Is this Mothering Sunday conversation taking place in every household in the country?
Shaun: Do you feel frightened in the evenings?
Me: Not at all. You mean at home?
S: No.
A: Oh. Out in the streets? Yes of course.
S: Really?
A: All the time. Since I was mugged, certainly.
S: I didn’t know.
A: I’m always conscious it might happen again. I avoid coming home from London by train, late at night, alone, if possible.
S: But you still do it.
A: Yes. But I’m alert, aware, all the time, till I get home, that I might be attacked any moment.
S: On your bike?
A: Yes. I wrap my handbag strap round the handlebars, or wear it across my body like the police taught me, rather than over a shoulder or loose in my basket. And bicycle down the middle of the road so I can see everything. Faster than before.
S: Are you nervous in the train?
A: Not if it’s full. But if I’m alone in a carriage with just a man… well, I make sure I’m not. And sit near an emergency communication cord. I’ve always done that. It’s second nature.
S: Have you ever been groped in public?
A: Of course.
S: Really??
A: Everyone has.
S: When?
A: Oh gosh, far too often to remember.
S: I’ve been reading this stuff – that every women you know has been groped in public – and at first I didn’t believe it. I thought it was too fantastic to be true.
A: I can easily believe that. It’s like racism. People say they experience it every day. It’s part of life, all the time.
S: But it’s terrible. Men need to know this. Why don’t you say? Why doesn’t everyone?
A: What do you think MeToo was about?
S: But why don’t you all say it more?
A: Because for centuries, millennia, women have been conditioned to please men. Please everyone. Be gentle and acquiescent and courteous and not make a fuss. I don’t even mean we’re “brought up” to do this. No one necessarily tells us. It’s just so deep down: for so long compliance has been our meal ticket, our way of being accepted, achieving recognition and status, often even our only way of being fed or housed acceptably, that it goes against everything we’ve ever learnt for us to speak out or complain. Otherwise we’re horrible harridans, aren’t we?
S: Whereas men are brought up to be aggressive and pushy.
A: Yes.
S: But it’s got to change!
A: Well, the way to do that is to teach Rose, now, while she’s still a teenager, that the moment a man touches her in the tube she should scream at the top of her voice that she’s being assaulted.
S: Or even just say it loudly so everyone can hear.
A: Yes: that would do it. Don’t you remember, years ago, when you came home after a man looked at you in a way you didn’t like?
S: It was a women. She eyed me up and down as she walked past. It was really disconcerting.
A: I thought it was a man. And you came home really quite shaken. And Serena, Bink and I all said, yeah??
S: Yes.
A: We’d experienced it all the time. Imagine how much more threatening it would have felt if it had been a man.
S: Yes.
A: After all, there wasn’t much she could do to you, was there? I’ve told you what happened to me in my first fortnight at Oxford, right?
S: Remind me.
A: I was asleep. A Second Year come into my room, got in my bed and started groping me. Inside my pyjamas. Until eventually he said, Oh, that’s why you don’t want sex: you’ve got your period; why didn’t you tell me?
S: What did you do?
A: I froze. I had no idea what to do. I just completely froze. I think he stayed all night. The next night, for several weeks, I locked my bedroom door. I heard him rattling the knob and then going away. I didn’t even tell my bedder, and she was like a mother to me. I told her when a tramp let himself into my room and I asked her advice about locking the door, and she said I should, but I never told her about him. I think the Second Years had made bets about bedding First Years.
S: Doesn’t sound like you not to say anything.
A: I was eighteen!
S: Had you had conversations with him? Had you, you know…
A: Not at all. I might have met him in the bar, briefly. I don’t remember.
S: Why didn’t you report him?
A: Report him?
S: Why don’t you report him now?
A: Can’t remember his name: I barely knew him. Come to think of it, why didn’t you? I told you about it, must have been the following year. Don’t you remember? You said it was just as well you didn’t know which team he played for because you would have broken his legs.
S: Yes… He played football, though. not Rugby.
I suppose one advantage we have over racism is that most men live with at least one woman.
Maybe it’s time we started telling them??
(PS Thank you for the flowers! I think I was almost glad you felt like breaking his legs – I was certainly very surprised! – but maybe it is just as well you didn’t.)
