Are the men doing this?
That's what girls have to think about all the time
I’ve had this post from
saved to share with you for a little while now - and I hope she won’t mind that I’ve borrowed the title (she says she’d borrowed it from Caitlin Moran). In the post, she talks about the expectation on women to share our deepest fears or the details of how much we’re earning, and how male writers don’t seem to be expected to do the same thing.
But then in the last week, there’s been another load of discussion about things that women have to think about and have to do - including trying to stay safe in a world that’s not designed for us to feel safe in.
As Marina Hyde wrote: ‘When clips like this go viral, it’s for a reason.”
A really specific memory of mine (this isn’t one of a bad thing happening, no content warnings needed!) from my time at university in Bath (a very safe city) was of finishing up a late evening pizza meal on campus with some friends from the debating society. It was maybe 11pm (pitch black) and time to call it a night. Without any sort of conversation about it, the girls in the group walked towards the bus stop, and the guys in the group… didn’t.
“Where are you going?” one of us asked.
“We’re walking down the hill,” one of the guys said.
It had never occurred to any of us that you could walk home from campus at night. It was over an hour’s walk to the part of town we all lived in, with half an hour or more along semi-rural roads with narrow footpaths like the one below, and then also having to cut through a trading estate.
It had never occurred to any of the guys in the group that we wouldn’t consider it as an option.
I don’t know whether anyone else who was there that night remembers that conversation - but I found it completely mind-blowing.
As our male friends and relations might say - it’s not all men. That’s totally true - but the problem is that we don’t know which men it is. So when (as on my way home on Friday night) I get squeezed off the pavement by a guy with a rugby player’s body walking abreast with his mates, I don’t want to show any reaction, because I don’t know if that man is one of those men.
In the run up to the US election, this all feels especially important and fragile. It’s impossible to underestimate how much the rights of women, and of people of colour, and of LGBTQ+ people, are at stake in this election. I don’t have anything wise to say there - other than to let the 22% of you who are in the US (according to my subscriber stats here) know that I’m thinking of you this week.
(As a side note, the ability to vote in privacy like this is why I’m a big fan of in-person early voting, as offered in some US states - here in the UK the only early option is to vote by post, which doesn’t guarantee the same secrecy from the people you live with).
On a totally different note, I tried a new thing last week, and made a ‘day in the life’ video for my Instagram page - so if you’re curious as to what life looks like now I’ve gone back to university, take a look:
Speak soon,
Lily
Here’s this week’s round-up of recommendations:
Jojo Meyers has a Substack!?! Yay!!
Also, great post, especially the bit about mail-in voting eliminating privacy from your family.