A Woman's Memoir

It was my turn to walk the dog. Bailey was pulling on his lead, almost running me off my feet as he tried to race ahead to where he could run free. I walked down the steps at the end of my street, along the road until I passed the lane that would lead to my auntie’s house. I smiled at my childhood friend’s grandpa sitting in his garden, unsure if he remembered me or thought I was just being polite. Across the road behind their house, and then through the woods that used to be untameable but now had a gravel path. Into the clearing in the middle where we had played football as kids. The paths around and through the clearing had become a track for kids to ride their bikes, a walk for people with dogs and prams, and from the look of the litter on the ground, a hangout for teenagers to drink while they hid from their parents. I let Bailey run around for a while, trying to tire him out in the hopes that he would be more relaxed later in the evening. I wasn’t long home from school, and having no homework to do that night, I was desperately looking forward to reading or watching TV until it was time for dinner. As it started to get dark, I called for Bailey and put him back on the lead. I don’t remember what I was thinking about as we made our way home, back through the familiar streets. Probably about something that had happened at school that day, or a boy I liked, or maybe just the latest plotline in whatever show my family was watching.
As I was approaching the steps, I didn’t notice the strange man standing at the top of them. If I had spotted him sooner, I would have walked straight on and entered from the other side of the street. I didn’t see him until I was about to cross the road, and by that point, it would have been too obvious if I had changed directions. I felt like his eyes were following me as I walked towards him, keeping my head down and trying not to draw too much attention to myself. I could smell the smoke from his cigarettes, and I saw the beer can that he had sat on the wall in front of him. I kept my hands clasped around my house keys in my pocket, remembering that old trick I had read about using them for self-defence. I didn’t know then that it’s apparently not a very effective method. I was too aware of his presence, every step taking me closer to him. I kept waiting for him to acknowledge me, say something, move somehow. But he didn’t. Finally, as I got level with him, he grunted something in my direction, something barely coherent and completely forgettable. I tried not to flinch. I think I managed. I wanted nothing more than to disappear into thin air. I wished I had walked a different route, walked the long way round the back of the street. I kept checking over my shoulder as I got closer to my house, but he was never there. I felt ridiculous, making myself paranoid over nothing. Still, I made sure to lock the door behind me. I didn’t tell my parents; sure that they would think that I was being silly. Even though I had known enough to be uncomfortable, I didn’t know enough yet to understand that those feelings were valid. I was only thirteen.
I was lucky. Nothing bad happened to me that day. The strange man at the top of the steps was just a strange man. Maybe he had been sent outside to smoke and decided to go for a walk instead of staying in the garden. Maybe he was finishing a beer and having a cigarette while he waited for his lift home. I don’t know why he was there, but it probably had nothing to do with me. Unfortunately, a lot of women aren’t so lucky. We were taught about stranger danger in school, told to be careful around people we didn’t know, and told to speak to a trusted adult if something happened that we weren’t comfortable with. The whole class was taught that adults can’t always be trusted. That there are good people and bad people. What sticks out to me now though, is that all the examples of bad people seemed to be men. In all the videos, all the stories, the kids told a trusted adult woman about the scary, strange man who was following them. We thought it would be easy to tell them who was good and bad. Or at least I thought so. But you never really know. That became more and more obvious the older I got. I wasn’t in any danger that day. But there was no way for me to know that. The older I’ve gotten and the more I’ve been out in the world, the harder it gets to differentiate between safe and unsafe. The group of lads walking towards you on the street might just pass by you on their way to the shops. Or they might yell something vulgar. The old man that you have to smile at in your customer service job could just be having trouble hearing you and needs to stare so he can try to read your lips. Maybe the guy who sits next to you on the bus has a sore leg and didn’t want to walk further back to the empty seats. The trouble is there’s no way to know for sure. And then if you lean the wrong direction, there are consequences for that too. If we err on the side of caution and the man turns out to be perfectly nice, we’re often called judgemental, paranoid, and most commonly, bitches. But if we aren’t cautious, our lives could be at risk. The older we get, the more often women are told to be cautious, to take care of ourselves, to make sure we’re safe. They don’t teach the boys not to harass us. We have to have a checklist before we go anywhere. Are we with a group? How late will we be out? Are we going to be alone after dark? Are our phones fully charged? How are we dressed? The checklist for boys leaving the house is just a pocket check for phones, wallets, and keys.
I used to think it was just about being sensible. Keeping track of your own drink in pubs and clubs. Not walking alone in unlit areas. Having a friend or relative know where you’re going and when. Texting people to let them know you got home safe. I was seventeen the first time one of my friends was spiked. It was a girl named Hayley that I knew from work, and she didn’t make it into her Sunday shift because she was in A&E with her parents. She was lucky that got home safe and had people to take care of her. That the friends that she went out with didn’t leave her side, got a taxi home with her and told her parents what had happened. That her parents acted quickly, took her to the hospital to test for drugs and stayed while Hayley was treated. She was lucky that she had a good ending to that story. There are a lot of ways that story could have ended badly. I was ten when my sister stayed at her friend’s flat after a night out and was beaten for trying to intervene in a fight between the girl and her boyfriend. He broke my sister’s cheekbone. Her friend stayed with him. Jessica was lucky that she wasn’t hurt worse. Lucky that our parents picked up the phone in the middle of the night and came to get her. In my third year of university there was a surge in spiking happening in Edinburgh clubs, which led to tips circling online telling women how to protect themselves. My classmates were discussing in a group chat which, if any, self-defence weapons were legal for us to carry. That same year, a girl I went to a musical theatre group with was telling us about how the night before, she had taken care of a girl outside a club who was blacked out drunk and surrounded by a group of guys claiming she was fine. One claimed to be her boyfriend. But when Millie asked him to see a photo of the two together, he didn’t have one. Maybe he really was her boyfriend and wanted to get her home safely. Maybe his phone had died so he couldn’t show proof. Maybe he was just a guy who had met a drunk girl and wanted to go home with her. Too many maybes. Millie missed her uber home to stay and make sure that police and an ambulance arrived to protect a girl who couldn’t protect herself. That girl was lucky Millie stepped in. Somewhere along the road it stopped being sensible and became about luck. Luck that we can’t control. Luck that is entirely about how a man chooses to interact with us. Luck that completely ignores the girl who isn’t so lucky around the same man. We shouldn’t have to be lucky to be safe. Because luck runs out all too easily.
I remember too often being uncomfortable or feeling unsafe around men. I remember hearing stories from my friends about the same things. Tips and tricks for staying safe constantly being passed around school, around work, being shared on social media. Women being encouraged to look out for other women, to keep each other safe. I don’t remember enough being said to men. Men aren’t told to keep women safe from other men. Men aren’t taught ways to appear less threatening, or how to make clear they’re one of the good ones. We’re just supposed to know they aren’t a danger to us. When the loudest comments from men are the ones calling women liars, shouting #NotAllMen over the voices of women, the genuinely good men are too often drowned out. Because there are good men. Probably more good men than there are bad ones. But you only ever hear about the bad ones. And we know it isn’t all men, but we also know that it is all women, that every woman I know has a story like this. Some are like mine, lucky to have only been uncomfortable but some are so much worse. Some don’t live to tell their story. I wish I didn’t have to remember it all. It would be nice to be able to walk from the library to my boyfriend’s flat at night without phoning my mum for half an hour. Or to wear earphones on a late tram home from town. It would be nice not to feel guilty about my flatmates meeting me at the tram stop and walking home with me. The endless safety tips, the horror stories of what could happen, mine and my friend’s first-hand experiences. Sometimes it’s exhausting to remember things.