“Every now and then, it is true, a man rises unexpectedly in our midst like a pine tree, and looks savagely at us, and sends us hobbling away in great floods to hide in the caves and gullies until he is gone.”
My friend Megan shared those lines from the Lydia Davis short story, “Men,” on Instagram in March after a thirty-three-year-old woman named Sarah Everard was abducted and murdered on her walk home in London. It happened on a busy, well-lit street.
There are other forms of public aggression with which women must contend.
For me and, I’d venture, most women, this talk of savagery and hiding rang true. Certainly, in the United Kingdom, there was a massive outcry as the deadly consequences of misogyny roared to the forefront of our minds once more. It made me recall all of the times I’ve been harassed on the street, in cities around the world.
What a shame that something as fundamental as walking safely in public can be taken from us, and will remain largely out of reach until there is a sea change in how men treat women.
Through this pandemic and the consequent lockdowns, one of the things I’ve been missing is spending time alone in public. I’d forgotten about the slight but constant vigilance required just to navigate my way through the world.
Having a pint and reading a book in a bar is an exquisite way to spend a couple of hours. As the alcohol seeps into your body, so do the words, softening the boundaries between the reader and the writer.
When I lived in Dublin, this was an unremarkable way to spend an afternoon for men, but for me it was a tightly organized mission. Which pub was safest? Which seat was hidden enough not to attract attention but still be in view of the bartender in case of a hassle? Was there a taxi stand close by? What time did it get dark?
I accepted these layers of concern, having internalized that when it came to leisure time the rules for cis men and the rest of us were different. Or rather, some specific rules existed only for the rest of us.
Wayne Couzens, a police officer with an elite London unit, has been charged with Everard’s murder. When the British government responded to her killing by suggesting it would put more undercover police in nightclubs, the reaction was derision and rage.
Years ago, I was stalked by a dangerous man for many months before the police acted. I have often felt afraid to be alone in public for many reasons, but I am not in the mood to list them. Suffice it to say it makes me furious that my world is smaller than a man’s world.
Back when I would walk home after working in a bar doing table service and, later, as a comic, my central nervous system would switch to high alert at the slightest sound or movement. I often admonished myself for being “jumpy.” I was being jumpy, but as a method of survival.
It’s not always the worst-case scenario, of course, that happens. But there are other forms of public aggression with which women must contend.
As writer Rachel Hewitt put it in The Guardian, in response to Everard’s murder, “We know that it’s a minority of men who rape and murder women. But a great many engage in continual, low-level, unrecorded intimidation that hints toward assault and is threatening to women who they believe to have ‘strayed’ into their territory.”
As I was going for a run in Brooklyn on a sunny morning, a man lying outside the park shouted, “Run to me, baby.” I shouted back: “That would defeat the purpose of going for a run!” I used to tell that anecdote onstage when I did comedy. I left out the part where he turned nasty, screaming obscenities, and making like he was going to chase me.
Instead I laughed it off, excused him mentally, thought I wasn’t letting it get to me, when what actually happened was an intrusion into a private and treasured world to which each of us is entitled.