As of writing this post I am sat in bed, it’s a Thursday morning, and I have realised that my life has been so hectic that I haven’t posted in nearly a month.
The chaos of 2021 as reared its head as I realise just how much I’ve been juggling, though it is worth mentioning that buying my first house, and starting a new job next week is A LOT. As much as I can say it has been smooth sailing so far, it has still be stressful!
As much as i have been avoiding the majority of the news lately to decrease the abovementioned stress, one thing that really stood out to me was everything regarding the murder of Sarah Everard. Wayne Couzens, a Metropolitan police officer, has been charged with her murder, and this news has been covered by the press every day (and so it should be). The handling of her case has been questionable, the vigils that the public wanted to hold last week were grossly mishandled by police, and the misogynistic posts under Facebook news articles surrounding the case highlight that there’s still an issue of inequality in Western society. It’s surprising how many men want to make this about something entirely different “but not all men…”, or “women do this to women too”. The issue isn’t a blame game, it’s a societal failure, but it’s more than that…
The issue is that The World Health Organization this week published a report saying one in three women globally (around 736 million women) have been subject to physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. The issue is that in the UK alone, among women aged 18-24, 97% said they had been sexually harassed, while 80% of women of all aged said they have been sexually harassed in public spaces. The issue is that also in the UK 52% of women have experienced sexual harassment at work, and of the one in five who had reported it, three-quarters said nothing had changed, while 16% said they were treated worse as a result.
As a teenager, I thought it was normal to be messaged by random men on social media talking about my body and looks. I still get unwarranted comments to this day. I’ve been catcalled both in my car, and on the street several times by men, even as recently as about 6 months ago by 2 men in their van. I thought it was normal that on numerous occasions when I’m walking on my own, I’ve had my hands in my pocket holding my keys as some kind of protection. The amount of times I’ve been told it’s “lad culture” when I’ve been groped unsolicited in the nightclub during my time at university. The stories I heard from friends at university about their sexual assaults and harassments, as well as the several times I got in-between a man and an intoxicated friend who couldn’t give consent to go home with him. I am fed up of it. I am fed up with the excuses, and I am especially fed up with the people who see how their misogynistic friend is acting, but don’t think to call them out on it because “friendship” or “he is like a brother to me”.
The only other things I think I can write at this point are some graphs from the sources I used that further illustrate my point.
I hope this post has been insightful. As this post suggests, this is about women- but I am aware that there are other groups where these stats show even worse statistics, especially when talking about harassment and violence towards the LGBTQA+ communities and the Black community too. As I mentioned before, it is a societal failure, and we need to do better.
Constantly Beth 
This is gross. It indeed is a society failure. And Dear Constantly, it is not normal to be constantly catcalled by male. It is not normal to recieve lewd stares and inappropriate talks about your own body. You have to talk it down, and “make your moderation known.”
We really do need to create a better society, and it has to begin with us. You and I.
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