Written submission from a member of the public (SPP0029)
1. When I was [under 18] I was walking along the street with a friend when a car full of men about ten years older than us drove past, shouting sexualised comments. They turned the car round and drove past again, more slowly, asking us to get in the car. We kept walking. We heard them turn the car around again and we ran down a side street and hid in a passageway. We heard the car drive down the sidestreet, the men still shouting out to us. I remember feeling really scared.
2. In my early twenties I sat on a bus in [location] and a man sat down next to me. He was high or drunk and talked loudly at me about sex. I tried to get past him to move seats but he refused to let me past until I kissed him. I asked him loudly to let me past, and looked around at the packed bus. No one helped me or said anything, although the whole bus could hear. Eventually I managed to get past and get off the bus.
3. In my late twenties I sat on a bus in [location] and a group of men sitting behind me made sexualised comments, asking me to come and sit with them. I ignored them and put my headphones in. Eventually a note landed in my lap which read: ‘when you get off this bus we will rape you.’ I got off at the busiest stop possible and went into a shop until I was sure they hadn’t followed me.
4. Between these I could list hundreds of other individual incidents: a man walked past me in a shop and put his hand up my dress and grabbed my crotch. A group of men loudly marked me out of ten as I walked past. A man in a nightclub dragged me into the men’s toilets to ‘get it on’ as his friends watched and laughed. Being followed home late at night. Being followed in broad daylight… every one of my female friends could do the same. As women we learn so quickly not to respond so as to avoid the aggression or insults that so often follow an attempt at retaliation. We know this is about power and that we cannot let the man lose face, otherwise we will have to deal with the consequences. I wanted to write this because, following Weinstein and the #metoo revelations, it struck me that my friends and I never saw any of these incidents as things that could be stopped – there was a sense that they just happened and we had to accept that. It was us who carried the shame and the fear, and us who modified our behaviour (not going out late, not wearing heels or strappy tops in public etc etc) in order to try and avoid similar incidents happening again. I have recently become a mother and it is my sincere hope that if enough of us – women and men – speak out then we can challenge the tacit acceptance that these kind of incidents ‘just happen,’ and that my daughter can grow up in a country where she never feels afraid to be a woman in public spaces.