"Listen to the children, maaaan"
Colm O'Gorman shows how little he cares for women's rights. Again
Colm O’Gorman, part of Ireland’s new misogynist order, asks a question regarding Ireland’s disgraceful plan to make toilets gender neutral in schools.
Instead of asking children what they think, why not ask adults? Is it because adults, who understand safeguarding, consent and the history of women’s rights, might not give an answer approved by Colm and his Wokeus Dei chums, one of whom unleashed a torrent of abuse on Laoise from The Countess yesterday on Irish radio?
Case in point, this brilliant thread by Rachel Hewit, which I hope she won’t mind me reproducing here. Reading it, I became angry all over again at having done anything to raise O’Gorman’s profile during Ireland’s abortion referendum. There’s nothing in it that will come as a huge surprise to anyone who cares about women, but it’s full of yet more proof that as a protector of human rights, O’Gorman is a great cook.
Right, I’ve been doing some reading (and writing) about young women’s experiences in public space, and it’s made me so angry and upset that I have to share a digest with you all.
Globally, during adolescence, ‘girls’ worlds shrink, while boys’ expand’. One study finds that the map of 14-yo girls’ day-to-day movements is 2/5 the size of that of their 11-yo selves, and only 1/3 the size of 14-yo male peers’ movements.
The shrinking of teenage girls’ access to public space correlates to reduction in girls’ ability to exercise. In Texas, teenage girls do 65% less physical activity than boys. Girls drop out of sport clubs in adolescence at far higher rates than boys. This sets a trend for life.
Numerous factors influence girls’ shrinking access to public space. Some are to do with gender roles in families. A study in rural Australia found that boys tend to be given outdoor chores (mowing the lawn), whereas girls are given indoor ones (washing up etc).
Girls in larger families are less likely to visit parks – probably because parents are less able to chaperone them, and there is a stronger expectation that girls, rather than boys, require chaperoning around public space.
But the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR that deters teenage girls from public places is... the presence of men. Teenage girls in western Australia say openly that ‘they’d use [public] spaces more if boys weren’t around.’
Park features that attract boys and men – such as ‘organized sport settings’ like courts – are repeatedly shown to deter girls. Teenage girls are often seen to gravitate towards playgrounds – the only area of parks consistently populated more by adult women than men.
Girls themselves report 2 main reasons for avoiding spaces dominated by men. The 1st is self-conciousness. The majority of teenage girls interviewed have experience of being taunted by male peers (and male teachers) for their appearance and sporting competence.
But the principal reason is FEAR. Australian teenage girls describe parks as the LEAST safe public space, followed by streets, then public transport. 60% of 13yo girls in Stockholm say they are scared in their own neighbourhood.
In South Africa, girls label over 58% of public spaces ‘unsafe’/ ‘very unsafe’, & areas that boys find ‘extremely safe’ (including schools) girls describe as ‘very unsafe’. Sometimes girls fear is about injury, & girls care more about the maintenance of public spaces like parks.
Teenage girls have coping mechanisms for these constraints on their access to public space. Some report trying to behave assertively, to not show fear. In parks, girls are reluctant to engage in exercise & prefer to ‘walk, sit or lay down’ in innocuous places, such as under trees.
In public swimming pools, girls try to make themselves less visible – by swimming in t-shirts, covering themselves with towels until the last moment, or hiding themselves among friends. They try to not draw attention to themselves, by jumping in, messing around or ‘having fun’.
But many deal with these constraints by simply avoiding public space altogether.Many girls explicitly avoid parks & courts. Many retreat to their bedrooms, where girls spend much more time than boys. One girl refers to her room as ‘the only place in the world where she felt safe’
I find this heart-breaking & enraging. I knew from my own experience that women have different responses to public space than men, but I thought I’d become hardened. But reading these studies, in which adolescent girls experience their world & possibilities contracting, is heartbreaking.
There are interventions that can help teenage girls to feel more at home in public space, &, by being able to exercise, to be more at home in their bodies. @CcriadoPerez’s wonderful Invisible Women describes interventions made by park planners in Sweden to encourage girls’ access.
Better lighting has been shown to attract teenage girls to parks (and, interestingly, to deter teenage boys), and this describes similar environmental changes to make public space more hospitable to women.
Similarly, there are efforts to improve teenage girls’ experience of school sport: more time to get changed & giving girls better choice of sports (girls report how boys are encouraged to ‘go outside’, while they are confined to ‘dancing studios’).
BUT one of the MOST effective interventions is to give girls access to spaces without men. It’s sad that it’s necessary, but allowing girls to participate in single-sex sports is repeatedly shown to increase participation and enjoyment.
Women-only sessions in public spaces like swimming pools allows girls to participate without harassment. Martha Brady shows how facilitating girls’ sports in single-sex spaces can be a way of ‘bringing girls into the public sphere’.
I used to be a bit jokey about the question, ‘women, what would you do if there was a curfew for men?’ But reading this material has made me realise how women are ourselves operating under a curfew. I’m sure many of us feel similarly to teenage girls retreating to our bedrooms.
This material has made me realise how important it is to grasp the extent to which women’s access to PUBLIC space is curtailed – the impact this has on our lives & health and happiness – and to devise ways for girls and women to take up occupation of space they have a right to be in.
The thing is, the majority of girls will never say these things if they know there is some expectation that they don’t. And in the case of allowing men and boys who say they’re women and girls into their private spaces, they know there is.
I’m a woman who has experienced rape on multiple occasions. I would feel incredibly uncomfortable if I found myself alone in a locker room or a small bathroom with a man, particularly a large man; much less alone in a room in a shelter or a prison cell with a man.
We need our refuges. If I feel under threat while cycling, I can stop and go into a women’s restroom. If it’s reasonable a man can follow me in there, that no longer becomes a safe haven. It used to be that going into the women’s restroom really did deter predators. Not so anymore.
It’s sad that I have to say “if I feel under threat while cycling,” because it’s sad that women of reproductive age have to take precautions as if we are always at war. Public space is limited to us- the world is not properly our oyster, no matter how much money we may have (which most of us don’t, since most of the world’s poor are women)- even in our own backyards.
I remember reading about a woman who casually mentioned to a male friend the kinds of precautions women generally take. He was shocked and said it reminded him of his time in the Army. He said the hypervigilance, awareness of exit and entry routes, plans for safety, or carrying of weapons all sounded exactly like soldiers conducting their daily business in a war zone.
It struck me that he was absolutely right, and just how heartbreaking that was. Girls’ worlds narrow.
My heroes have always been the women who take risks anyway. I’m a huge fan of cross-country or intercontinental cycling, and remember reading about a young woman who cycled alone around the world. Such a beautiful story, it almost seems like a fairytale. I want to believe I could be so adventurous and be left alone, be safe. I used to think maybe it had something to do with attitude: if I were open, loving, and not fearful, the bad men would leave me alone. I don’t think this is entirely true though, and I’m sure this young woman had many encounters she never discussed in her blog, and that she probably dedicated quite a bit of mental and physical energy to protecting herself on her journey.
Cat-calling, eve teasing: these are threats about what happens to you if you’re a woman in men’s public space. The public realm is coded male and male only. You become fair game the minute you enter it. As favorite targets, teenage girls are perhaps the most keenly aware of this.
As an adult woman, I also deserve the right to feel safe in vulnerable public places, so that I can participate in public. I have the right to practice female culture without males, too. This is the least society can do to remediate the intensity of sexism and sexual violence aimed at us for being female.
There are women and girls who are too traumatized to be around males in enclosed spaces at all. These laws mean the return to the urinary leash for them.
Why don’t we matter?
Colm: "Is anyone actually asking young people what they think?...and if girls say they want their own toilets, is anyone drafting a letter calling on people to deny those girls a voice?"