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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Have you ever considered how much energy goes into avoiding sexual violence? The work that goes into feeling safe is largely unnoticed by the women doing it and by the wider world, yet women and girls are the first to be blamed the inevitable times when it fails.
With real-life accounts of women’s experiences - based on the author’s original research - this book challenges the culture of victim-blaming by highlighting women’s everyday resistance to harassment and sexual violence.
F Vera-Gray has worked for the Rape Crisis movement and is currently Deputy Director at the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University. This very readable and unfortunately highly relatable book looks at the steps that women take to avoid sexual violence in their day-to-day lives, drawing on interviews with 50 women from different age groups and backgrounds and showing how it permeates through the generations.
I picked this up for two reasons. The first is because the back cover copy reminded me of a safety event I attended in around 2007 that every woman at the law firm I was then working at was invited to. It was hosted by an ex-police officer turned safety consultant and it was all about what we as women could do to stop ourselves from being attacked. It had all the advice that women are generally given - don’t wear high heels when walking down the street, don’t go down dark streets on your own, carry a rape alarm and be prepared to shout “fire” if someone attacks you, cross the street repeatedly and change direction if you think a man is following you and don’t wear headphones so you can stay aware of your surroundings. I remember it clearly because I was pleased that I was already doing everything that the lecturer recommended and at the same time wondered why there wasn’t a lecture aimed at the men in the firm to explain how they should behave to avoid frightening women. The second reason was because in 2022 a man exposed himself and performed a sexual act on himself in front of me on the Tube. I was “lucky” some delivery riders shouted at him so he got off at the next stop and when I reported it to the police they found him and he was convicted and imprisoned.
This is a slim book - only 156 pages plus citations and references - but as a 40-something woman I found so much of it to be recognisable to my own life. Vera-Gray draws on interviews conducted with 50 women (all of whom are anonymised but she provides basic details in the back of the age, ethnicity, nationality and sexuality and slowly builds a picture of the attitudes and steps that women take to try and keep themselves safe from sexual violence. I found myself nodding as the women she spoke to talk about how they stay alert, some have keys in their fingers when walking at night and also the types of unacceptable male behaviour they have encountered (from wolf whistling and cat calling to groping, flashing and ultimately sexual violence).
What surprised me (and probably shouldn’t) was how Vera-Gray demonstrates that women are conditioned to regard this. It is essentially normalised, often through generations as some of the interviewees discuss how their female relatives told them to laugh it off, or view it as flattering and in some extremes, told them that it was the woman’s own fault. It made me very sad to read the accounts of women who watched how they dressed because of experiences that were most definitely not their fault. Vera-Gray than goes on to demonstrate how women are then punished or mocked for displaying such caution or worse, told to have empathy or pity for the unacceptable behaviour of men. Vera-Gray uses the phrase “catch-22” and it truly is.
The final chapter looks at how to combat the catch-22 by challenging the messaging that surrounds crime against women (she mentioned a truly awful London Transport campaign against illegal minicabs that I had completely forgotten but which suggested that women who got into unlicensed cabs were in some way responsible for what happened to them). She also discusses shifting gender norms and considering female self-defence (which is aimed at women and focuses on increasing self-esteem, assertiveness, physical skills and decreasing fear) as a way of combating attitudes.
It’s a very readable book because Vera-Gray deliberately wrote it this way but gives a reference for academics looking for something more in the academic vein and there are a lot of references and citations here if you are interested in delving more deeply into the topic. If I was going to be picky, then I sometimes found the various interviewees difficult to keep track of (I had to constantly turn back to the list to keep track of who was who) and I think I would have been interested in having the conclusion drawn own two chapters rather than one because it covers a lot of ground and I’d have been interested to have it gone into a bit more deeply than it is.
That said, although this is a difficult read at times, I think it’s one that women of all ages and backgrounds will be able to relate to and what I think is so great about it is how it reassures you that you are not unique in the behaviours you adopt to try and keep yourself safe and that you are not crazy for being so hyper vigilant.
The Verdict:
F Vera-Gray has worked for the Rape Crisis movement and is currently Deputy Director at the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University. This very readable and unfortunately highly relatable book looks at the steps that women take to avoid sexual violence in their day-to-day lives, drawing on interviews with 50 women from different age groups and backgrounds and showing how it permeates through the generations.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
Have you ever considered how much energy goes into avoiding sexual violence? The work that goes into feeling safe is largely unnoticed by the women doing it and by the wider world, yet women and girls are the first to be blamed the inevitable times when it fails.
With real-life accounts of women’s experiences - based on the author’s original research - this book challenges the culture of victim-blaming by highlighting women’s everyday resistance to harassment and sexual violence.
F Vera-Gray has worked for the Rape Crisis movement and is currently Deputy Director at the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University. This very readable and unfortunately highly relatable book looks at the steps that women take to avoid sexual violence in their day-to-day lives, drawing on interviews with 50 women from different age groups and backgrounds and showing how it permeates through the generations.
I picked this up for two reasons. The first is because the back cover copy reminded me of a safety event I attended in around 2007 that every woman at the law firm I was then working at was invited to. It was hosted by an ex-police officer turned safety consultant and it was all about what we as women could do to stop ourselves from being attacked. It had all the advice that women are generally given - don’t wear high heels when walking down the street, don’t go down dark streets on your own, carry a rape alarm and be prepared to shout “fire” if someone attacks you, cross the street repeatedly and change direction if you think a man is following you and don’t wear headphones so you can stay aware of your surroundings. I remember it clearly because I was pleased that I was already doing everything that the lecturer recommended and at the same time wondered why there wasn’t a lecture aimed at the men in the firm to explain how they should behave to avoid frightening women. The second reason was because in 2022 a man exposed himself and performed a sexual act on himself in front of me on the Tube. I was “lucky” some delivery riders shouted at him so he got off at the next stop and when I reported it to the police they found him and he was convicted and imprisoned.
This is a slim book - only 156 pages plus citations and references - but as a 40-something woman I found so much of it to be recognisable to my own life. Vera-Gray draws on interviews conducted with 50 women (all of whom are anonymised but she provides basic details in the back of the age, ethnicity, nationality and sexuality and slowly builds a picture of the attitudes and steps that women take to try and keep themselves safe from sexual violence. I found myself nodding as the women she spoke to talk about how they stay alert, some have keys in their fingers when walking at night and also the types of unacceptable male behaviour they have encountered (from wolf whistling and cat calling to groping, flashing and ultimately sexual violence).
What surprised me (and probably shouldn’t) was how Vera-Gray demonstrates that women are conditioned to regard this. It is essentially normalised, often through generations as some of the interviewees discuss how their female relatives told them to laugh it off, or view it as flattering and in some extremes, told them that it was the woman’s own fault. It made me very sad to read the accounts of women who watched how they dressed because of experiences that were most definitely not their fault. Vera-Gray than goes on to demonstrate how women are then punished or mocked for displaying such caution or worse, told to have empathy or pity for the unacceptable behaviour of men. Vera-Gray uses the phrase “catch-22” and it truly is.
The final chapter looks at how to combat the catch-22 by challenging the messaging that surrounds crime against women (she mentioned a truly awful London Transport campaign against illegal minicabs that I had completely forgotten but which suggested that women who got into unlicensed cabs were in some way responsible for what happened to them). She also discusses shifting gender norms and considering female self-defence (which is aimed at women and focuses on increasing self-esteem, assertiveness, physical skills and decreasing fear) as a way of combating attitudes.
It’s a very readable book because Vera-Gray deliberately wrote it this way but gives a reference for academics looking for something more in the academic vein and there are a lot of references and citations here if you are interested in delving more deeply into the topic. If I was going to be picky, then I sometimes found the various interviewees difficult to keep track of (I had to constantly turn back to the list to keep track of who was who) and I think I would have been interested in having the conclusion drawn own two chapters rather than one because it covers a lot of ground and I’d have been interested to have it gone into a bit more deeply than it is.
That said, although this is a difficult read at times, I think it’s one that women of all ages and backgrounds will be able to relate to and what I think is so great about it is how it reassures you that you are not unique in the behaviours you adopt to try and keep yourself safe and that you are not crazy for being so hyper vigilant.
The Verdict:
F Vera-Gray has worked for the Rape Crisis movement and is currently Deputy Director at the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University. This very readable and unfortunately highly relatable book looks at the steps that women take to avoid sexual violence in their day-to-day lives, drawing on interviews with 50 women from different age groups and backgrounds and showing how it permeates through the generations.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
