Pavement Rage
‘It’s a f**king road you sh*tc*nts’ screamed the lump of testosterone out the window of his shiny SUV as he accelerated across the pavement into the garage forecourt.
With a cool indifference I swaggered up to the front of his car. Resting my boot on the bumper of the brand new Range Rover I challenged the raging meathead to repeat his words and explain himself. Failing to meet my cold level stare he dribbled out an apology, promising to be more respectful to people in the future and to pay more attention when driving.
This cool exchange happened in my head, sadly the incident that inspired it was real. In fact, my partner and I were too stunned to react immediately, so we turned to one another in shock and giggled at the fury of the man who had chosen the unlikely word combination ‘shit cunts.’ The reason he felt confident to shout obscenities with impunity is that I’m 4’8” and like my less diminutive partner, female. Had we have challenged him he would have had no difficulty in flattening us, and I’m fairly confident he would have. So what we actually did was to try not to show he had got to us and walk on without looking back.
He wasn’t alone in the car, there was a woman with him. I found myself pondering, if he was that aggressive with strangers in broad daylight she must have a miserable life. This is the third time in as many months that I have faced harassment from random men in the same stretch of street; sometimes it’s been based on my appearance, sometimes just my presence. What is interesting is that it is always from men.
Each time a man has shouted at me, or whispered obscenities as I’ve walked passed, my world has become a little smaller. I’m neither a victim nor a coward, but I am also not impervious to hate nor the burn of humiliation,which however misplaced, sticks.
Whether it’s a comment about my ‘sexy arse’ or just straightforward abuse, the message is the same. I am reminded of my weakness and punished for daring to walk as equal in the public sphere. As it happens I don’t think of myself as an equal, I know I am superior to these insecure men, but what I think is irrelevant — because I know that if I answer back I will thought to be asking for it. So like most women, I shut-up and go on my way.
Objectively, what the angry SUV man did could be said to fit the definition of a hate crime. He was abusive to two small women in a way that he is unlikely to have been to a man capable of thumping him back. He knew he could get away with it, and he did.
So what would have happened had I have reported this to the police? Chances are, not a lot. My local police force have seemingly endless consultations about hate crime. Yet, the daily abuse and harassment of women by men is never recognised as such, neither by most women nor the police. Indeed, when I looked at the most recent survey circulated by my local constabulary ask for every facets of an individual’s identity, aside from their sex.
In these days of gender-neutral pronouns and safe spaces we’re not supposed to recognise that sex matters. But I guarantee, no matter how I identify my female body will mark me out as a target to those with male bodies. Hate is about power and in short, men feel entitled to talk to women in a way they would never with other men. Indeed, it is my contention that some men think commenting on women to keep us in check is both a duty and male-bonding activity. By reducing us to fools who dare to walk in front of their cars, or body parts for their consumption, men remind us that we are lesser and that we step out of the domestic sphere at their sufferance.
Hate from some men is what all women live with. From daily interactions on the street to institutions, misogyny is woven through society and it is so normal is hard to recognise. In a world where most men masturbate to images of women in pain is that any surprise? Greer’s observation that “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them” rings more true with each day.
What happened to my partner and I is just one of everyday instances that will go unmarked. There is no incident number, there was no crime and if I were to tell the other women in the office they would be quick to dig out examples of abusive women, because recognising male violence as a pattern is too alarming. My partner and I weren’t beaten, we weren’t hurt, and yet the hatred of women by men continues to shape our lives.
