If The Walk Home Is A Battlefield, Our Relationships Are Minefields

TRIGGER WARNING: This post includes references to rape, sexual assault and domestic violence.

One day after school I sit at the dining room table and mention to my mum that a friend has dropped out of an after-school club. Mum frowns and asks, “Then who are you going to walk home with?”

I am 13 years old, and my secondary school is a half-hour bus ride away. In the winter months, I often get home after dark.

I tell my mum that I don’t know, that I guess I’ll be on my own. She tells me she doesn’t like that, and that she’ll come and meet me at the bus stop. I laugh.

“I’m 13, Mumma. I’m hardly anyone’s first choice am I?”

Mum shakes her head again, and I see something flicker in her eyes.

“Unfortunately,” she says, “you could be.”

Later that year, a girl from my area is pulled off the street and attacked in my childhood playground.

That is the nightmare, of course. The threat of that scenario is why we walk home clutching our keys and texting our friends. That fear is the strange man, villainous, violent, who might whisk me away in the night.

But there’s another fear that doesn’t fall directly into this nightmare — a fear that is harder to articulate, and perhaps more insidious. The fear that comes when you realize that some of these shadow men perpetrating these scenarios could be the boys and the men that you know.

In recent weeks, our timelines have been full of discourse about violence against women — and for good reason. In early March, 33-year-old Sarah Everard was allegedly murdered by Wayne Couzens while she was walking home from a friend’s house.

We have told each other over and over that while we are right to be scared, it is sad that we are scared to simply leave our homes. At the same time, as we have decried the violence committed against us, we have prepared for it. We read a post explaining how to call emergency services by clicking a button on your iPhone five times and another explaining to men that they shouldn’t walk behind women creepily late at night, because we might find it … well… creepy. We download an app that tracks your location.

I’m glad of course that this conversation is happening. I’m glad that we are collectively crying out for things like a crackdown on victim-blaming and a reform of what we teach our sons. I’m glad that men seem to be hearing us, and that we are acknowledging that this violence is embedded in the very institutions that claim to protect us (or rather, that claim to protect some of us).

But there is a danger even in the framing that rape and assault and kidnap and battery are things that happen to women rather than acts of violence that men commit. We are at risk because men put us there, and what is often missing from this discourse is a conversation about how we interact with the men in our lives. Not the shadowy monsters, whom we are taught crawl out after sunset and attack “innocent” women in the streets, but the men we sit down to breakfast with, drink with, and yes, sometimes, sleep with.

Women carry an awareness not only of the threat that strangers pose to us but also the people we know. The walk home is a battlefield, but so is the house party you went to or the Tinder date you were on beforehand. For some women, so are the four walls that they live within. Some women are exposed to a heightened risk: trans women, for instance, are 2.5 times more likely than cis women to experience sexual violence from a partner. Young women, women of color, bisexual women, and women on a low income or who live in social housing are all more likely to be abused by a partner. As the recent events in Atlanta have made clear, the race fetishism and hyper-sexualization leveraged against Asian women makes them particularly vulnerable to violence.

My interactions with men are laced with the knowledge that it could be them that embodies the strange shadowy threat I’ve grown up with.

And I’m sure that most of these men, if they knew that, would be horrified. Most of them are not assaulters and most of them have no intent of hurting me or the next woman they see.

But I live in the UK, where two women die every week due to domestic violence and marital rape was legal until 1994. Over 90% of rape or sexual assault victims know their attacker, according to a study in 2018. 560,000 women were sexually assaulted in the UK in that same year, which means that over half a million women were attacked by someone they knew. So excuse me if I’m a tad cautious at first.

I'm seventeen. I am play-fighting with a male friend. I would like to argue that I am testing out self-defense moves in a safe and controlled environment, but the truth is, I have wound up wrestling because I am an incorrigible flirt. He shows me how to break free of a headlock. Then, holding me in said headlock, he tenses slightly - I think as if to say “I’m strong, isn’t that attractive?” - and unfortunately, he crushes my windpipe and I choke.

He drops me immediately and apologizes. He is not an asshole. He gets me a glass of water and he feels bad and I am fine, but it is a momentary reminder for me that this person is stronger than I am, and if he wanted to do something bad, he easily could. I may try to convince myself that I, like my favorite fantasy heroines, am wily and strong and could overcome an attacker with speed and precision, but the reality is I’m vulnerable and, most of the time, I am at a physical disadvantage.

At nineteen, I argue with my boyfriend. We do not argue often, and this is perhaps the most heated we’ve ever been with each other. After turning away from me, he moves very suddenly back to face me. I flinch. He registers the flinch, and we both freeze. His expression, so furious seconds ago, is now filled with pain. “Please don’t flinch away from me”, he said. “I would never, ever hurt you."

“I know,” I tell him, but the truth is that up until this moment, I didn’t know that. I know that he loves me and that nothing in his character has so far even hinted at aggression, but this is the first time I’ve seen him well and truly angry. So how could I have been 110% sure that he wouldn’t lash out?

Now twenty-one and single, I dip my toe into the dating pond and aren’t those waters murky. I meet a man from Hinge. We sit on the beach and discuss colonialism, sexism, and the evils of empire. He invites me to his house, and I go despite a gut feeling that I shouldn’t. I tell myself that this gut feeling is a socialized response, that he is nice, that I am fine. That I am being silly and my fear is unwarranted.

We wind up in his room. He kisses me for approximately one minute, and then he starts to have sex with me. I will not say that I refuse consent, but I also will not say that I give it. The truth is that I do not say no (not that verbal consent is the only form of consent necessary) because I am scared that if I do, he will turn violent, angry. And if this man, some years older and a whole foot taller, does turn, I don’t know what I will be able to do. Instead of removing myself from the situation, I go along with it, because I am scared. It is better, I tell myself, to stay in this blurred space where I am uncomfortable than to challenge it directly and become in the situation, the one that we are all afraid of. And so I stay in this room with this man, a man who doesn’t meet my eye, who doesn’t even take off my clothes.

Afterward, I look at myself in the mirror. You’re okay, I say out loud. I walk home in the dark and for once, I do not check over my shoulder. I am sure that I have just left a house that is more dangerous than the streets I walk now.

On my next date, perhaps a month or so later, I try to convince myself that I am not nervous, that my last sexual experience will not impact this one. I am pleasantly surprised. I have a good time. The next morning I call my friend. "It was great!" I say. "I mean I don’t think I’d date him, but he kept asking for consent! And he asked me even again in the morning." My friend and I celebrate, and then, recognizing the ridiculousness of the conversation, we joke: oh my god, you didn’t assault me! I guess what I’m saying is, we’re planning a June wedding!

This is why we are constantly vigilant; these are scenarios that we have to entertain. Too many times when my friends have recounted sexual experiences with their partners, a look of discomfort has passed between us. We squirm around the idea that the men that we love can get it wrong.

There is the flip side, of course. There are many men in my life who I have come to trust absolutely. The aforementioned male friend, the ex-boyfriend, and many others. But I want all men to hear that women are afraid - not just in the streets, but sometimes in our own homes. And, having heard that, prove to us that we do not need to be. I want men to challenge other men - to call guys out for boasting of a “body count,” for using a term that regards the number of sexual partners someone “achieves” as murder. Sex and death are inextricably linked in our language, and unfortunately, for many of us, they are inextricably linked in real life. I don’t want my sex life to come with the caveat that I could die.

Men need to be aware of their presence and impact, not just in the streets they walk, but also in the beds they sleep in, the homes they go to, the friendships they develop. Because, when women walk into each new relationship, of whatever distinction, our past experiences hold our hands and whisper in our ears. The good moments and the bad ones weave together, informing what we expect from the men we are around. The experiences of our friends and our sisters bode warning and speak hope.

If the walk home is a battlefield, then cultivating relationships is akin to walking out on a minefield. We do not know what is under the surface, but we do know that, given the long-standing and messy war that has been waged upon our bodies and ourselves, we need to tread very, very carefully.