A friend....a man....well-intentioned and very
kind....told me last week that he was hopeful. Weinstein’s abuse and unmasking really
might change everything. There always has to be a turning point. It seems like
something is happening. This is hopeful. He pointed me to the Time front cover.
Forgive me. I held my head to one side in
that way we have. You know the way. The one that says “I want to punch you in
the neck for that naive comment that makes me want to scream but I like you so
I will breathe hard while not punching you and then my head will sag over with
the effort”.
I thought about Eva Wiseman’s article. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/29/a-year-on-from-trumps-pussy-grab-nothing-has-changed
Eva’s piece said that our hope – as women - comes and goes every year. I thought...
you, as a man, can hope. Because having that hope dashed every year simply
means the world isn’t going to be as moral or kind to women as you would like. But
it won’t mean that the world will remain constantly hostile to you as a sex
class. It won’t mean that you are despairing as to how things will ever change.
I wondered if I was being a bit.... well.... me. Hard. Pessimistic about the
patriarchy. Angry.
Then came Saturday night.
I never go out to busy bars in the centre
of town. Ever. I rarely go out late around men. I tend to avoid bars where a
certain type of man will be drunk, and especially, drunk late at night. I class
a problem time to be anywhere past 9pm. Most men will not understand this. Some
women will.
Saturday night I had promised to go and see
a couple of male friends sing at a bar. I took along a female friend. It was
only 8pm. I figured we would be ok. It isn’t a swanky, trendy bar. Quite old
and well-established. Surely anywhere with live music by a hoard of gay blokes
would be ok? Surely?
But this is Christmas. Everything I
ordinarily fear about this is worse at Christmas. It should be better. But it
isn’t. You can’t put a bauble or fairy lights on a sexually risky
situation.
As we entered it became clear that personal
boundaries were being eroded by alcohol. People pushed. You pushed back or
fell. I made my way to the bar and my friend indicated she would wait at a
distance. A man at the bar looked me up
and down and then “made way” for me. Except with that look. The one that says
.... you can cram in here but you have to do it by rubbing past my body.
Again.... women will know that look.
I held my arm out to invite him to step out
of the way first. He did but suddenly “fell” into me. I massively eye rolled
and waited for him to move on. No real harm done. I don’t get automatically
pissed off at every time someone touches me in a bar. No matter what the
Twitter Trolls might say.
I waited to be served. It was very busy. I
knew it would take a while. Suddenly someone tapped me on the shoulder. I
expected it was one of my friends. I turned. It was a sea of male faces. None
of whom I knew and not one of whom acknowledged they were trying to get my
attention. I turned back to the bar. Then it happened again. I realised someone
was trying to wind me up. I turned around with a smile and offered to the sea
of unidentifiable faces, “Come on lads. Pack it in now.” Many women will know
not to anger drunken men. Fighting is not sensible. Glass is involved.
Why would the men do this? Easy. “Woman alone. Fun. Bit of a joke?” Or
something more along the lines of “Woman.. alone.... confident.... let’s take
that away! That will be fun. She is few and we are many.” The latter is what
experience teaches me.
And so I registered all this rather quickly
and thought that continuing to ignore was best.
And then I was tapped on the shoulder
again. This was swiftly followed by a hand firmly though my legs and a grab,
quite hard, of my vagina. I spun around. Not a face moved. All men stared ahead.
All. Men. Stared. Ahead.
And that’s when you know.
Nothing has
changed. Nothing is changing.
Unless ordinary women keep fighting, I will be long dead before I can go to a
bar and expect to keep myself, and my vagina, safe.
For women... the Weinstein case heralds no
new dawn. These men won’t even know about it. They won’t have seen the hashtag
#MeToo They won’t have got the “stoppit now” memo. They won’t have read the
front part of the newspapers before clicking through to the football. They
won’t have clicked the ardent blogs before clicking on Pornhub.
Why the hell would they? The world and bars
and women are theirs. Women should stop being hopeful. They should stop
listening to men being hopeful on their behalf.
When all men stare ahead while a woman is
sexually assaulted, women must stare at the future and know it will not change
unless we change it.
