But Which Men?

One thing I’ve noticed over the last few days, as we hear the awful news about Sarah Everard, is that we have an ingrained narrative that we all accept and go along with; that women are more vulnerable and that violence against them is normal, there’s an unspoken assumption that we all take action when out alone at night, and we adapt our behaviour and clothing because this is just how it is.

I joke on here about pockets and mansplaining, and I complain about being talked over by men in meetings only to have our previously ignored ideas presented as their own to huge applause, and we roll our eyes at the widespread misogyny on social media and the double standards, and all of these things are bad, but the fact is we regularly do not feel safe and this shouldn’t be how it is.

We’re at the stage now where women on social media are swapping tips on keeping safe, that’s how bad it is, women feel they have to manage this by themselves because it’s just not taken seriously. So we share advice such as telling our female friends to message us when they get back safe (I don’t think I’ve ever done that with a male friend) because not every woman gets home safe, and choosing our shoes for a night out based on whether or not we can run in them if we need to.

We don’t wear our headphones while walking home and we keep our keys in our clenched fists. We run a risk assessment any time we turn into a different street at night, scanning for alleyways and bushes and doorways and street lights and cars with their engines running and men who look at you for just a second too long. The things that men take for granted are a whole other scenario for women. We just want to walk home. 

We’re told – Not All Men – which we get, we really do, but how are we supposed to know which men? Because from my experience, the bad ones don’t look like bad men, they are the men you work with or live near (often with) or, as we’ve seen this week, they’re the very men who are supposed to be protecting us. So while we don’t want to treat every man like he’s a potential attacker, we also kind of need to.

And while it’s great that men are asking for advice about what they can do to make sure women don’t feel threatened when they’re walking behind them on a dark night, it also feels a bit exhausting, yet another thing we have to do to make sure the men feel ok about this. Publicly asking on Twitter shows what a top bloke you are but seriously, it’s not rocket science, just use your common sense. And then do something that doesn’t just feel like a token gesture to make you feel like you’re doing something, the equivalent of dropping a fiver into a charity bucket on Red Nose Day then forgetting about it for the rest of the year. Call other men out for their bad behaviour, stand up for women, and don’t laugh along with those derogatory ‘oh, you women…’ comments and jokes and Karen memes that are only a bit of fun but perpetuate the idea that women aren’t quite as good as men.

I know there are just as many men outraged by this, I can see that but I can’t help feeling that this is selective outrage. Would there be this much outrage if the victim hadn’t been a young attractive white woman? Would the conversation be different if she’d been drunk? Homeless? If she was in a mini skirt and crop top instead of a bobble hat? Are you sure? Not just a little bit of judgement? A tiny hint of well she should have known and what was she expecting? Because we seemed to have developed into a society that makes women responsible for men’s actions. Men have more power than women, until it comes to their ‘urges’ in which case women are suddenly in control.

Because whatever we do, we must not provoke them, or make them cross, or make them sad, or turn them down too harshly or inflame them or offend them. Men’s feelings are the priority and are pretty damn fragile. Even when complaining about this we have to add a disclaimer and we’re constantly reminded that it’s not all men. We must not upset the men. Especially if you are threatened, you need to keep them calm, placate them, don’t anger them, you need to protect yourself. Any woman who has been threatened or attacked is invariably asked why they didn’t fight back, again with an element of barely disguised blame. 

But why didn’t you shout out? Why did you just stand there while he tried to kiss you while sliding his hand up your top? Because when you’re faced with someone who is physically bigger and stronger than you, who is quite clearly volatile and ‘worked up’, your survival instincts kick in. And even now I’m justifying female behaviour. Women are just collateral damage of a really messed up society that automatically blames its female victims.

We’re coming at this from the wrong angle, tiptoeing around the main issue, because of course we can tell men how we need them to behave when they’re walking behind us at night, but this is just scratching the surface. (Also, I’m wary of this advice to men because I once had someone walking behind me, shouting at me to not be so paranoid and assume he was a rapist because he was just being friendly and all he wanted was a smile, no need to be a c*nt about it.)

It’s not just a case of us letting you know we got home safe, or checking on your female friends, it goes deeper than that, everything needs to change. We need to look at the roots of the inherent sexism and male privilege in our society and make changes right at the base of our major institutions because this stuff affects us every day, in every area of our lives.

When it gets to the point where 80% of women have been sexually harassed in a public place we maybe need to look at our public places as well as the people who frequent them. Every woman I know has a story, I don’t have to ask, I just know because it’s part of life, it’s factored into every walk home alone. It is our normal. How sad is it that we all have a story and nobody ever flinches.

I think that in a week where people are more outraged by a young woman speaking out about mental health than they were when they found out a man in a position of power and status was involved in a paedophile ring, we really need to have a word with ourselves about who we prioritise and protect in our society.

Think of your partner, your daughter, your sister, your mum, your friend, think of everything they are, everything they’ve ever been and everything they have yet to be, being reduced to the phrase ‘human remains’, just think about that for a minute and swallow your Not All Men hashtag and just listen to us.

Flash Fiction

Tomorrow (22nd June) is International Flash Fiction Day and to celebrate this I’m taking part in Flash Mob 2013, which is a kind of competition/blog carnival featuring writers from all around the world. You can read some here by clicking on the photograph of each writer.

Up until a year or so ago I didn’t really get flash fiction and it wasn’t something that appealed to me at all. I always have too much to say so there was no way I could narrow it down to 500 words, and especially not 100. I am regularly laughed at for the length of my texts. I ramble endlessly in my emails and when I was studying for a degree my tutor must have got bored with writing ‘try to be a bit more concise’ across the bottom of my essays, the ones that invariably laughed in the face of the word count.

But I read some I really liked in a book called Not So Perfect by Nik Perring and in a conversation with him he suggested I have a go, which I did. And I surprised myself by how much I liked it.

There’s something very pure and stripped back about flash fiction. One thing that often annoys me in fiction is the use of too many flowery adjectives and similes. It feels like it’s all fluff and air and no substance, like I’m being conned. A bit like eating a cheesy puff. Maybe that’s why I like both reading and writing flash fiction, the words are highlighted, every one matters and there’s nowhere to hide. You have to get to the point and there can’t be any fannying around. Some of the most powerful things I’ve read have been in less than 500 words.

It’s not for everybody and some people will never get it. Some people look down on it as an inferior form of writing, as people often look down on the short story as not as ‘proper’ as writing a novel. But with a novel you get time to develop characters and situations, in short stories/flash you don’t and that takes more skill, not less. For me, it’s all practice, it’s all part of the continuous process of finding my voice and discovering what I like to write about and how I like to write it. It’s a great procrastination ploy, a way of putting off getting on with The Novel for another day. It’s also a great way of getting over writer’s block. If I’m stuck and don’t know where to go next I try and write something short, something that doesn’t demand too much time, and it gets me back into writing again.

I also find it impossible to hear or see the words Flash Fiction without having this go through my head, from what is surely one of the best films ever.,and for that reason alone you should all go and read some right now.

H is for Hubris

This title is a bit tongue in cheek because I think you actually need to be pretty hubristic to use a word like hubris. People who regularly slip Greek and Latin words into everyday sentences are mostly doing it to prove how much cleverer than you are they are, and they need to just shut up. But I was stuck for a letter H.

Being a writer requires you to possess hugely contradicting qualities. On the one hand you need to be sensitive and emotionally aware; you need to be able to lay yourself open and bear your soul. On the other, you need to be thick skinned with an ego that you can bounce rocks off. It’s tough. You sit in your little garret, typing away day after day, nurturing your piece of art. Then suddenly you’re thrust out into the world, blinking in the daylight from under your messy hair, brushing the toast crumbs off your top while everyone examines you under a microscope. You need to be pretty self confident to do this. You’re exposed, everyone has an opinion. It’s like when you’re pregnant and suddenly everyone is touching your stomach. You don’t want them to touch you, or hurt you, but you still want them to tell you how fantastic your baby is.

However, there’s a fine line between self confidence and arrogance and I regularly see authors hurl themselves over this line with abandon, arms flailing wildly. I have to admit that a part of me wishes I had this cockiness, this thick skin. I wish I didn’t really care what people think. But then if I didn’t care about this kind of thing, about feelings etc, I’d probably wouldn’t be able to write. That’s what I tell myself anyway.

But I really hope I don’t turn into one of those writers. The writers who think they’re above it all. It’s often the writers who haven’t quite made it yet, but they’ve had enough attention to feel that they deserve to have made it. These are the same writers who hassle the agents (See the A is for Agent post). Their manuscript isn’t accepted? The agent/publisher must have been having a bad day. The rejection letter? That particular agent must secretly be a wannabe writer themselves and are just jealous, they’re obviously trying to keep all the good books off the market so that when they publish their book there will be no competition.

They argue with their proofreaders, who obviously don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t need suggestions, they don’t need advice, they’re above all that. They nod and smile and look like they’re taking it all in but inside they’re rehearsing their speech for when they win the Booker prize. They’ve written their book, they know it’s a masterpiece, their mum/wife/husband/dog has told them so, there’s no need to change anything about it. It is perfection.

Hubris tends to mean extreme arrogance and having an exaggerated view of your own abilities that blinds you to the truth. In Greek tragedies this often ended in that person’s ruin, and while I don’t want to see any arrogant writers end up being horribly mutilated by a bull, it is still quite satisfying to see them poke themselves in the eye a little bit with their lyre as they sadly retweet their latest rejection letter.