Women do not make dating easy for men – we are known for committing a terrible atrocity where we ‘friend zone’ men. For those of you lucky enough to have not come across this terminology before, being put in the ‘friend zone’ is the phenomenon where a woman who you are attracted to refuses to do her civic duty to reciprocate your desires and immediately sleep with you, and instead chooses to maintain a friendship with you because she has this ridiculous notion that you actually value her company as a human being and not just as a fuckable object.
It’s ridiculous, unfair and something we women obviously never have to deal with.
When we go on dates, all we worry about is being in that well known circumstance where you politely reject a man who doesn’t respond to the rejection very well and then… well, murders us. This concern of ours is so common that there’s even a song about it in my favourite show ‘Crazy ex-girlfriend’ with the lyrics ‘Hey sexy stranger come back to my place and please don’t be a murderer’.
Okay - so these are sweeping statements and of course men do sometimes experience these fears too – I definitely don’t want to invalidate that.
Some of you may think I’m exaggerating about this, making things up, or that I don’t have the right to speak up about this having not been on a date like that myself - and I’m going to be honest – I have actually never personally been murdered on a date. Believe it or not, for the women that have experienced this, it’s actually not that easy for them to speak up about this. This is partly due to the way society treats and silences such women, but it’s also due to the simple fact that it’s hard to speak out about something when you’re dead.
This week we have seen a horrific news story that has deeply shaken up the whole country. I don’t want to go into the gruesome details about what happened to Sarah Everard out of respect to her and her family – but she went missing about a week ago, and in the days that followed her remains were found and a police officer was arrested for her murder.
She was subjected to a horrendous crime that we, as women, all fear will happen to us.
Every time I leave my house at night I worry that I will be subjected to gender-based violence, and I can assure you that I am not alone here. Every woman I know has her techniques and tactics for trying to protect herself at night, because we are all too aware of what our fate may be. We have come to accept that this is just the way things are; that this is part and parcel of being a woman in our society.
But now it feels like we have reached a turning point. The fact that this awful crime happened during a global pandemic, a national lockdown and allegedly at the hands of a police officer whose role should have been to protect her has truly shaken us up.
It has made us angry.
It has made us fed up.
I am fed up of the fear I feel any time I am alone on public transport with only a man on there too, staring at me.
I am fed up of not being able to walk certain routes in the dark with the knowledge that there are no security cameras and no streetlamps on that route and so it is more likely that I will be attacked.
I am fed up of walking home with my keys held between my knuckles so I am ready to defend myself if anyone attacks me.
I am fed up of pretending I am on a phone call anytime a man comes near me on an empty street, so that he will be less likely to attack me because he’ll think I have someone to shout for help to.
I am fed up of not having ‘no’ taken seriously as an answer by a man who approaches me in a club unless I follow this up with ‘I have a boyfriend’ – these men will not respect my choice and my rejection unless it is backed up by another man.
I am fed up of not wearing my hair in a ponytail at night, under the knowledge that this makes it easier for an assaulter to grab you.
I am fed up of having to attend self defence classes where I learn about the legalities of what you are allowed to do to protect yourself at night, and what you may get imprisoned for doing (the key thing is actually not okay).
I am fed up of telling my female friends to text me when they get home if they have gone home late at night by themselves, and of worrying when I do not get that confirmation text they have been assaulted, raped or murdered on their way home.
I am fed up of the knowledge that if I have a daughter one day, she will have to do the same thing that I have had to do my whole life, as has every other woman, because no changes seem to being made and our lives and safety still do not feel important to society.
Because lets be honest, violence against women is not just something that happens in poorer developing countries, where there are no laws against domestic violence or marital rape. It does not just happen in war zones where mass rape is used as a weapon and women are treated as commodities. Violence against women happens in the West, it happens in the UK and the US and every single country in the world. It is something that could affect any of us, although those women who belong to multiple marginalised groups are at even more risk than those of us with more privilege. Trans women of colour are at the highest risk of sexual violence in the UK and the US, yet are often given the least protection.
Now let’s be clear, if we want to know what causes rape and murder – there is one clear answer that it’s hard to argue with: rapists and murderers. The people that commit these crimes absolutely need to take responsibility for it, and I don’t want to act like it is only the patriarchy and our society that is to blame for this, and that the men who commit these crimes do not need to undertake individual responsibility.
But we do need to also acknowledge our collective responsibility as a society as to how we perpetuate rape culture and manifest a society where such violence is able to persist. These crimes don’t happen out of nowhere, there are many aspects of our society and culture that condone and encourage this behaviour that seem small – but that all of us can address.
Lots of people, men especially, have been asking what they can do to be better allies. Now obviously, if you are a man that is thinking about committing an assault, rape or murder, I’m going to give you a radical piece of advice: please don’t. But I’m guessing that most of the men asking this question are not thinking about doing that, so I want to talk about some of the things in our society that all people, but men especially, can look at addressing to help eradicate rape culture.
I also just need to quickly caveat that this blog is approaching this topic from a heteronormative perspective – and it’s not to say that gender-based violence doesn’t happen in the context of the LGBT+ community, after all one of the most horrific forms of conversion therapy is ‘corrective rape’ where gay women in particular are raped by men in order to try and convert them to heterosexuality. But I don’t feel that I have the knowledge or experience to fairly discuss how rape culture is perpetuated specifically within the LGBT+ community – I will try and do some more research and share any articles written by people much more knowledgeable and articulate than I am.
I also want to caveat that I’ve seen a lot of advice on apps women can download and tactics women can take to further protect themselves at night, and while these apps are incredibly useful, I’m not going to talk about these at all because I’m fed up of the fact we even need them. I want to focus on what we can do to make a society where we don’t need to worry about these things in the first place.
1. Masculinity and gender roles
In the last few centuries, there has been a prevailing idea of masculinity being associated with dominance and power – that to be a ‘real man’ men need to be comfortable with violence, they don’t have time to be sensitive and that they need to be physically strong and overpowering. On the other hand, femininity has been associated with submissiveness, with the idea that women need to be polite and gracious, that to be taken seriously they need to ask nicely and phrase things in an inoffensive way (you know, like ‘please, pretty please, could you maybe not murder me please?').
We have all come across situations where we have seen these ideas around masculinity and femininity being upheld, they are often even placed upon young children as ideas on how they should behave based on what their genitals look like.
Challenge that.
By challenging the idea that masculinity is dominance and femininity is submissiveness, we will create a culture where men do not feel the need to dominate women and women feel they can speak up boldly when they need to.
2. Locker room talk
When I talk about locker room talk, I’m talking about the situation where men get together and have conversations that objectify and sexualise women. And in particular, my concern is when this happens when men make these comments about women where there is a power dynamic that exists between them and the women.
We have all heard stories about companies where the older male partners rate their more junior female co-workers on looks and attractiveness, where they make comments to each other that are not fully appropriate, where they make their junior female co-workers feel uncomfortable, but also unable to speak out because they know that there is this power dynamic that exists between them.
We have heard about the extreme of this where male colleagues go off on golf trips together that end up in strip clubs.
If you are a man, I would be extremely surprised if you have never been in a situation where these kind of conversations have been had. I mean I’ve heard of comments that have been made about me in such circumstances that make me feel uncomfortable, and what I really want my male allies to be doing is to calling out that behaviour and those comments as soon as they are said, and not letting men speak that way about other women in the first place.
This kind of talk and objectification of women does perpetuate rape culture, and men have a responsibility to question and call out their peers who speak like this.
3. Slut shaming and victim blaming
‘She shouldn’t have dressed like that’.
‘She shouldn’t have drank that much’.
‘She shouldn’t have flirted with him’.
‘She was asking for it’.
How many times have we heard comments like that being made when women do come forward about being assaulted? Women are often told that their innate sexuality makes them responsible for the assaults they endure, because how can men be expected to control themselves if they behave, look, or dress like that?
It happens horrifically in court when women who are brave enough to come forward and report a sexual assault have their whole character and sexual history dragged in front of them, as though by engaging in any act of sexuality in their lives, they have brought the assault upon themselves.
This manifests itself in a less extreme circumstance in the form of slut shaming, when women are insulted and judged for being sexually active, or for dressing or behaving a certain way.
I’ve definitely been guilty for engaging in slut-shaming style conversations ‘what is she wearing?…. How many people has she slept with?....’ etc etc. It’s not okay, and I need to address the fact that the way I spoke about other women perpetuates rape culture. We all do.
So next time a comment like that comes to your head, or you hear one of your friends making a comment like that, question it and call it out.
4. Consent
When I was in school, my sex education mainly consisted of watching episodes of programmes about teenage parents to try and discourage us from getting knocked up straight away. There was a bit about STDs, a bit about protection, and a lot of awkwardness.
Apart from inclusive, intersectional education that acknowledged the fact that LGBT+ people actually exist, one of the biggest things that my school missed out in its curriculum was consent.
We need to teach our children about consent, we need to teach them about the importance of asking for it, the importance of giving it, about the fact there is no such things as sex without consent – sex without consent is rape.
Because most rapes are not committed by strangers or by scary men in alleyways.
They are committed by people we know, in our own homes.
If we really want to address and dismantle rape culture, we need to prioritise and celebrate consent, we need to view asking for consent as sexy and vital and we need to make sure people of all genders feel comfortable saying ‘actually, no, I don’t want to do this right now’.
5. Believe women
This sounds like an obvious one, but it’s shocking how much this doesn’t happen.
I remember when Alex Salmond was first in the news for sexual harassment, some men in my office were discussing how it was probably made up in order to get some money or some political clout out of the whole situation.
Firstly, statistically, this is almost definitely not the case. There are very few women who falsely accuse men of sexual assault – men are significantly more likely to be sexually assaulted than to be falsely accused of assault. Most of the time, women don’t even come forward because they know what awaits them when they do – scrutiny, judgement, abuse and people not believing them.
The thing that really struck me when I heard those comments though is what would happen if I became a victim of something like that in my workplace, which thankfully I have never experienced. Would I even be believed, or would people just apply the same rhetoric to me?
People often read articles on topics like these where people from marginalised communities speak out about their experiences and treat it as a topic of debate, as though it as trivial as whether or not marmite is tasty or not (my opinion – tasty in cooking, gross on toast). Please don’t be this person. Please don’t treat someone’s lived experiences as a topic of debate.
If a woman is brave enough to speak out on this topic, and more generally if anyone from a marginalised community is brave enough to speak out about their experiences, believe them.
Honestly if everyone just believed women more, more women would be able to come forward about their experiences and not feel they need to hide it and keep it to themselves.
So these are some of my tips on things we can address in our society.
I just have one final point I want to make. I love that people are asking the question on what they can do to be better allies, I think it is such an important question to ask and people need to take ownership of their actions to be better allies – after all allyship should be thought of as a verb, an ongoing activity, rather than a noun.
But just remember, you are not entitled to be educated by women, or to have anyone from marginalised communities educate you. I’ve had a few people in the last week ask me what they can do to be better allies, and while I am so glad they are asking this and think it’s definitely preferable to just not doing anything to try and be a better ally, it’s also been exhausting and emotionally draining, especially where I have been asked to explain and justify my traumatic lived experiences and views.
Remember that there is such thing as Google – just to see what was out there I tried googling, ‘how can I stand up against rape culture’ and the following really useful UN article came up:
Realistically, I think men are more than capable of googling this themselves.
Now I know there’s the issue with Google of the fact that anyone can put anything on the internet, and you don’t want to read something harmful or that does the opposite of what you want. I think this is a fair point, but I also think its much better to do some reading and research yourself first and then ask your female colleagues if they wouldn’t mind discussing the article (and take no for an answer graciously if they don’t have the mental bandwidth to discuss this right now) – rather than coming to your female friends and colleagues with no prior knowledge and research and expect them to educate you for free on everything related to violence against women under the sun.
The other thing is to look at who's posting the article – if it’s a post by the UN it’s probably going to be reasonable, if it’s a post by a blogger called ‘I_hate_women_69’ (or even by this legend I’ve heard of called angry_brown_vegan_woman) it may not be as legit.
It is no secret that I love and admire women, I think it is amazing the way that we come together to support each other and celebrate each other, even when the patriarchy tries to pit us against each other to maintain control. I think in the coming months we are going to really see revolution in this area, we are going to see women coming together in our mutual ‘fed-up-ness’ of gender based violence – and the only thing that would make this even better is to have men on board, taking active roles in dismantling our society’s patriarchal rape culture.
And if that’s too much to handle, let’s at least try to acknowledge that while the friend zone isn’t fun, the murder zone is probably worse.