As girls, we collect rites of passages like badges — the inevitable events which raise us into the women we will one day become, pinned all bright and shining across sashes. The first crush. The first boy to pull our pigtails or push us into the mud. The first adult to tell us that boys are only mean to us if they like us. The first bra we buy. The first sex joke we’re meant to take as a compliment. The first romance. The first slut shame. The first ‘text me when you get home safe’. The first cat call. The first grope. The first kiss. The first assault.
We don’t stop collecting. We watch our experiences grow, watch how they shape us, how they harden our exteriors, and think “ah, so this is what it means to be a woman.” We go through life with keys for knuckles and a constant, deep-rooted fear for our safety, and then some guy tells us that “we don’t even need feminism anymore!” It’s an ingenious, never-heard-before take.
I have always understood my place in society, that the world would always view me as a woman before all else. A sum of all my parts before I could be myself. According to Plan International Australia, 90% of 500 female participants aged 18-25 in Sydney had been harassed, catcalled, followed, leered at or groped on the streets. For so many, it begins at childhood. I was ten years old in a striped dress and thick black stockings the first time I saw men staring, and they haven’t stopped since.
As women, the first lessons we learn are about distrust and safety, taught by the experiences of mothers and sisters and friends. Our mothers teach us what clothes to wear, what will attract the least attention, muted colours and ornas to cover our chests. We’re taught to be home before dark, to not be too friendly with men.
They don’t teach you that as a woman, you are more likely to experience sexual violence at the hands of someone you know — maybe even trust — rather than a stranger. According to the ABS, “20% of women aged 18 years and over have experienced sexual violence by a male perpetrator who was a known person.” Instead, they teach us how to slowly move away from an uncles too friendly of a touch without offending him. They don’t tell you that it is not enough to hide yourself away, because the monsters will still find you in the dark.
Our sisters teach us how to see danger before he approaches you, how many drinks you can have before you become prey, how to smile and flirt as you reject someone, so they won’t get angry. Not too much, of course, so they don’t follow you home. They sit around with you after the first time you are slut shamed or groped, and they tell you their stories (and they always have stories – it’s a rite of passage, after all).
Your friends and you learn together simultaneously, how to read each other’s eyes for fear, how to pull each other away from men who get too touchy on the dancefloor, how to sit with each other after its still was not enough to protect each other and someone’s hands wandered further than it should have. We take our turns laying our horror stories on the dinner table before ordering dessert. Nothing feels more like girlhood than sitting around and trading stories of all the ways men have harmed you.
Our survival and safety rests on ensuring we keep men happy. It’s the hardest lesson a woman learns — no matter all your efforts, all your protections and all your modesty, your safety is never in your own hands. Harassment and assault are always motivated by the desire for power, control and a sense of superiority over women. It stems from the belief that respecting women must be beneath a man, that making another person feel weak and vulnerable and scared is a show of masculinity. Not only is it enabled between guys, but it is encouraged and celebrated — you receive a clap on the back for every girl you bag, throw around abusive and insulting language with your trusted circle of friends, stay quiet as you watch your mate treat a woman with disrespect or harassment or even assault in the name of ‘loyalty’.
I remember the other day I had thought to myself that I was so incredibly privileged to have a partner who respects my boundaries and consent. I was standing at the sink, hands washed, with droplets of water dripping slowly onto the porcelain. The soap had slunk down the drain. The tap was still running, and there I was: a proud feminist, musing on the bare minimum of my boundaries being respected, my voice not only heard, but listened to, thinking, shouldn’t we have bigger wars to fight by now?
But we were raised to accept crossed boundaries, to take an assault like a tap to the wrist rather than a violation of our rights. We are told it is not a gender issue when we are told to add a layer or clothing to avert the eyes of family friends who are never held accountable, or when we cannot even walk down a street without the eyes of men crawling up our legs. We are told it is not a gender issue to wonder if you will make it home safe that night, if at all. When our women are on every news headline – a new case of rape, a new case of femicide – everyone is outraged. How could we let this happen, they ask? But these outraged men are the same boys who whistle out to girls from their cars. The same boys who call girls bitches and sluts just because they can. The same boys who let their hands wander after being told no. The same boys who say nothing, who look away from the problem, and never hold their mates or themselves accountable. They are the same boys who make up the 97% of sexual assault offenders, the boys that reflect the statistic that 26% of men actually admit to committing an act of violence in adulthood. The same boys who tell us that we don’t need feminism anymore.
Instead we are told it is our fault, the way we dress, the way we smile, the way we tempt boys and lead them on, the way we simply exist in the presence of men. We’re told to take the compliment, if they grab us by the tits that means they like us. No one ever told those boys in the playground that you don’t show a girl you like her by shoving her down and pulling on her pigtails until she gives into you. We have been fighting for the same tired fight: the right to exist safely.
