I won’t tolerate it any more

explain blue to someone who’s colour-blind.

I haven’t ever been sexually assaulted. I’m fortunate enough to not make up the screeds of women who’ve been violated. Sure, when I was 12 an older man made lewd comments to me in a pool, but I told my teacher and he was asked to leave.

I’ve never been sexually assaulted but, yes, when I was 11, my 16-year-old sister took me to see

and a man sat next to her in the empty theatre and masturbated, forcing her to decide if we should leave and risk me finding out what’s happening, or stay and allow me to be in blissful ignorance. She chose the latter and then didn’t tell anyone, because it was just ‘‘one of those things’’.

I’ve never been sexually assaulted, but I guess, when I was 18, a stranger did hop into my cab at the lights and refuse to get out. And yes, I pleaded with the taxi driver to pull over and let me out instead, but I was ignored.

And yes, when we got home the stranger got out too, forcing me to make a break for inside to wake up my dad so he could confront the stranger who’d followed me home and was now waiting in our driveway.

And now that I think about it, I’ve never been sexually assaulted but when I was 19 I did get too drunk then wake up the next morning unable to remember anything but covered in drawings and writing all over my body.

All of these things happened and I am not a person who has been sexually assaulted. I am not a person who contributes to the staggering statistics. I am a person who has just lived in the world as a woman and accepted that there is danger, and there is a range of behaviours I should be prepared to accept. I was taught to normalise my own vulnerability and that’s exactly what I did.

I understand that people may say I’m too sensitive, or I should relax. I could do that. But I would ask, how hard is it not to make sexual comments to a 12-year-old girl, how hard is it not to masturbate at a kids’ movie, how hard is it to not take a drunk person’s clothes off, how hard is it not to get in a cab and follow someone home?

People talk so much about the #MeToo movement and the effect it’s having on men. We talk about how it’s making them more awakened, more aware. But what we don’t talk about is how it’s having that effect on women too. Women are becoming awakened to the ways in which we’ve allowed ourselves to be treated like s ....

If the #MeToo movement doesn’t change the outlook of men, it will have at least changed mine. Because I am awake now. The spectrum of behaviour I will tolerate or brush off is narrower. I have grown from this movement because I have felt the anger that resides when you’re ignored and it has given me more empathy.

I’m a better person because #MeToo has made me reflect on society, who I am implicitly oppressing, and confront what role I should play in redressing this. All I ask, at the very least, is this same reflection from the men in our lives.