meeting in the aisle

Sydney too violent for women - SMH reveals

It was a Saturday, around midday, and I was catching the train into the city with a girlfriend. We were excited - I was on my way to a photo shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Real Women” project, and that was something different for me back then.

I was 20, I was from Blacktown - only rich, thin, pretty girls got into the pages of a magazine, not short, pudgy, plain girls like me. I was going to get my makeup done professionally, and Kristy and I were chatting away, lost in our own worlds when he leant over the back of the train seat and pulled out a blood-filled syringe.

It all happened so quickly. The syringe, the demand for our money and mobile phones. The promise that he would stab me in the foot with it because he’d just got out of jail, and that’s where he’d be going back to, and he didn’t care if he made us sick, he just wanted his next hit, and “you’re just some dumb girl.”

We were scared. This was Sydney! It was the middle of the day! There were other people in the carriage! Not that they came to help.

We were lucky though. All we lost was some money, our phones, and a big bucket of naivety. In the nine years between then and now, I have gathered more stories like this, but none have had quite the same impact.

There is something about a ‘first time’ in this, but I’m not going to say it.

Instead, I’m going to track the stories about violence against women that hit the papers in Sydney and Melbourne for the next few weeks.

Thank you (!?), Sydney Morning Herald, for making this first post so easy with FIVE stories about violence and sexual harassment of women.

Monday 27th September brings us:

• League star accused of assaulting pregnant girlfriend
• Stewart charge absolutely totally unbelievable
• Sex assault on babysitter
• Home invader attacks woman with crowbar
• DJ $37m claim publicity-induced psychiatric illness in Kristy Freser0Kirk court told

Related posts:

- Think violence against women is something that happens ‘over there’ - think again.
- How unsafe should you feel?

How unsafe should you feel?

I recently moved to Melbourne from Sydney, a city where I knew a sum total of three people when I first arrived, two of whom promptly went overseas. As part of the whole rigmarole associated with starting somewhere new, I spent many a cold, wintry eve stumbling around the unfamiliar streets of Melbourne in the dark, straining to read house numbers from footpaths, while trying to keep an eye out for anything ‘suspicious’.

Naturally, I felt unsafe when I turned down poorly-lit streets, or more industrial looking areas, or had to walk through a park. I felt unsafe walking alone along the side of a busy road. Unsafe walking through the grounds of the University of Melbourne. Unsafe waiting alone at the tram stop with the pub on the corner.

I remember saying to myself, “If something happens to me, I’m stuffed. I have no one to call if something happens.” (That scary, scary ‘something’).

So it comes as no surprise to me that a new study reports that almost 50% of girls under 18 feel unsafe in UK cities. This is not just a UK thing, I’d wager. Cities are scary places for half the population, if you listen to what people say.

And it’s hard not to listen to your mother, father, brother, your friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, shopkeepers, media, and everyone else inbetween. At 29 years old, I’ve been told the world is a very scary place for me, and I need to be careful.

I need to be careful of ‘rough types’ getting off the train in Footscray (Melbourne) alone at night. Careful of the men spilling out from pubs as I walk home alone from the bus in suburban Seven Hills (Sydney). Careful of rickshaw wallahs walking to work in the early hours of the morning in Chittagong (Bangladesh). Careful of men on the metro in Barcelona. Careful of tradesmen while taking travel-snaps along the back streets of Cairo. Careful of the gypsy boys walking along Nevsky Prospect in St Petersburg. And not to be outdone, I need to be careful of my male friends in every city in the world once we’ve all started to loosen up a bit, have a drink, dance, because, ‘you know how men are’.

I have tried to recall when the world became one trap after another for me, but I can’t really find a time when the world was safe. From stranger danger and neighbourhood watch as a young school girl through to now, the unsafe narrative has always been there.

You know what? I’m sick of feeling unsafe. I’m absolutely sick of the common narrative around the world being that I need to be vigilant, to always be on the lookout, because violence against me, as a woman, is always lurking just around the corner.

What will it take, I wonder, to make the world safe for me?

(This could be a good place to start - Australian men, have you taken the oath?)

Did you see this? No? Me Either

Dear Media - WHY THE LACK OF INTEREST IN SUCH A GREAT NEWS STORY?

Apologies for the allcaps to the fragile people in the back row, but they’re warranted. I’m disappointed, disillusioned, frustrated and plain pissed off that I had to come across this news story via Crikey, courtesy of someone else’s blog.

And because I really couldn’t say it any better:

I really love images of men standing up in opposition to violence against women (and other men) and I just couldn’t let a fantastic photo like the one above go by. I would argue that these kinds of images make everyone feel better, not only women, and certainly not just black men – surely all men get a lift out of seeing men do good, out of feeling a sense of solidarity in opposing violence? - Hoyden About Town

(NB: The title of this post also comes from Hoyden About Town)