When I was 14 years old I was a victim of violent sexual assault. I was on holiday in Norfolk and I had gone down to the beach during the afternoon to do some sketching with my chalk pastels. A naked man, with a towel over his shoulder, approached me and stood in front of me striking poses and laughing. I tried to ignore him, but he came closer to me and gestured to me to touch his penis. I shook my head and began putting my chalk pastels back in their box, and hastily packing my possessions into my bag. He took out a note and offered me money to touch him. I grabbed my stuff and walked away as quickly as I could, but the man followed me. He grabbed me and I pushed him away and started to run. But he was faster than me, he chased me down, threw me around like a rag doll and groped me. I had my shoes in my hand (I hadn’t had time to put them back on), and I hit him with them, as hard as I could, until he let go. Then I ran, up the steps from the beach and only turned to look back once I reached the top. He was stood at the bottom, wanking himself, and screaming “Fuck me, Bitch!”. This memory is now seared on my brain forever, in disturbing detal, and often gets triggered when I visit beaches. From 2017-2019 I was full-time activist, campaigning alongside grassroots communities, in unofficial roles working with volunteers, where there were no systems of protection in place. An older male activist developed an obsession with me. It didn’t take much effort scrolling through the photos on his Facebook profile, half of which were of me, for anyone to realise he had an unhealthy fixation. He began following me around at events like he was a possessed dog, usually drunk with a bottle of coke, half of which was made up of vodka. You could smell the booze on him. He was known to be unreliable by other activists, as he would regularly disappear to go to the pub. Wherever we were, in a venue, on the train, at a demonstration, he would always try to stand or sit as close to me as possible. Then he started putting his hands on my bare legs and pressing himself into me. If I arrived at an event he would greet me by grabbing both my arms and kissing me on the lips. When I took my dog to events, he would take her lead and refuse to give her back to me. when I first told others what was happening and asked them to act to protect me, I was told that they couldn’t do anything because he was “alcoholic and emotionally vulnerable”. I was so terrified of him turning up, I started avoiding events where I knew he would be there. In 2020, he died of cancer, and I am not ashamed to admit I felt relieved. Sadly, he was not the only one. I’ve been harassed innumerable times online and in person. The worst incident was an older man sending me messages that he dreamed of marrying me and having children. He then found out my address online and started sending “gifts” and postcards to me in the post. I was terrified he would turn up at my house and I nearly called the police, but I did not – I didn’t think they could do anything to help and it would be more hassle than it was worth. He was also an alcoholic and has since died from his addiction. I have also experienced older men in positions of power behaving inappropriately towards me. One such individual, used to proclaim that he loved me when I encountered him at events and kiss me on the lips. I tried on a number of occasions to propose collaborations with his campaigning organisation but was fobbed off onto a junior member of staff and given minimal support and no promotion of the research booklet I produced – he clearly didn’t “love” me that much. I later found out that he was an old school chum of Boris Johnson when he was one of 30 attendees at his Covid-era wedding party. Another time, a privileged, white man and emeritus professor of philosophy who is regularly interviewed on radio 4 and somebody I looked up to and respected, deeply disappointed me by defending sexual harassment and mysoginist behaviour. He advised me to stop calling out incidents of street harassment on social media because it was “instinctive male behaviour” which is “to be expected” and I should “take it as a compliment” because I am an attractive young woman. I was incredulous and disgusted that someone who was so intelligent could be legitimising and condoning this sort of behaviour. But maybe I was naïve to have thought otherwise – I lost all respect for him after that conversation. But sadly, this is not a lone opinion, I have had both men and women who comment on my posts telling me that I should take harassment as “a compliment” and be “grateful” for the attention, or told that my actions in calling out abuse was “stopping their sons from getting a girlfriend”. I frequently get accused of lying and “attention seeking” for calling out incidents when they occur. There have also been incidents of people unfollowing myself and other female activists for speaking out about their experiences of sexual harassment, with a Victorian-era “women should been seen and not heard” mentality resulting in the silencing of those “outspoken women”. Personally, I have been called misogynistic insults, such as, “Prima Donna”, “Little Madam”, “Attention seeker”, “spoilt brat” and “self-publicist” by fellow campaigners, for the crime of making my voice heard above the crowd. Whereas I have witnessed male activists applauded for making virtue signalling tweets and posts about gender equality, when in reality, they have neglected opportunities to platform or support their female counterparts in any meaningful way and engaged in sexually predatory behaviour themselves. When women speak out and campaign against sexual harassment, online or in public spaces, we are demanding one thing: that we are treated with the respect we deserve. I’ve also received all manner of lewd DMs and comments on my posts, including rape threats and misogynistic trolling. One article published by Guid Fawkes (an alt-right blog) titled ‘EU Supergirl’s Randy Sugar Daddy’ which insinuated I was prostituting myself for crowdfunder donations, led to a spate of trolls calling me a “sex doll” and accusing me of prostitution. I have also had men on Twitter, mocking me for a congenital eye condition (Duane’s Syndrome) speculating about how they would like to “bend it in to [me]” another one responding that they wouldn’t be able to perform unless I closed my “skelly eyes”. During my tour of the EU27 in 2019 (funded by a ‘Democracy Needs Imagination’ grant from the European Cultural foundation), I experienced street harassment in all but one country (Sweden, where I was visited for less than 24 hours). From groups of men shouting hello across the road to wolf whistling and swearing at me, the constant nature of the macho behaviour wore me down: It made me feel singled-out, isolated, intimidated, self-conscious, anxious and fearful as I travelled alone. At the time (November 2019), I had a self-proclaimed “feminist rant” about the issue after a particularly horrific experience in Greece, and I was shocked by the response it received (193 comments on the original post – mostly from women sharing similar stories or men expressing their despair that this behaviour still occurs in the 21st century) – this helped me feel validated and not personally to blame. In my blog post I wrote, ‘I in no way want to single out Greece here, as the inherent societal misogyny which leads men to believe they are somehow entitled to sexually harass women in the streets is endemic across Europe. Ljubljana, Brussels and Frankfurt have also been especially bad in my personal experience, but Athens has been notably worse than anything I have endure before: More persistent, more aggressive and more frequent. In addition to the standard level of cat-calling and wolf-whistling that I anticipate everywhere; “Hello miss, how are you?”, “Hey! You! Hey! You! Listen to me! Hey! You’re beautiful!”, “Slow down sexy!”, etc. etc. I also had 3 particularly unpleasant experiences in less than 48 hours: Firstly, a guy following me down a road, for a good few minutes, walking by my side and constantly pestering me “Hello! Where are you going?” Etc. The second, a man stopping in the street looking me up and down and saying, “Oh God. Oh shit.” Thirdly, a man leering extremely close to my face and blowing kisses at me. I’ve also had comments shouted at me in at least 3 languages (English, French and Greek). When I have met people on my travels and I’ve told them I am travelling alone, they have expressed genuine shock at the prospect of a young woman travelling solo across Europe. Likewise: I’ve had numerous emails/messages from women telling me they think I am “brave” for travelling on my own and (this is the worst thing) also saying they would be too scared to travel alone. Perhaps I am “brave”, or perhaps stupid, maybe I’m just determined to live my dreams and deliver on my project for the European Cultural Foundation: which involves sitting in the streets of all 28 capital cities in the EU countries. And I will continue to sketch the beauty of Europe regardless of unwanted attention from guys. But it pisses me off that it changes my behaviour & stops other women from living freely. Nothing terrible has happened on my travels but the threat and associated fear of this constant street harassment is very real. I have been assaulted in the past: by a naked man, whilst sketching on a beach alone, aged 14. The memory of this trauma is always on the back of my mind when I am accosted in the streets by men. And as a woman, I hate the thought that other women, their fathers, brothers, partners, friends, etc. fear them travelling alone. So I implore them not to let it stop them living their lives – and show, by example, that a woman can be fearless in the face of this situation… But I will tell you the truth of how it makes you feel deep down; Scared, intimidated, angry, vulnerable, guilty and self-conscious. It’s not a compliment. It’s not acceptable. And it has to stop. I for one am sick of it.’ This is not just an issue which affects European countries, I have experiences incidents of street harassment across the UK. In my home city of Sheffield, walking to an open mic night during daylight hours, a drunk man made a lewd comment about my guitar and grabbed my arm. In Oxford, I sat sketching on a bench on a sunny afternoon, in a busy public space. A man sat next to me, slowly edging closer to me, he then began rolling a spliff on the bench and touched my bare thigh. Whilst out jogging, i’ve had all manner of things yelled at me from men in cars. One man pulled up next to me, told me he had seen me out running locally with my dog (who I didn’t have with me at the time) and asked me for my number, like I was a drive-by pick up, taking advantage of an opportunity when I didn’t have a large Alsation to protect me. I am eternally grateful to my dog, who can smell alcohol/drugs, for barking aggressively at men who have approached me, but I shouldn’t need a large dog with me to feel safe on the streets. Women should be allowed to walk home without fearing for their lives. This should be a basic right in any decent society. And women shouldn’t be victim blamed for male violence, as I have been. “What were you wearing?”, “I told you not to go out alone.” Etc. Women should not be punished and restricted by the actions of men. We should be allowed to sketch on the beach if we want, we should be allowed to wear whatever clothes and make-up we like without worrying about the unwanted attention we will receive, we should be allowed to travel without a chaperone, we should have the right to walk home without being attacked. I thought this behaviour was only directed at me because I was a lone female. But on a holiday in the UK with my boyfriend, I still experienced a number of incidents of men shouting at me as they drove or walked past, and a man looking me up and down then telling my boyfriend that he’s “a very lucky guy”. Which could have been interpreted as a compliment, except that being objectified isn’t really a compliment. In the fight against street harassment and sexual violence, we need men to take women’s side. And men need to listen and understand the situation from the woman’s perspective, and act to remediate the inequality. It’s not good enough to sit back and say “well I’ve never behaved like this myself” – we need your help and support. The men who respond with the comment “NOT ALL MEN” are contributing to the problem in the same way that the “ALL LIVES MATTER” brigade contribute to racial inequality. Women face this constant abuse and harassment, living their lives in fear and anxiety, suffering the consequences of systemic gender inequality from birth, and are then accused by a mysoginistic culture of being “weak”, “fragile”, “lesser beings” than men. Men need to gain more awareness of their privilege and take action to address gender inequality which still proliferates throughout our patriarchal society. If home is somewhere you feel safe and secure, my country certainly doesn’t feel like a place that I can call home. But then I wonder where in the world does feel safe for women and girls?
