Outside, I walked past a young man on his bike and his friend. One of them said something incredibly disturbing to me, and my entire body turned as cold as the milk against my spine. (Imagine my horror when years later I heard the song that he was apparently quoting, a classy Nine Inch Nails ditty called “Closer”; you\u2019ll know the lyrics I mean.)<\/p>\n
Although I didn\u2019t have the context for the comment, I knew it was a threat and that I was in danger. But I also knew that if you can\u2019t fully defend yourself, it\u2019s better to ignore things that boys do so they don\u2019t escalate and hurt you. Yes, I had already learned this. I bet your daughter has too.<\/p>\n
They followed me home on their bikes, and when I crossed the road, they did too. I crossed again, thinking that if they had crossed coincidentally before, they wouldn\u2019t again. But they did.<\/p>\n
When you know you\u2019re in trouble, it is a very different feeling than thinking you might be in trouble. It\u2019s unforgettable. I started to feel it.<\/p>\n
My dad\u2019s house was the first on a side street, so I waited until the last moment, then whipped down the street into the driveway and raced into the house, backpack swinging wildly. I wish I could say I felt safe once inside, but I\u2019m not sure I have since.<\/p>\n
I learned there were different rules for boys and girls. I learned, very young, that girls were often victims of horrendous crimes, and that the male perpetrators were rarely caught, and that the legal system was committed to failure when it came to rape. I saw this in every type of media\u2014so not only was it being reported on in the news, it was being explored and exploited in ‘pleasurable viewing’ for the masses. Imagine being a kid who\u2019d been molested seeing their parents watch Law and Order: SVU<\/em>. Would it say anything other than ‘this is completely normal’?<\/p>\n As I\u2019m writing, more and more anecdotes of threatening male behaviour come to mind, as I\u2019m sure is happening to female readers right now. The time I was 12 walking with my friend and a truck full of men yelled obscenities at us on Main Street.<\/p>\n This happened to me again on a late-night walk this January, by the Summit Centre.<\/p>\n I would be unable to count the number of times it\u2019s happened between the two incidents. Men yelling from cars is part of the background noise of women\u2019s lives. The work I\u2019ve done in this community means I know the names of more rapists and abusers than I would like. I can tell you right now, you know some. Harassment, stalking, abuse, and assault all happen in every town, an iceberg of violence against women, most of it well beneath the surface.<\/p>\n It took me about twenty years, but I started to feel like I was doing everything right when it came to moving through the world cautiously. I took courses on self-defence, assertiveness, empowerment, and learned strategies for defusing high-tension situations. With a friend, I eventually started to give workshops on these subjects\u2014literally called I GOT THIS, all about knowing, and owning, the space around you.<\/p>\n I did for two reasons: so that I would be better prepared if anything happened, and because maybe then I wouldn\u2019t be blamed if something did.<\/p>\n But all the while, the rape and murder of women who did everything right was like an infection\u2014we tried treating it with everything we had, but it\u2019s too resilient, too ready to mutate.<\/p>\n At the end of every single day that I do everything right to protect myself, I feel a slow-burning rage at the fact that I have to do anything at all. I\u2019ve been in women-only space with three thousand women and never once felt as unsafe as I do in my own community. I could have walked back to my tent naked, wasted, and singing at the top of my voice, and I would have been joined in song, and possibly lovingly escorted, but never assaulted. No, it seems the realm of sexually attacking women in the streets solely belongs to men.<\/p>\n Sarah Everard<\/a><\/span> did everything right on her walk home.<\/p>\n People were expecting her. She called her boyfriend for much of the journey. She passed under bright street lamps and CCTV.<\/p>\n And a man abducted her and murdered her. We don\u2019t know what else (but we do know).<\/p>\n Her name is echoing around the world right now. It reminds me of Jyoti Singh<\/a><\/span>, the woman who was raped to death on a bus in Delhi in 2012. Her death sparked something in all of us. The realization that no matter what a woman does, with zero exceptions, rape is never excusable.<\/p>\n We can find ourselves empathizing with the motivations for every other crime, even murder. But anyone who feels that way about rape is a danger to be around. It is the only inexcusable crime and it is the most dismissed and disbelieved.<\/p>\n Sarah\u2019s death reminds us we have not taken back the night<\/a><\/span> and, in fact, it\u2019s more dangerous than ever for women. In Mexico, men in trucks wait at bus stops to abduct women<\/a><\/span>. Imagine that level of existential fear when you\u2019re just trying to get home to your family after a long shift. In First Nations communities policed by RCMP, there are countless accusations of male cops harassing and harming Indigenous women<\/a><\/span>. There is no patriarchal society in which women are safe, and as Audre Lorde says, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even if her shackles are very different from my own.” So please do not derail this by telling me how good white women or Western women have it in comparison to women elsewhere, because it is the same infection hurting us all. As Sarah Everard could attest, if she were alive. And the more privilege I have, the larger my responsibility to shout about this and shut it down.<\/p>\n We all know that feeling when things change in an instant. A car accident, a phone call, a diagnosis. The trajectory of your life changing unimaginably. Sometimes ending, unimaginably.<\/p>\n You\u2019re going for a walk, like you always do. You hear footsteps behind you, because you only wear one earbud, always with the volume down low. You step aside to let him pass, not wanting him behind you.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a police officer. There\u2019s a moment of relief. If you\u2019re a white woman who\u2019s never had to report so-called domestic violence or sexual assault to the police, you might think cops are indeed there to serve and protect.<\/p>\n I wonder how long it was between when Sarah realized he was a cop and when she realized he was still going to kill her.<\/p>\n The horror in the slow, then too-fast realization that it won\u2019t end at rape. Somehow, it gets worse. At the moment you realize this is the end of your life, because a man decided your value, the person your friends and family love, every birthday candle you blew out, every time you said “I miss you”, every seed you planted in the garden\u2014he determined that none of it mattered and it was all disposable.<\/p>\n And when women tried to gather to hold a vigil for Sarah Everard? Women were thrown around by male police officers. The violence was described as ‘deeply disturbing’ and ‘neither appropriate nor proportionate<\/a>‘<\/span>.<\/p>\n There can be no more advice for women. We are already doing everything we can and so much more than we should have to, and it isn\u2019t working. If curfews are discussed, I only want to hear about men being told to stay inside. If ‘be safe’ is called at someone\u2019s back when they leave the house, it needs to mean ‘don\u2019t rape and murder anyone’ not ‘don\u2019t get raped and murdered’.<\/p>\n It is not enough to be a feminist mother raising good boys. It is not enough to teach consent in schools. It isn\u2019t enough to use parental controls on porn. None of this is enough. It hasn\u2019t been and it won\u2019t be. At what point is it enough? I thought after Junko. I thought after Jyoti. I thought after Eurydice.<\/p>\n Maybe after Sarah?<\/p>\n I am tired of the onus being buried.<\/p>\n And I am really tired of women being buried.<\/p>\n This is a femicide<\/a><\/span> and we have had enough.<\/p>\n Sign up here<\/u><\/a> to receive our email digest with links to our most recent stories. Click here to support local news<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kathleen May (Photo: Kai Rannik)<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Kathleen May is a writer, speaker, and activist. Her column, She Speaks, has appeared in the Huntsville Doppler since 2018. Her work in our community includes co-founding the long-running Huntsville Women\u2019s Group, volunteering with Muskoka Parry Sound Sexual Assault Services, and her role as a front-line counsellor at the women\u2019s shelter. Kathleen is a 2018 Woman of Distinction for Social Activism and Community Development<\/a><\/span>. She was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize<\/a><\/span>, short-listed for the 2019 CBC Nonfiction Prize<\/a><\/span>, and received the Best Author award for her 2018 submission at the Muskoka Novel Marathon, a fundraiser for literacy services. When she isn\u2019t writing, she\u2019s designing a tiny house which she intends to be the impetus for a sustainable women\u2019s land co-operative in Muskoka.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was a pre-teen, my dad sent me to a convenience store to buy milk. I went on my bike with a backpack and the single-minded determination of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":617,"featured_media":95701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n<\/h5>\n
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