Feeling safe should be our right
WOMEN everywhere will be glad to hear the pledge by Alan Billings that he ‘wants South Yorkshire to be a place where women and girls both feel safe, and are safe’ because in this climate violence against women seems to be worse than ever. Despite the bra-burning of years past, women – sorry ladies – will never be equal to men because it’s like comparing an apple with a pear, we are fundamentally different.
Can you remember the last time you read about a sexual assault on a man by a woman because I can’t?
Women will never feel safe walking home alone. We might have a legal leg to stand on if we’re accosted in the workplace, but on the streets – forget it.
As a society, bringing boys up to respect women, and not cross boundaries is a great start. Men calling out men is a massive part of the solution as men are both the problem and ironically the answer to it.
I know men who, when they see a lone female on the same stretch of road as them, cross over so she won’t feel intimated.
We’ve been walking the dog in the park where there has been a lone woman walking hers and a solitary man with no dog hanging around and the other half has engineered our route so he could keep an eye out for her, at a distance not to alarm her.
But human beings still retain a lot of primal urges from their old days living in caves and some men are less able to control them – and that’s an impossible problem to tackle seeing as many thousands of years hasn’t watered them down in relation.
And I do hope that women feel safe in reporting cases to the police. Many don’t want to trouble them and embarrass themselves. Many are scared it will only make things worse. It takes some women a lot of courage to ring up and report incidents, I know this for a cold, hard fact.
Women need to feel they can trust the police when they have to call them and not be dismissed as time-wasters or blamed for ‘driving men to do what they do’. I hope that’s also on your to-do list, Dr Billings.
■ THERE have been some spooky goings-on at Gee Vee Travel coach depot at Stairfoot.
A paranormal group went in to investigate, so I read in last week’s Chron. It brought back fond memories of a group who turned up at Barnsley Antiques Centre a few years ago. ‘Cum art ‘n show thisen’ shouted one of the investigators to the air in broadest Barnsley.
The entity didn’t materialise. I suspect it was from out of the area and hadn’t a clue what it was being asked to do.
■ Don’t forget I’ll be at the Book Vault in the morning from 9.30am until 11.45am.
Do support a local author flogging her 20th (I know!) book please. I have goody bags!