Planet-walking

This rant was written for our writers’ group, for the topic of ‘Planet Walking’, but it explains some of the feelings behind Cass’s newest adventure, The Shetland Sea Murders.

Remember when we were young .... It was like another planet, those heady days of glowing futures. A man had walked on the moon, and Tomorrow’s World promised all sorts of revolutions: flying cars, household robots, video telephones. Mini-skirted sixties dollybirds had fought battles over employment and sexist language, and now it was official: girls could do anything. Suzi Quatro wore leathers and played a bass guitar. Our teachers talked about us training to be doctors, lawyers, scientists. There was even a woman Prime Minister. The world was ours for the taking.

            The bad old ways still lingered, of course. You knew that if you had to stand on a bus some old geezer would fondle your bottom. You’d avoid the streets where there was building going on, because of the cat-calling. While I was at University, we didn’t get into taxis alone, and you wouldn’t in your wildest dreams expect women in films to have a serious conversation that wasn’t about men, or, for that matter, to get away from the villain by themselves. Only bad tough girls learnt self-defence, because, hey, you might hurt some poor guy who was just wanting to check you were okay. We still laughed politely at sexist jokes, and my first head teacher didn’t like female staff to wear trousers.

            But it was going to be good. The bosses, the law, the Government, the police couldn’t discriminate against women any more. There were laws against violent husbands, protection for battered wives. The Marital Rape bill was passed, and how you were dressed was no longer material in an assault case. Women had economic independence to support themselves. Insurance companies said they were safer drivers. Clare Francis sailed solo across the Atlantic; Junko Tabei climbed Everest.

For many years I kept believing that things were better for women; except that when I went out into the world, it didn’t seem like it. I tried to have a drink with my daughter Marnie in London and in every pub we went into, a couple of men came up to us assuming we wanted company. I was disbelieved by the repair man in Televiradio when I described what was wrong with my video. I took it for granted that it wasn’t safe to go out alone after dark in Edinburgh. Under all the lip-service to women’s lib men were buying brides from the Phillipines or Russia. You still heard dismissive comments about women drivers. Philip and I joked about the way the plumber only came when he phoned, after me calling twice. The surgery chased him up for ‘well man’ tests on blood pressure and heart, while I had to go to a doctor three times to get anything done: the first time to be told I was imagining it, the second time to be told it would go away by itself, the third time for action.

Then I started learning about women’s suffrage, which hadn’t been so much as mentioned in school history lessons at my girls’ school. I’d thought of it as a brief Edwardian movement. I learned that it had taken sixty years, sixty years, of fighting to get the vote. I read the speeches of the men who objected to each bill. If there had been cars back in 1860 they’d have argued against women driving. I learned that Parliament gave the 1882 Women’s Property bill two years to take effect, so that ‘unfortunate’ men who’d engaged themselves to an heiress would have time to extricate themselves now they wouldn’t get her money. I learned that Cambridge didn’t give degrees to women until after World War II.

Surely, though, attitudes had changed in the mass, even if there were dinosaurs around.

Then Trump was elected in America. That was when my cosy, liberal world-view cracked. This orange-faced vulgarian was not only saying things that I had assumed would be unsayable, but a voting majority agreed with him. Then the abuse scandals began. The paedophile priests made the headlines, but it gradually became clear that no children’s home, no young offenders’ unit, no care home, was exempt. It wasn’t isolated instances, it was endemic. Men in power abused children; and worse, they abused them with the compliance of their institutions. If the BBC wasn’t actually complicit in Jimmy Saville’s behaviour, they knew about it, witness after witness said, and they didn’t stop it.

After that came #MeToo. It wasn’t just children; it was a huge number of female subordinates in offices, in industries, in Westminster, in Hollywood. Men in all walks of life were still treating women as objects. Nor is it just older men. Appallingly, in the wake of the death of Sarah Everard, schoolgirls are now speaking out about the sexism they endure on a daily basis from their male classmates, and the expectations of sexual behaviour from boys who watch online porn. This is worse rather than better. The only thing on women’s side was that now, if they could bring a strong enough case, the law might protect them. Except, according to QC Helena Kennedy’s 2019 Misjustice: How British justice is failing women, it might not. If you’re female, your chances of justice don’t depend on your case but on how you’re presented. Of course that’s true for men too, but it’s particularly important for women to conform to the judge’s image of a Good Wife and Mother. Being white helps, of course. If he can’t imagine you having tea with his own mother, you’re guilty. If you’d be a bad influence on his own sweet daughters, you get an extra five years. On top of the slanted justice system there’s the completely biased trial by media: blaming, shaming, smear campaigns, cancelling.

Then there’s the doctor thing, which began for me when I was eighteen, and was told symptoms of TB in one lung were’nerves’. Two days ago I was sanding the boat, and got highly poisonous antifouling paint dust blown into my eyes. I rinsed them, taking care not to rub them, but they still felt gummy and gritty the next morning. I phoned the surgery to see if Judith, the nurse, could rinse them properly, and was given the locum. He told me that the reason my eyes were red was because I’d been rubbing them, and offered antiseptic ointment. Clearly written among the instructions was: Tell your doctor if you have something in your eye. I tried, dear readers, I tried.

It wasn’t just that somehow I was making doctors think I was a hypochondriac. Baroness Cumbersedge’s report (2020) on the side-effects experienced from three different medications for women homed in on this: the women went to their GPs, their consultants, their surgeons, saying there was something wrong and were dismissed, or given anti-depressants, or offered further medication. Her conclusion was clear: overwhelmingly, the medical professionals weren’t listening to women.

Then I read Caroline Perez’s Invisible Women (2019) and found out about all the other people who don’t take account of women. The scientists, who don’t test medication on women, not even on female mice. Our hormones spoil their results. The car manufacturers, who make car safety features to suit an average male (women are 50% more likely to be injured in a crash), and whose female crash dummies are scaled-down male figures. The police riot-gear manufacturers whose female suits are small-sized men’s wear – that killed one police officer when a knife went in at the side of her breastplate. The town planners who create dark alleways and tunnels leading to bus stops. The bus planners whose routes go into the town centre and out again, not caring that mostly women need to go sideways to their childcare or ageing relative. The male-run offices whose shelves are set too high, whose thermometers are set too low and whose parking spaces don’t include ones near the door for pregnant women with swollen ankles.

The reason I often feel that I’m living in a world where somehow I don’t fit is because it wasn’t designed for me. It was designed for the other half of the human race.

Soon after that a man died, horribly, in police custody. There was rioting in the streets. Black Lives matter. Yes, of course they do. But as I watched the hysterical rioting, part of me was screaming, Women’s lives matter. Two women a week, 104 a year, die at the hands of a spouse or partner. The police receive a phone call every minute about domestic violence. Where’s the rioting about that? Where was the public outrage when a police-officer who strangled his mistress walked free? Sorry, m’Lud, I lost my temper and didn’t realised I’d injured her. Trafficking of women and children is now a world-wide industrial-scale business. What about that? Let’s not talk about how the police officers who joined the Black Lives Matter protests responded to the Sarah Everard vigil. She was only a woman, not worth gathering for, and, besides, it was half past nine, she shouldn’t have been out alone at that time of night – yes, people genuinely said that. Since when was nine thirty “too late to be out”?

At the other end of the scale the little pinpricks gather. That wretched locum. My beloved church, to which I’ve tried to give a lifetime of service, is to use a more modern translation of the Bible. The Bishops of England and Wales opted for one which still translates the neutral Greek word to address a mixed gathering as ‘Brothers’. The Scottish bishops have followed suit; only the Irish are considering retaining the gender-inclusive New Jerusalem version. That feels like a kick in the teeth to me. Worst of all, I don’t believe that it was done in malice. They genuinely didn’t think it was important.

Somehow this isn’t the planet I thought I was on. The world isn’t moving forwards. For women it’s going backwards; no, for us all it’s going backwards. Our civil liberties are being snatched from us in a frightening way, and this base-rock of misogeny makes me afraid. The Handmaid’s Tale is a nightmare but it begins very simply: close the women’s bank accounts. Do you think they wouldn’t do it? Do you think we could stop them if they did? After all these years of arguing that women are people too seem to have failed, is there any way we can change the hearts and minds of men?

But to end on a cheerful note: let’s hear it for Switzerland. On 30th March this year, the Swiss army finally issued female underwear to its women soldiers.