Every woman I know has a story. Sexual harassment, and the threat of it, are daily features of most women’s lives.
Whether that’s being unabashedly stared at for the entire duration of a Tube journey, an unwanted and unwarranted hand groping your body on a crammed rush-hour train, or being followed home.
This is not to mention the jeers, the laughs, the comments. And the assaults that leave scars that are difficult to erase.
These shouldn’t be persistent, universal experiences in our lives. The niggling anxiety and fight-or-flight alertness shouldn’t be as essential a feature of my commute as bringing my Oyster card. But it is.
Yet, in light of the coronavirus pandemic, an unlikely item has changed this for me: the face mask. Strapping a mask around my face on public transport, and while travelling late at night, makes me, as a woman, feel safer. As do public social distancing measures.
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Having to wear a mask has offered a strange, unexpected sort of reprieve. It shrouds me in a cloak of anonymity. An incognito feeling.
The stares haven’t stopped completely. In fact, Twitter is inundated with reports of catcalling and abuse despite mask-wearing, and I was still approached by a masked man pretending to be lost so he could ask for my number.
But now I can stare back, knowing that they don’t know what I really look like; that they’ll never be able to imprint my face on their mind.
I no longer need to shrug on my ‘resting bitch face’; my mask does the work for me. Gone, too, are the ‘cheer up love’s and the ‘give us a smile’s. It is perhaps no coincidence that new research indicates women are more likely than men to wear a mask.
The fact that social distancing means strangers can’t come near you – or shouldn’t, at least – offers further protection. Stay alert. Stay away.
Before this year, I can’t remember a time when I haven’t had a nagging – often heart-thumping – worry when leaving a party late at night, or riding a deserted Tube carriage, or crossing the street and averting my gaze when passing a group of bawdy men.
It is not an exaggeration to say I have felt more confident walking home at night.
I have walked where before I would have got a taxi. Whispering in the back of my mind is the thought that should someone approach me, I could cough, could say I had the virus.
This would deter them, I assure myself.
The phantom shadows that follow me and countless women home every day, all over the world, will be kept at bay by the menace of the virus. It is perhaps no coincidence that new research indicates women are more likely than men to wear a mask.
I am not the only one of my female friends to voice this, nor to share these thoughts. And it speaks of a wider, more perpetual issue in society: the relentless sexual harassment and assault of women in public spaces.
Research has found that sexual harassment on public transport has soared in recent years, and a study by humanitarian organisation Plan International claims that sexual harassment is the number-one safety risk facing girls and young women worldwide.
Even within my small sphere of reference, the stories are ubiquitous. Should this be the norm?
The masks, as hopefully the pandemic itself, are transitory parts of our lives. They are no long-term solution to sexual harassment.
Nor should the onus be on women to cover themselves or change their behaviour to prevent predatory behaviour. We know that what you wear has nothing to do with whether you are a victim of harassment or not.
The fact that wearing a mask makes me feel safer as a woman is part of bigger problem that will not disappear with a vaccine. It’s something we must address – and face unmasked.
There are many brilliant, hopeful campaigns fighting back against sexual assault across the world. But there is still much work to be done.
Until then, I’ll be sat on the eternally stuffy Northern Line with no discernible air con, alongside weary travellers and dishevelled commuters.
Like everyone else, I’ll have my mask on and pulled up over my mouth and nose – even if it is too tight and tugs my ears into misshapen crescents.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/08/07/mask-sexual-harassment-13097605/
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