Sara Everard. Blessing Olusegun. Nicole Smallman. Bibaa Henry. Julia James. Sabina Nessa.

ix names belonging to six victims that have made headlines in the past nine months, which – on reading – likely elicit a visceral response: your chest tightens, your stomach clenches, the hairs on your forearms stand to attention. But these are just the women whose cases made national news; the tip of a terrifying iceberg that represents the experiences of women at the hands of violent men. Scratch the surface to look beneath the nightmarish headlines and there’s a torrent of pain that chips away at our collective wellbeing.

According to data from UN Women UK, 71% of women have been subject to sexual harassment, defined as uninvited, unwelcome verbal or physical behaviour of a sexual nature – such frightening experiences because they balance on a knife edge between the seemingly trivial and utterly devastating. This year in particular, a line has been drawn from experiences such as unwanted sexual comments, catcalls, groping, public flashing – rates of which have increased since Covid hit UK shores – to fatal acts of male violence. On the streets, yes, but also in places where women learn and earn; in March, more than 8,000 allegations of school-age sexual abuse were made by pupils on the website Everyone’s Invited. April saw female workers in the TV industry accuse bosses of protecting ‘sexual predator’ actors and producers, and a June report revealed 60% of nurses have been sexually harassed while doing their job. The risk intensifies for Black and mixed heritage women, those wearing religious dress, lesbian and trans women.

It begs the question: what impact is this destructive threat – whether you encounter it first-hand or via alarming headlines and anecdotes from others – having on your mental health? And what can women do collectively to help keep ourselves feeling strong and, crucially, supported?

UNDER THREAT

In the year ending March 2020, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated that nearly five million women had been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. A quarter of us will suffer a form of domestic violence and one woman is killed every three days. These offences are almost always committed by men. Given this omnipresent threat, it’s sensical that as a woman, from a young age, you’ve been primed to pick up on suggestions of sexual harassment – and protect yourself from it. Ever since you were told by a wellmeaning parent to wipe off that make-up in case it attracted some unwanted attention or instructed to wear your school skirt past your knees.

‘This behaviour sends a subliminal message that there’s something out there to fear,’ says Dr Fiona Vera-gray, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Durham University and author of The Right Amount of Panic (£11.99, Policy Press). It also encourages young women to see sexual harassment as an inevitable part of growing up. Women and girls must constantly risk-assess their environment for potential threats, then change their behaviour, appearance or actions in order to avoid them. Sarah Everard’s disappearance, in particular, sparked a collective conversation about how the precautions women routinely take – flat shoes, keys between fingers, texts upon arrival – are symptomatic of a chronic anxiety around feeling safe in public.

So, how can women’s emotional labour of self-protection affect our sense of self? ‘It will erode or change it,’ Jayne Booth – an integrative psychotherapist, trauma specialist and sexual assault survivor – tells Women’s

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Health. ‘Women compromise – in small, daily and more macro ways – and change themselves significantly in an attempt to avoid harm.’ Citing the ubiquity of stories about a murdered girl or woman (think: HBO’S Mare Of Easttown and true crime podcasts West Cork and Serial) alongside mainstream news reporting, Booth argues we’re fed a media diet where women are passive victims of male violence. There was much discussion about whether this was true in the reporting of August’s tragic shooting of five people in Plymouth by

Jake Davison. Davison, whose victims included his own mother, was understood to be interacting with ‘incel’ (involuntary celibate) culture online, which often includes forums where men offload their anger and resentment towards women, who they feel find them unattractive and who they view as lesser beings. For a minority of incels, the anger turns to violence.

ALARM BELLS

When you feel threatened – by a stare, catcall, disturbing headline or stalking scene in a TV drama – your body’s alarm system kicks into gear. ‘A brain region called the amygdala signals to the prefrontal cortex, the area essential for

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cognitive function, to shut down as the body gears up for fight or flight,’ explains Booth. ‘This causes the release of stress hormones including cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline.’ This is no bad thing in and of itself. But when the brain’s self-protection protocol is repeated frequently, it causes harmful structural changes. ‘Each time the amygdala is forced to process fear, it causes brain changes associated with trauma,’ she adds. ‘Different parts of it are rewired – so your brain will already be on alert for your trauma response to kick in again when you encounter a similarly threatening situation.’ This may manifest as faster breathing, a surge in heart rate and the inability to think and act decisively.

The consequences of a constantly stimulated trauma response are significant. One study in the journal Sex Roles found that repeated experiences of sexual objectification left women with a hypervigilant view of their own appearance, which led to body image issues, while another study, in 2018, found that women who have experienced sexual harassment were twice as likely to have elevated blood pressure and insomnia, as well as an increased risk of depression and anxiety many years later. Sexual harassment has also been linked to long-term

physical conditions, such as chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome and headaches, to name but a few.

Intimate relationships can suffer, too. ‘If a woman has bad memories of being catcalled, then her male partner trying to sext or talk dirty might feel triggering and make her uncomfortable,’ says Dr Laura Vowels, a sex and relationships therapist, ‘even if you know that partner to be loving and respectful.’ Neuroimaging research supports her view. Scientists at the University of Geneva showed film footage of male-female interactions – some menacing, some positive, some neutral – to a group of women, half of whom were diagnosed with PTSD stemming from male violence. This group, the researchers noted, had impaired social perception – their brains displayed a fear response not only to the menacing scenes, but also to a variety of positive male-female interactions.

SAFE KEEPING

The horrors of this situation worsen knowing how little wider society appears to stand up for women. Even, in the case of Everard’s killer PC Wayne Couzens, how deadly perpetrators are able to exist, unchecked, within the very institutions meant to protect the public. Rape prosecutions are down in England and Wales: in the year to March 2020, 58,856 cases were recorded, but only 2,102 subsequent prosecutions. ‘The mental health cost of feeling like you won’t be believed is huge,’ Booth argues. ‘It eats away at core beliefs you hold – for example, if I have been wronged then the perpetrator will face justice – and cements a subliminal message that you and your rights are not important.’ Feeling like no one out there has your back adds to the precarity of existing freely and safely as a woman in public.

Then there’s the biting reality that some victims seem to matter more than others. Many comparisons have been made between the attention given by the police and media to Everard’s case and that of Blessing Olusegun, 21, a Black woman who went missing and was later found dead in September 2020. ‘A Black woman would have to consider long and hard whether the police would take her

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case seriously when she knows it’s an institution still rife with racism and misogyny,’ laments psychotherapist Lorraine Green. ‘It compounds a sense of otherness, unworthiness and futility, which could mean that the psychological fallout of experiencing male violence – or just existing in a culture where it’s an omnipresent threat – is greater for women of colour.’

POWER TO YOU

At Women’s Health, we encourage you to take personal responsibility for your body and mind, and equip you with the tools to make change. But that doesn’t quite stack up here; to suggest ways you can protect yourself from the dire consequences of sexual violence and harassment would be fallacy. Righting these wrongs requires systemic change and action on the part of policymakers, law enforcers – and ordinary men. Urgently. We can, however, pass on some evidence-based, expert-recommended suggestions that you can employ to counter the impact that the threat of male violence has on your health.

For women who have experienced rape or sexual assault, Booth recommends seeking out a traumainformed counsellor, who’s registered with an industry body such as the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. ‘Regular mindfulness exercises have also been scientifically proven to soothe anxiety both in women who have been subject to male violence, as well as those who fear attacks,’ she adds. Research in the journal Psychological Trauma found that eight weeks on a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course (weekly 120-minute sessions and one intensive four-hour ‘retreat’) reduced symptoms of stress, depression, anxiety and PTSD – along with levels of inflammatory markers in the blood – for a group of trauma-exposed women. A team at Johns Hopkins University found the practice reduced the impact of childhood trauma in adults, while regular mindfulness interventions increased the self-efficacy of women struggling with PTSD after intimate partner violence, reducing reactivity and the intensity of anxiety attacks.

Booth recommends mindfulness exercises

(try Headspace or Insight Timer) and distraction techniques (pay close attention to something beautiful, be it the way the afternoon sun glints off an office block, or the fresh, ready-to-unfurl leaves on your potted peace lily) to her clients when their fear response sets in, and suggests you use them, too. ‘The aim is to get the amygdala to pause its sounding of the alarm and, in doing so, stop the release of cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline,’ she explains. ‘Of course these aren’t solutions to the male violence epidemic. But they’re tools that can dial down its psychological fallout.’

When it comes to managing your media consumption, Dr Vera-grey recommends following your brain and body’s own cues. ‘Some women find reading others’ experiences of sexual harassment helpful because it validates their experiences,’ she says. Researchers have also posited that so many women engage with true crime because it allows them to explore the vulnerability they feel as a woman in public and process their own anxieties. ‘But others may find [engaging with alarming news or other stories] unhelpful because it makes them feel like the outside world is a really scary place,’ Dr Vera-grey adds.

If you’re struggling with a sense of futility, she recommends getting involved in activism – signing petitions, joining protests, writing to your MP – provided you’re feeling up to it. ‘I love watching young women organising the Reclaim The Streets marches; it’s powerful to see people say, “We’re not scared.” But many women are scared – and that’s okay,’ says Booth. ‘It’s perfectly logical: living with the threat of male violence is not a pleasant place to be. But healing starts with an acceptance of your feelings – not denial of them.’ So, it’s with sharing, communing and healing in mind that we asked four women to share their experiences of how the threat of male violence has impacted their mental health.