It’s men like me

The distressing film footage from Clapham Common last night, where the Metropolitan Police temporarily lost its marbles and wrestled protesting women to the ground, must have come a terrible shock to the Duchess of Cambridge, as she settled down to an evening of Ant and Dec on the telly. “That could have been me,” thought Kate Middleton. Except of course that it wouldn’t have been her because royals are a bit above being wrestled to the floor when paying their respects to a murdered woman.

I respected Kate’s decision to lay flowers in memory of Sarah Everard because as gestures go, it was a meaningful one. After a disastrous week for the royals, it was reassuring to learn that they do actually care for decent photo opportunities – sorry, I meant for their fellow human beings.

I am not aware whether Kate was warned by a friendly bobby that she was actually breaking lockdown rules by leaving her local area, but I rather hope not. Like all the other women who have visited the Clapham Common, hers was a humanitarian mission, adding support to a group of people who have for years been put up on and sometimes terrorised. I mean, of course, women.

To protect what’s left of my sanity, I have sanitised my social networks feeds to avoid the hate, but I still saw hate in other people’s threads, always from men who were all but suggesting that the women at the vigil “asked for it”. I have no way of knowing whether these men are representative of society in general but given how our broken country is divided not just into factions, but small fractions, I fear there are not a few people who think like that. And it’s men who were the problem.

It’s men like me, too, who as I explained in another blog didn’t always treat womenfolk with the respect and dignity they deserved. I now realise that my subsequent holier than thou “I always walk a woman home” comment simply wasn’t good enough. I need to be honest about the man who I was and the man I am today. This is why I have have been somewhat consumed with different emotions about how men regard women and my own negative role in it. So, from today, I shall try harder to be a better man.

As I wasn’t at Clapham Common last night, I cannot vouch for what precisely happened, but when even a nasty right wing populist politician like Priti Patel, who is currently bringing in laws to make it very difficult for anyone to protest about anything, says there are questions to be answered, you had better believe it.

I’m concerned that the reaction to Sarah Everard’s killing will be a six day media wonder and in no time at all, it will be business as usual with women being raped and murdered and hardly anyone being prosecuted. That’s the worst side of this. And the daily harassment, the daily abuse, the daily misogyny and bigotry will resume just like it always does.

I have seen nothing from our government to suggest tomorrow will be any different from today and someday soon another tragedy will occur, we’ll all wake up for a while, urging for ‘something’ to be done, Kate will lay some more flowers and it will all be followed by more government inertia. At the heart of everything will be what men do. That, I’m afraid, is the problem.