Friday 12 March 2021
The Toilet Roll Archives (24): I don't wear a ponytail when I go for a run.
I had the urge to post this earlier this week but I held back. Other people were articulating how they felt on Twitter so well, I thought I would just wait it out a bit. But then I woke up to discover a Met police officer had been arrested in connection with your disappearance – and later that day found out on what charges. And then I learned human remains had been found out in Kent somewhere, and they've been confirmed as yours, and as of 47 minutes ago that said-mentioned Met police officer has been charged with your murder, and now I have that overwhelming tingly restlessness I get in my fingers to get some words out, any words out. I don’t know whether I’ll end up posting it or not. I might delete it later, like I have done with pretty much all my tweets this week.
I think the connection I’ve felt between myself and other
women this week is deeper than I have ever felt before. There is this
collective anger and surge of sorrow. I’ve kept pretty quiet and just watched
stories unfold; stories of hyper-consciousness, stories of engrained awareness,
of lessons in school on ‘staying safe.’ And how we have all just accepted it
our entire lives. It’s so weird. It’s standard behavioural procedure. Because “it’s
just the way it has to be.”
We all share live locations. We all hold our keys between
our fingers. We all make the fake phone calls. We all run down the street in the
dark. We all look for the nearest door. We all have sat behind the
driver. We all have theorised our escape routes.
“Text me when u get home xo” – autopilot.
We’re all grieving your pointless death. We know it could
have easily been any one of us. And we know the narrative on “doing better” and "lessons learned" will continue to play on the TVs and phones of all the women in Clapham who have
been advised to “stay indoors” by local police. And yet again, sexual violence is
made a woman’s responsibility. Because we’ve been warned
countless times: don’t drink too much, don’t go to the bathroom alone, “stick
together, girls!” Because your mother knows the threat too. She’s felt it like
hot breath on the back of her neck too. She’s held her key between her fingers
too. She's faked a phone call too. She’s tried to stop her worst nightmare, which will no doubt become your
own worst nightmare, from becoming your reality. So the nightmares become warnings.
But the warnings become headlines and press cuts and stories whispered between
the mums down the street.
We all know that the headlines about the abductions of women are rare, that the rape and sexual attacks on women we sometimes hear
about on the news are usually perpetrated by men already known to her. We
know the statistics. And statistics should help distance the threat all the
more; they should ground things and give them that factual edge everyone seems
to like and trust.
But statistics make things that bit more real, that bit more familiar. It’s all you know. It’s just life. It is what is is. We deal with it: like periods, or pay gaps, or being killed twice weekly by a male partner. It is just what we know life to be so we just get on with it, and protect ourselves and each other: “Text me when u get home xo” – autopilot.
It’s #notallmen. But it is 97% of women. And this is where it
starts: the very threat of it being #notallmen. Because, you're right, it isn’t,
but it has to be someone; the ambiguity is the threat, and the threat is a blanket
as thick as the night. When there aren’t many people in the station. When you know
someone is walking behind you and you can’t turn round to look. When it’s 8pm
and it is dark and you have to go under the railway bridge. When it is 8am and
it is broad daylight and the man on the District line with the sweaty,
moustache-coated upper lip continually grazes his hand too close to your thigh
for it to be an accident.
And then you disappeared in the middle of a pandemic (Happy 1
Year Anniversary huns xo) when going out for walks seems to be our saving grace,
and we mourn for yet another woman we have never met but we still knew in some
way because she was both one of us and all of us.
I also would like to say that we need to think about the ways in which we respond to young, white middle class women when they go missing, and how we address women of other races, classes and ages when they go missing. The conversation must have its moment beyond #BLM. I have plenty of thoughts, but I don’t quite have the words just yet. That conversation requires a post of its own.
I wonder how many ways in which men can say "not all men?" "Maybe she was drunk?" "Maybe she was wearing a skirt?" "Maybe she shouldn't be walking home alone at night?"
Maybe men should simply stop assaulting women?
