This article originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the original article here.
Over the past month, it’s felt like every day has brought a grim reminder of the dangers faced by women on our streets and in our homes. The inquest into the murder of the Epsom college headteacher, Emma Pattison, and her daughter; the conviction of the murderer of the charity worker Elizabeth McCann; the arguments over the release of Joanna Simpson’s killer; the life sentence awaiting the boyfriend of Elinor O’Brien, who stabbed her in a “rageful and violent attack”; the conviction of the serial rapist police officer David Carrick; and the murder of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey. And it’s two years since the disappearance of Sarah Everard, murdered after being stopped on her way home by the rogue police officer Wayne Couzens (affectionately known by his colleagues as “the rapist”).
Against the backdrop of these horrific headlines, I have been having more and more conversations with women about how they feel unsafe in the streets. We’ve exchanged stories of being followed and catcalled, of sharing Uber rides with each other and making sure we text when we’re home safe. We’ve lamented the increased risk of attack that trans women face, and how Black and minority ethnic women face the threat of both racism and misogyny. We’ve discussed the 800 Met police officers under investigation for domestic and sexual abuse, and what it means for women’s trust in the police – though that’s a privilege many women of colour have never had.
But in my recent conversations with some women about their feelings of safety, I have noticed underlying coded messages. They say things like “it’s a dodgy area”; that they “wouldn’t want to be alone around there”. They say they are scared of men in hoodies.
Some forego any pretence. One woman said to me: “I probably do find Black men in hoodies more scary.” Others admit they quicken their pace when they see a Black man walking down the street.
When women talk in general terms of “dodgy” areas or that some “types” of men feel scary, often a lightly masked stereotype has informed that fear. Studies have shown time and again that images of Black men were seen as larger, more threatening and potentially more harmful in an altercation than a white person. Being scared of certain areas where there are more of the “types” of men perceived as scary, then, becomes code for being more scared of Black and minority-ethnic men in public. When I’ve challenged these women, they protest: “It’s just the crime statistics!”, without acknowledging that behind these statistics lie stories of police harassment, ethnic profiling and racial criminalisation.
Studies have tried to get to the bottom of this. One, in 2014, questioned a group of women about their fear in public spaces and reported: “Racist comments came up in the discussion: although the young women acknowledged they were stereotypes, they conditioned their feelings anyway.” A study last year examined views of Australian women on street harassment and spoke of “some participants saying they felt unsafe or perceived behaviour as threatening because the person was ‘not like them’.”
I find that the women who speak to me in problematic terms are usually those who have either not spent much time in areas with a high minority-ethnic population, or are part of the gentrification of poorer neighbourhoods and are living side by side with different racial groups for the first time. These women would typically pride themselves on being “anti-racist” – they may even have joined the mass global outrage over police brutality against Black men and women in 2020. They may have dipped into an anti-racism reading list. Yet it seems they haven’t truly interrogated how racial bias has seeped into the way they perceive their own safety.
This racial stereotyping can lead to a very real feeling of fear and vulnerability in women. Because that feeling is so real, women find it hard when challenged to unpack what biases have informed that fear. There’s a sense of outrage that anyone would question a woman who says she feels unsafe. Yet I am not challenging the fact women feel unsafe in the streets. I am simply asking for women to look at how their prejudices may inform who they are fearful of and why.
There are consequences to making lazy generalisations about “areas” that seem scary, or the “types” of men who inhabit them. It’s part of the same stereotyping that leads to the violent overpolicing of Black men. The Metropolitan police, for example, are four times more likely to use force against Black people, because officers perceive them as “more threatening and aggressive”.
The impact of this coded fear of certain “types” of men in certain “areas” is clear: increased policing of these communities. That means more surveillance, more targeting and more racial profiling of groups who are already treated with greater suspicion and violence than their white counterparts. If the headlines have shown us anything, it’s that women’s fear shouldn’t be relegated to a specific type of person; that anyone is capable of violence towards women, from teachers to police officers to intimate partners.
The goal of women’s safety does not lie in racial stereotypes. We should instead direct our concern towards a culture of toxic masculinity that has seeped its way into every corner of society. It shows up as misogyny in our institutions, in our workplaces and in our schools. It can be seen in the normalisation of violence against women in our popular culture. It is rooted in rigid concepts of gender and “manhood” and is supported by a system that routinely fails to believe women, and that blames and intimidates them.
Everyone should be able to feel they can walk down the street without fearing attack, assault or humiliation. So when we tackle the very real issue of women’s safety, we have to avoid actions that make the streets more dangerous for others.
This is not a zero-sum problem: we can fight for women’s safety in the streets and avoid playing into racial stereotypes. To have a coherent, intersectional approach to women’s safety, we have to work towards building streets that are safer for all vulnerable groups.