letters that you'll never read

From living in a country where you can pass through the self-service checkouts at a supermarket with alcohol and not even be asked your age, back to living in one where you have to produce I.D just to buy a pack of painkillers. 

I’M 21 FUCKING YEARS OLD, JUST GIVE ME MY IBRUPROFENNNNNN

France > England. 

For some reason the Radio 4 documentary ‘My Name Is Not Hey Baby’ came up in conversation with my parents this evening. None of us had heard it but we all knew what it was about: street harrassment or ‘cat calling’. 

My mum announced that she thinks ‘cat calls’ can be considered a compliment. I stared at her for a second or two in disbelief and then got really fucking angry. She couldn’t really understand why I was reacting this way and began her whole ‘roll your eyes at the oversensitive raging feminist daughter’ routine, so I did what I thought would be most effective: I told my parents, word for word, the kinds of things men have said to me in the street or in public over the past few years. 

Off the top of my head I can remember the time a vile, pissed middle-aged man who must have been about my Dad’s age shouted “Hey love, want to sit on my face?” at me as I walked to the train station with two friends. 

I can remember the student who whispered “I want to lick your pussy” as I sat back down next to my (at the time) boyfriend and his group of male friends in a pub in Birmingham, knowing full well I wouldn’t start a confrontation because it was my word against his. And anyway, what can you prove from a whisper? 

I can sure as hell remember the group of about 20 guys on an Otley Run in Leeds who cornered me metres from my house, scaring the shit out of me before one of them got closer and shouted in my face “How much for a wank, broad?” 

I can remember the car of teenagers who drove slowly beside me as I walked home after uni one day, passenger window down, wolf whistling and shouting “Get your tits out”, “Get ‘em out” over and over until I finally got away. 

I can remember walking home in the dark after a concert in Lille only to jump out of my skin when I realised there was an old guy tugging away furiously at his dick in the fenced off carpark parallel to the pavement I was walking on, his vile body and face suddenly inches from mine. 

Then there are the endless sneering “Alright, love?”s and “Smile, love”s, the truck drivers who beep their deafening horns as I’m crossing the road to see me shriek with fright, the wolf whistles and the dog calls. 

These things have felt intimidating, terrifying, ridiculous, pathetic. They have made me feel powerless, angry and sad. But, Mother, I have never once felt complemented by this attention. Because it’s not a fucking compliment.