How do you tell your 13 year old daughter that "Men are scum"

 

Our daughter is now at an age where rather than ignoring the news, she picks up on particular stories and they turn into a topic of debate at home instead of something we try to gloss over or protect her from.

 The recent case of the disappearance of Sarah Everard has once again raised a sickening aspect of toxic male behaviour that we are now trying to mentally and physically prepare our daughter for. 

But where do you start? How can you possibly begin to describe certain "default" aspects of male behaviour in a way that doesn't stamp all over that teen romantic idea that some boys aren't just after you for the obvious - and want to be friends at first, perhaps later to see what develops?

How do you also answer the question she asked me directly. "You are a man, does that mean you are like that too? What about Grandad? What about Uncle Simon, Uncle Graham?" and there, dear reader, is where I couldn't provide a quick comeback. 

Why are some boys / men pre-wired with the idea that they have a right to treat women like property, like the weaker sex, to harass, insult, direct innuendo or smutty talk at, wolf-whistle and a whole host of other male behaviour that makes your blood boil whether you're male or female and you were brought up to respect other people, not treat them like dirt. 

That, sadly, is the crux of all this. Some men - fathers, brothers, uncles, even grandfathers, still seem to think there's absolutely nothing wrong with harassing women and sometimes that can develop into something far more sinister. 

I was brought up mostly by women and among women. There were no paternal figures in my life from an early age, and that's probably why I've never understood this notion some men have that every single woman is somehow attainable, available and theirs for the taking. 

Twitter calls for a male curfew and some pretty harrowing tweets directed (not undeservedly in the majority of cases) at men, all men, regardless of whether you consider yourself kind or sympathetic or just plainly not a nasty bastard, were worrying to read, further highlighting the vast scale of the problem here and across the globe. 

I wanted an answer for my daughter that wasn't just some hand wavy "Look I'm not like that, and that's all you need to know" but the truth is that this is not something easily glossed over by some #notallmen hashtag or a well-meaning assurance. Any decent human being feels that they want to do more than that, they want to solve this problem once and for all but most people feel utterly powerless to deal with men who are incapable of changing. 

I talked about an incident back when I was younger when I did something that I would never have considered brave or heroic, just something that decent men would do in the same situation.  

I managed to intervene to prevent a female friend on a pub crawl from being assaulted by a man who had been foisting his unwanted attention on her all night. He was the younger brother of a (then) friend of mine, visiting his older brother at uni, a real jack-the-lad who displayed all the outwardly toxic cliched trademarks of someone who thinks they're god's gift. The sort of man I've mentioned above who would be incapable of change. This had largely gone unnoticed by most of us on the crawl until a point where I heard her loudly and clearly say "No" to this arsehole. 

I stood between them and tried to defuse the situation, vocally at first then physically when he still wouldn't get the message and started pushing me aside to get to her. 

I am not brave and was scared witless but not half as scared as she clearly was. I am not a fighter, I am not physically intimidating and to be honest I do everything I can to avoid conflict or confrontation but he wouldn't quit. I have no recollection of what was said or what happened between a scuffle and him ending up on the ground with my foot on his throat (and if you think that sounds horrible, it still haunts the living fuck out of me now, here, today as I type, not a moment I'm at all proud of). 

I was furious, angry enough to hurt him, and beyond angry that it had to come to that in the first place because of his actions and his alone. 

The girl was in shock but managed to compose herself enough to be taken home by one of her female friends. I kept my foot where it was until they were long gone. Some might think that the situation was easier to deal with because he was someone I "knew" - but it wasn't, the pub crawl was the first time I'd met him and I had no idea whether or not he would stop even when I did intervene. 

Eventually the situation was defused, though there was a further confrontation with the guy's brother the next day (toxic and violent behaviour obviously ran in the family as this resulted in another altercation and another situation I could well have done without. Even when I pointed out to my friend what would have happened if I'd let his brother carry on, he just could not see why I had done what I did (and there, folks, is the dyed-in-the-wool behaviour that needs to be tackled, eradicated and destroyed - that assumption that it was his brother's god-given right to behave like that because she'd smiled at him, been friendly to him and chatted to him. Sickening).

I got to know the girl sometime afterwards as a friend and I remember a conversation we had sitting in a park months afterwards about that night. She was still clearly quite shaken by what had happened and made it clear that he would have assaulted her if I hadn't intervened. There was no thanks, no modest "Look anyone would've done the same", just a silent understanding from both of us that this is something women experience all the time. No different 30 years ago to now and I defy any man to sit there and tell me that they haven't witnessed a situation like that, or been directly involved in a similar situation themselves because I can definitely tell you that women have, are, and will go through something similar again and again until...well what. Until what. That's what I wanted to tell my daughter - that there was a solution to this, a solution we can parcel up as civilised humans, make happen, deliver along with the strong assurance that this toxic behaviour will be wiped out and eradicated once and for all. 

Some of the tweets talking about Sarah's disappearance and what women and men can do to stay safe suggest more practical non-violent approaches that people can take if they witness something similar happening, if they see a woman being harassed or attacked. 

Talk to the attacker, make a pest of yourself, make it loud - even nonsensical, anything to distract the would-be attacker because that could be the difference between someone being a pest to them becoming an assailant. Get others involved, make it everyone else's business, everyone else's problem - not just hers. Sure, most people's default behaviour would be not to get involved, to distance themselves from an incident but would you want to read about it the next day in a newspaper or on social media...to hear that it turned out for the worst?

I still don't have an answer for my daughter. What have you done to dissuade your sons from behaving like this?