A losing battle…
TW: mentions of sexual assault and rape
Crossing over to the other side of the street will not save women’s lives. It will not make us feel safe enough to live our lives freely, without compromise or qualms. You can call out your mates when they make degrading comments about women; you can call out your mates when they harass women. But what is that solving? You are merely picking weeds out of the ground, rather than uprooting the soil and dousing it in weed killer.
Men feel entitled to women’s bodies. This is the essence of the problem. I would go as far to say that every single cisgender, heterosexual man feels this entitlement to a certain level. It’s impossible not to, and there is no blame for this fact specifically. For centuries upon centuries, men have been emboldened to believe that women are their property. Hell, it was still enshrined in UK law less than 100 years ago. It would therefore be pretty surprising if this did not factor into how men view and treat women to some level. The fault arises when men refuse to recognise and fight back against these thoughts when they are awakened from slumber. And many men simply refuse. They reside (knowingly or not) in their conviction that women are secondary and exist beneath men. How do you unlearn something that is so fundamentally ingrained in our cultures and societies, and in half of the world’s population?
Being repeatedly told that rape and sexual assault is wrong will not do anything to ameliorate this. We need to get to the root of the cause. Men, as a collective, need to start respecting women and their right to live independently. Their right to live freely and do all the things men do, without comment or intervention.
But this is where I get stuck. HOW do you reform a man who thinks he has an innate right to women’s bodies? That thinks he is naturally superior because he was born a man? How do you reform this when it has been the culturally accepted norm for almost the entire history of mankind? When you realise that this is something that needs to be addressed in almost all men, you begin to lose hope.
Men will not unlearn these ways and they will not forfeit their privilege. Because they benefit too much from it. It’s human nature, really. Why would you want to start treating women with respect when it dispossesses you of the ’superiority’ awarded to you by your biological state? This is why this problem is so complex and the road ahead looks arduous. Particularly arduous when the onus is still on women to draw attention to, and ultimately resolve, this problem. And we’re tired. 97% of young women in the UK have been sexually harassed. Why should we keep having to relive our trauma just to be heard?
This is why it feels like a losing battle to me. It’s why, when I see infographics being reposted by men on how they can ‘do better’ by crossing the road and not approaching women in the street at night (the bare minimum, might I add?!), I feel nothing. In fact, I feel worse. Because nothing is going to drastically change in our lifetimes. And that’s because I don’t believe most men really, truly want to commit to drastic change. Performative Instagram Stories do not fill me with confidence. They don’t assure me that men will stop coddling abusers in their friendship groups, or that they will become active bystanders, or that they won’t have completely forgotten about all of this in a week’s time.
That’s why I struggle to envision a future where women are truly liberated. Where we don’t have to live with chronic dread, fearful that today may be our last, simply as a result of going about our day-to-day business.
It has to change. But we need commitment to total upheaval for that to happen. From men themselves. And I’m not quite sure we can count on that right now.
