hannahbellzzz:

Amen Sister. 

Fucking hell, I am sick to death of people saying she was really drunk and couldn’t fend off people. I can’t walk in heels that size. I would appear drunk as well trying to walk in heels, that’s why I don’t wear them. 

Stop blaming women. Sometimes we don’t have a choice. My house was like the same distance as Jill’s from the Brunswick Green. How the hell can I get a taxi at 1am around the corner. 

And unrelated to Jill’s story- many of my ex boyfriend’s have laughed at me when I have asked them to accompany me home. Men are like that…well, the dickheads I have known. Don’t tell me I have a choice sometimes. Because I don’t. 

All of this, plus a reminder that this shit doesn’t only happen at night - as I said yesterday, I had a man follow me and tell me that he was going to rape me and that I was asking for it in the middle of the day, while I was out buying milk a few blocks from my house.

Did I need an escort then? No. What I needed was for people like him to not exist, to not think it’s appropriate to threaten women on the street. Reporting it didn’t even cross my mind. If that behaviour had been less expected, maybe I would have reported it.

I have also had exactly the same experience with boyfriends not appreciating how it feels to be a woman and to be catching public transport or walking alone at night. I do it because I value my independence, because I shouldn’t need an escort, because I have no alternative. But when I have had a boyfriend, there was at least one memorable incident in which I asked if he could leave for a party an hour later, so that he could meet me on the train when I finished work and I wouldn’t have to travel alone. He refused because he said the host of the party was important to him, so I found myself on a train with young, drunken men leering at me and making comments that scared me so much I changed carriages and was surprised that I had managed to do so without being assaulted. But my boyfriend wasn’t a dickhead - he just didn’t get it. Most guys don’t.

Telling women to be more careful, when virtually everyone already takes every reasonable step (personally - carrying those pressurised cans of ‘body mist’, getting a black belt in taekwondo) is pointless and offensive.

Teach men not to harass, and not to rape.

(via )