5 minute read
WOMEN AT RISK
She was just living her life.
By Elizabeth MacGregor
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Elizabeth MacGregor is a former educator and a regular contributor to SideOne.
In March, a woman was attacked in her car, at 11:30 a.m., west of Toronto, by a man who opened the car door and tried to drag her out. As directed by her school board, she was eating her lunch in her car in the parking lot of the school where she teaches. Teachers were told it was not safe to eat inside schools, because of Covid spread, so they should have lunch in their cars – alone. The new rules, after the attack, are to lock your car door. Security guards were then posted to the parking lot. I taught in that school, I know many of the teachers. I have walked to my car, parked in the dark lot, after parent-teacher meetings. I would feel fear until I locked the door and left the lot. The area is not a dangerous one. However, every parking lot can spell danger for women. This situation is one that is well known to women who walk, run, drive cars, merely trying to live their lives. The “Me Too” movement reminded society that many women don’t feel safe or supported as they go about their daily routines.
HIDDEN THREATS
As a young woman living alone in Montreal, I experienced the attention of men who were too old for me, whom I had no interest in, and who should have known better. One such person, a business associate 25 years older than me, married, who harassed me for months, later became a Canadian celebrity lauded as an adoring husband.
Once in my local grocery store, he came upon me shopping and queried me about whether I was married or had a boyfriend. He later tried his luck by inviting me to his home on a Friday mid-afternoon, while his wife was away, to sign a business contract. The vice-president of the company I worked for saved me from a most difficult situation by coming with me. The man’s anger was palpable when we entered the his home.
As a young teacher, I worked in a school with an interior staircase, closed off to the rest of the school by steel doors. A vice-principal passed by me on the stairs one day, and tried to lean over and kiss me. As I leaned back he snickered, not embarrassed by his actions, just part of the chase for him.
FINDING SAFE SPACES
When I moved to Toronto, I naively travelled alone on the subway late in the evening, feeling quite safe. I didn’t know any better until I was told it was something I shouldn’t do. Taxis didn’t feel safer, though. Being alone in a car with an unknown male was not always a good choice. Once, I was driven home by a cabbie so high on something that he ran every red light and almost killed me. All the while, I had to look outside as he kept trying to catch my eyes in the rear-view mirror, while asking me about my personal life.
Keys as weapons, carried between fingers, rape whistles on keychains, crossing the street repeatedly to be sure you are not followed, walking on “safe” streets only, wearing flat shoes in case you have to run, not taking public transit after a certain hour, texting a friend the license number of your Uber driver – just in case, checking the back seat of your car before sitting in it. Don’t run at night, don’t wear
headphones. This is the advice given women who are just living their lives.
We never know when we have unwittingly attracted the attention of a man who will be unreasonable, who may follow us, stalk us, attack us.
According to Statistics Canada, 94 per cent of sexual assaults are committed by males. Most men are bigger, stronger. Some be lieve women are property for their use and erupt when they don’t get their own way. Incidents such as the van attack in Toronto, the killing of women at work in Atlanta, the murder of Sarah Everard (who was just walking home) in England, the long-ago slaughter of female engineers at Polytechnique Montréal, all have one thing in common, a male who resented and hated women.
A GROWING RISK
The pandemic has greatly increased the number of domestic attacks on women. A women’s helpline in Toronto fielded 55,000 calls between March and September 2020. They would have received approximately half that usually. An additional 12,000 calls did not get through or were dropped when on hold. A home, which should be a safe haven, can become a battleground.
There are those who say men are victims of violence as well. However, one in three women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime, whereas one in six men will. More than 90 per cent of violent deaths of women and girls in 2020 were caused by men, and there were 160 of them, according to a report published by the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability at the University of Guelph. Eight per cent of assailants are friends and family of the victim.
I have a brand new great-niece. I had truly hoped that the misogyny and the effects I’ve lived through, that my daughter and nieces experience, would be dealt with by now. I had dreamed of passing on a world to her generation that would include real equality. Women deserve to move through their lives with the knowledge that they can wear what they want, look like what they want, and enjoy the cities and towns they inhabit.
PERSONAL SAFETY – A RIGHT
Safety of each person, no matter what gender, sexual persuasion, or skin colour should be a given. Women should be able to go to doctors, male or female, without fear. They should be able to go to gyms without being bothered, go to bars unafraid, have the same freedom of movement that men enjoy.
It is not our clothes, our makeup, our body type, our way of walking that makes us victims of unwanted attention and sexual violence. Men need to be taught to treat all humans with kindness. They need to check their attitudes and those of their friends, when misogynistic comments are traded. Disrespecting others is not humorous. They need to speak up and defend the right of females to share equally in life. Teaching men that women are not their property would go a long way to fixing this problem.
