Women will always walk alone

Perhaps most disturbing about the abuses detailed — in the thousands — on the website Everyone’s Invited are not the specific details of each episode of sexual harassment, rape or social humiliation, but the fact that each incident is recalled with the same sad, defeated tone. Even aged 13 or 14, as so many of the students were when they were molested at a party, or slut-shamed by a group of older male students, or raped when they were blind drunk and incapable of moving, the girls seem resigned to the fact their trauma would go unnoticed. Invariably their stories were brushed away by others and they were left alone to negotiate the gruesome aftermath of shame.

Everyone’s Invited has flashed into the headlines following the murder of Sarah Everard, the 33-year-old media executive kidnapped while walking home and killed. Since the site was founded by student Soma Sara in June 2020, this collation of peer-sourced testimonies has become part of the wider public discourse about gender discrimination and harassment and caused an international outcry.

Its nearly 5,000 entries about rape culture among students make for deeply unpleasant reading. Many of them refer to incidents that have allegedly taken place at extremely high-profile, fee-paying London schools, most of which are coeducational, exclusive and encourage a liberal education. But the stories essay a litany of failings by the teaching staff and those people in positions of responsibility: there seems to have been virtually no intervention, little was done to stem the tide of social-media harassment, and victims were offered almost no support. In one of the more outrageous stories, a 12-year-old girl recalls being punished with detention when a nude photo of her was found to have been circulated among her peers.

Reclaim the Night, the first attempt in the UK to raise awareness about gender rights and public spaces, took place in 1977, as police failed to apprehend the Yorkshire Ripper

This week, and following much unwelcome exposure in the media, some schools have decided to take action. On Tuesday, Latymer Upper School, a coeducational school in Hammersmith, west London, that is named more times on the site than any other, announced that it had reported the allegations to the Metropolitan Police and Hammersmith and Fulham council. The headteacher, David Goodhew, told reporters he was “troubled” by the allegations, which the school says it takes “extremely seriously”, and had reached out to students and alumni to offer support.

It only took the murder of a woman walking home at 9pm, the bungled management of a public vigil, and the efforts of a 22-year-old living with her grandmother to reiterate the message that while #notallmen are awful, some of them are very bad indeed. But, who doesn’t know this, really? Reclaim the Night, the first attempt in the UK to raise awareness about gender rights and public spaces, started in 1977, while police failed to apprehend the Yorkshire Ripper. And, quite frankly, in the more than 40 years intervening, nothing much has changed.

A survey published by YouGov last week found that 97 per cent of women aged 18-24 said they had been sexually harassed — a statistic described by Claire Barnett of UN Women UK as a “human rights crisis” — with only 4 per cent of victims actually making a report to the authorities. Meanwhile rape prosecutions are falling. Crown Prosecution Service figures show that in the year to the end of March 2020, 58,856 cases of rape were recorded by police forces in England and Wales. But of these, there were only 2,102 prosecutions, compared with 3,043 in the previous year.

The statistics aren’t much better in other countries. And while we blab on about the shocking numbers, women (and, yes, men) keep on getting murdered. And women (and, yes, men) still get raped.

There’s a strange syncopation in how this latest social reckoning in Britain has ignited just as Covid rates are falling and people are looking to re-enter “normal life” again. Last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, which were sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and then galvanised and internationalised on social media, also took off at a moment when we stood on a post-lockdown threshold. But has the pandemic spurred really new introspection and awareness? Or just allowed long-held frustrations to ferment?

When schools reopened across the UK last week, my teenager’s elation at being reunited with her school friends was tempered only by her anxieties about being harassed en route to school. “Is it sexual harassment when a boy walks right up to you and starts shouting in your face?” she asked, following one of several petty but daily abuses. To be honest, anxiety slightly exaggerates the feelings she associates with fending off the lechers. Mostly she just feigns a weary resignation, shows a willingness to take last-minute detours, and is always prepared to run.

And, yes, women (and men) do want more protection. It would be wonderful if the offenders could all be prosecuted, and if misogyny were made a crime. And, no doubt come the next public opportunity, we’ll be tramping along the asphalt hoping that these crummy statistics can be eroded, that we can eradicate misogyny via education, and that with better reinforcement, better government and by being better humans, things will not remain the same. And when that doesn’t happen, we’ll likely feign a weary resignation, and resume the lonely walk back home.

Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com

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