The Idea that Men Aren't Responsible for Their Actions Needs to Get in the Bin (Along with Sarah Pochin's Stupid Video).

When I was about 11 years old I was sitting on a bench at the station in my school uniform, waiting for my train home, when I was approached by a random man.

‘You alright?’ he asked, smiling.

‘Yeah’. I replied, as he sat down next to me.

‘I love you’ he said suddenly. ‘I love you all over’ he continued, looking me up and down.

I jumped up in alarm and started walking away from him, fast. He stood too and began following me. ‘Come to my place later, yeah?’ he shouted. ‘Eight o clock! My place! Eight o clock!’

I ran into the ticket office and fortunately he remained on the platform. It’s worth noting that there were several people who watched this exchange take place and did nothing. Shakily, I told a member of station staff what had happened.

‘I know that man’ she said. He has mental health problems. You have to understand that some people are a bit nutty’. I came away feeling that I had been berated for being ableist and that I was silly to allow myself to become so shaken up by the whole thing.

About a year later, my friend and I were walking through the village where we both lived, again in our school uniforms. It was raining and we didn’t have an umbrella. An old man pulled up next to us in his car and asked us if we wanted a lift.

‘No, thank you’ we said, defiantly and in unison.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘It’s raining! Come on, get in the car. You don’t have to be afraid of me’.

We ran away and hid in a nearby garden.

Remembering a PHSE lesson where we’d been told that if anything like this ever happened to us we should report it, my friend and I decided to ring our local police station. We didn’t think to get the man’s number plate but, based on our description of him and the car the policeman we spoke to said he thought he knew who the driver was. Apparently, he regularly offered lifts to girls and had been reported before.

‘He’s very old and from a different time’ the officer said. ‘He doesn’t understand that what he is doing is wrong. He’s harmless’.

When I was 16 I got a job working as a waitress in a country pub. A group of middle aged men came in and I went to take their order. As I was standing at their table with my notepad poised, one of them put his hand on my bum and left it there. I remember being shocked at the audacity of it, but some kind of instinct kicked in and I turned to him and said, very loudly, ‘excuse me, can you take your hand off my bottom, please?’. I believed he would be embarrassed in front of his friends and perhaps apologise. Instead, there was a beat of silence before everyone carried on as if nothing had happened, apart from the groper-in-question who went to the bar and reported me to my boss.

I was called into the office where I was told in no uncertain terms that these men were about to spend a great deal of money, that the customer is always right and that I should stop making a nuisance of myself. ‘If you felt uncomfortable you should have discreetly had a word with me’ my boss added, as a rather unconvincing afterthought. ‘I would have had a word with him tomorrow when he is sober. They’re all drunk right now and drunk men do silly things’.

Even though these incidents were several decades ago, I remember them all in vivid detail and doing so still makes my pulse quicken. I think it’s because these were the formative experiences in which I learned how far the world goes to excuse men for their bad behaviour. Most women I know have several stories like this.

Last week, Sarah Pochin (a Reform MP probably best known for saying that seeing black and brown people in televised advertising ‘drives her mad’) posted a video to her socials in which she said ‘England won the football last night and thank goodness they did because on the occasions when England lose their football matches incidents of domestic violence go through the roof. So boys, keep winning’.

There were so many things wrong with this ‘analysis’, not least of all that it isn’t even factually correct – intimate partner violence increases whenever England play football and whether they win, lose or draw. There was also the breezy tone with which Pochin delivered her missive which, as several commentators pointed out, sharply contrasts when members of her party discuss VAWG by immigrants or Muslims. It’s almost as though the severity of the offence depends entirely on the identity of the perpetrator in their world view.

But most of all, Pochin’s video message has been criticised for suggesting that abuse is the fault and responsibility of the England football squad, rather than abusers. It compounded the dangerous notion that men (because most football fans and approximately 93% of known domestic violence perpetrators are male) aren’t in control of their actions and therefore should not be held accountable for them.

If we want to see any progress in survivors receiving justice, this archaic idea needs to get in the bin.

The National Domestic Abuse Helpline is open 24/7 on 0808 200 247.