• I HAPPENED to be at Highbury Fields taking my daily exercise when the vigil was supposed to be held on Saturday March 13 in memory of Sarah Everard.

My female friend, with whom I take my exercise, started to get noticeably anxious as the sun set and darkness surrounded us.

We had several discussions about how we had felt this last week, her having a series of panic attacks. I had spent three days filled with a sense of fear.

We had taken Sarah Everard’s disappearance and the developments throughout the week so personally that we had dredged up every remembrance of sexual assault, harassment, or fear of them happening we had had and relived it with the dread that it could have easily been us.

But not only this, we had felt a numbing sensation, the emotionally raw and exhausted feeling of knowing that for years we have had to be alert to every man around us as a potential threat.

I’m not sorry for how uncomfortable a man might feel to see me cross the road to avoid walking past him, when I have feared for my safety; as a man crossed a busy section of Holloway road, yelling harassment at me, just to grope me and ask me why I’m not up for it.

Every woman I know has stories like this and we must recognise and remember that women of colour and trans women face violence at much higher rates than white women; the similarity between us all being that it’s chronically unreported to the police because we know it won’t be taken seriously – or feel there’s not much they can do.

If you felt personally victimised by Jenny Jones’s suggestion that men be held to a curfew of 6pm, or fell behind the idea that she, an unelected member of the House of Lords, had no right to suggest such an obvious infringement of men’s freedoms, think of how many ways women are expected to modify their daily actions to protect themselves from harm.

If you felt like screaming “not all men”, please know we are aware, but the constant fear of not knowing exactly which men, exhausts our minds and bodies at every possible turn, for every space we have to or want to occupy.

And after all the extensive effort we go to, that Sarah Everard went to, to have it reinforced that it still isn’t enough, fills you with an overwhelming sense of despair.

There has to be a shift. Having been sexually assaulted on Holloway Road on more than one occasion, I have taken to loudly exclaiming “you are making me feel uncomfortable”, just to get men that make unsolicited comments to me to feel uncomfortable themselves, like someone might hear the “fuss” this little woman is making.

This is often met with “don’t be like that” or “I haven’t done anything”. Wrong. You’ve made me feel so afraid I’ve had to shout into the street for help.

It’s been encouraging to see some men seeking ways to help this week and the narrative needs to change – this is a man’s problem. Men need to take ownership of the effects of their actions.

It will be the everyday battles that fall on the shoulders of women to fight for their own safety that need to be taken on by men.

It is the difficult conversations, to check your friends’ inappropriate jokes, to keep your distance from women you see walking alone, actually believing the women around you when they say they have been or are made to feel uncomfortable, and not using any language that blames them for feeling so.

It’s an opportunity for you to put a woman’s right to feel safe above your own agendas, for you to protect women from the harm of a cultivated narrative that our actions are the root cause of the violence against us.

You’ve got to check your egos at the door for this conversation to take place and for women to feel safe.

DEVON OSBORNE
Islington Green Party