
safe when walking alone: https://metro.co.uk/2021/03/13/six-of-the-best-safety-apps-for-women-walking-alone-at-night-14233244/
And Reclaim these Streets works to make the streets
safer for lone women: https://reclaimthesestreets.com/
