Male Violence. The stunning shock of really seeing it
The whole story is awful indeed. We know it without even having had to read it. Woman walking alone is accosted by a violent male and abducted. Later her remains turn up in a wood. Or a garden. Or a lake. How many times before, how many times again? Our posturing government, which has decimated funding for women's refuges and for the rehabilitation for violent sex offenders, whose party has overseen a cut of 14% in police numbers in a decade and which took no effective action when a senior MP was filmed brutally manhandling a female protestor at a dinner, which instinctively rushes to crush the right to protest about anything faster than it ever sees an obligation to tackle the issues that make people want to protest in the first place, is now waiting to frame its populist stance on the issue. The right-wing, sexist national newspapers, currently bathing in faux-concern-for-money over Sarah's murder, will set the tone.
And we will likely be left with what we are always left with. A story fading and women left to carry on, clutching our keys on the way home, thinking about the better lit and busier road even if it means a detour, listening to the footsteps behind and wondering how far away they are, and whether they have been there for long.
These kinds of experiences are mine too, whenever I have to be out at night. And yet it wasn't always quite thus. As a trans woman, I do remember the shock of these things experienced for the first time - after I transitioned over a decade ago and found some peace in living my life authentically. I realised quickly that prior to my transition, my visible appearance as a male had inoculated me from the sorts of encounters that other women have grown up with. I see it now.
In that previous, now strange life, being out at night alone was of course not entirely risk-free. Walking home at closing time, I'd scan my surroundings, identify individuals who looked threatening, and perhaps cross the road. Do men do this routinely? I don't know. My motivation was simple enough. I didn't want anyone to tangle with me, I didn't want any hassle. I could do without it.
Yes, there was some anxiety involved from time to time. But I didn't think much about being violently assaulted, of being overwhelmed by force in a frenzy of entitled violence. I didn't think about being pushed into a car, or being raped, or even murdered.
That changed after I transitioned. Luckily for me, it hasn't resulted in physical violence to date, but the experience of male anger when it happens now is profoundly different from what I saw before.
I think of an incident, a few years ago. I had stopped at a North London petrol station to get a coffee and some odds and ends. Coming out of the shop I noticed a young man theatrically inspecting his car in the parking bay next to mine. It seemed that he suspected me of having touched his car with the edge of my door as I had got out and was now involved in a forensic examination of it. In a white open-necked shirt and dark trousers, he looked like some sort of junior professional. The kind of 25 year old you might find doing a junior job at an estate agent or in a mobile phone store. Yet he exuded real menace. He turned to look at me and snarlingly accused me of damaging his car. I was instantly and unmistakeably very frightened. I denied that I had scratched his car - because I hadn't. He was boiling with cold rage. There was just no restraint in his voice or demeanour.
And then the clincher. He accused me of not treating him "with respect" in a voice about as full of hate as I have ever heard and I knew, just knew, that the very next step was him physically attacking me. Luckily, shielded by my car, I could rapidly get in, start the engine and leave, before he could take it further.
More recently, another incident comes to mind. Perhaps milder but also shocking in its randomness. A workman doing some kitchen work in my house was refusing to wear a mask. This amidst climbing numbers and the Second Wave of the pandemic. Rather timidly, and feigning a joke so his ego wouldn't feel threatened, I gently hinted that he might put it on. I simply wasn't prepared for the mouthful that came my way immediately. Full force and unmistakable. I had tried to take power over him. He wasn't going to be told what to do by me. I should have sacked him on the spot of course. But a new kitchen was lying all around us, in bits, uninstalled. I am a woman. My partner is a woman. He knew where we lived (show me the man to whom that issue would even occur?). He didn't calm down in the ten seconds I devoted to trying to mollify him. I was scared and just backed off. For the rest of the week, my girlfriend had to deal with him. I couldn't go into my own kitchen when he was in there.
Two nights ago I answered the door to a man whose attempts to sell me something were both ludicrous and incomprehensible. I shut the door on him. His anger and invective exploded out of the blue. I knew that he wouldn't have spoken to a man in that way. Too much risk. He'd been drinking and in his state, a man, especially a young one, could easily have walked straight out and punched him. Frightened, once he had gone, I spent the next 30 minutes re-fixing the security light. I was just glad I was inside my home and he was outside it.
In each case, it was the instantaneous torrent of rage that was shocking. No restraint, no overture, no attempt at self-control. Having run into male anger from 'both sides' now (though my previous life sometimes felt like being raised by wolves), the character of this experience feels entirely different now. Previously, male-on-male threat seemed to have more of the character of an unfolding dance of menace. It had stages. The challenge. The assessment of the opponent. The posturing. The sizing-up. The escalation, or the withdrawal.
In fact, very angry men often simply do not talk to other men as they might do to women. Or if they do, the process by which they get to this state in male on male violence make perhaps take longer. The assumption of superiority based on a knowledge somewhere deep down, that they could deploy violence to prevail pretty much every time, means that the need to evaluate their chances of failure in an encounter with a woman can often be set aside. In short, male rage and violence can be instant if deployed towards a woman, in a way that feels rarer when tangling with another man. Could I have him? they'll ask themselves. Yet in a similar situation, facing a woman, none of that comes up. Could I have her? they'll ask. For some, in that split second, the answer is Yes. Obviously. And 'have her', can mean something else of course too. Knowing this means that there need be no holding back, few or no preliminaries. Their unchallenged rage is their right.
Not all men. It's not preinstalled. Some have gotten in touch with these processes. But for many men, alas, it's somewhere deep and unexamined. You can see it in their language when they get angry. In a contempt that seems peculiar and only reserved for the woman, but not for the male whose presence is seen as competition. Ultimately, it's in the unacknowledged status of being able to call upon levels of menace and violence without restraint when the emotionally triggering moment unleashes it. And I'm not even talking about psychopaths.
I could offer other examples, many could. And sadly, many many women could offer much much worse. No-one's physically attacked me. Though I have friends who have been attacked and raped. Like other women, I self-police by trying not to look vulnerable on the street, an experience few men ever think about. Once, a few years ago, when I was working late in a city centre, a man came out of nowhere and walked alongside me, making advances, all the way to my hotel. I tried to shake him off, ignoring him, then humouring him. I had no idea what I was going to do, other than get into my hotel, tell the concierge and get to my room as fast as I could. Luckily he didn't follow me into the lobby. All the way back to my room I had two thoughts. How do I get away from this man and Don't make him angry.
The media will soon tire of Sarah Everard's story, sadly. Other women have died even since she did and have not been judged as click-worthy by the cynical British press. Murdered women of colour rarely get the same prominence as attractive white women. Violence towards trans women is entirely ignored (RIP Amy Griffiths whose name and picture appeared on no national front pages and whose name was not read out in Parliament by an MP commemorating the deaths of women in the year past). Once this tragedy has been editorially exploited, developed, refreshed and fully monetised, the press circus will move on, leaving behind the familiar wreckage of a broken family. And, sadly, millions of men are still very likely ignoring the entire thing, thinking it has nothing to do with them at all.
Image: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/when-girl-walks-alone-night
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