You certainly don’t need to be taking any lectures on the underlying fear in all women from a privileged, middle-class, middle-aged man living in a safe village in the Home Counties, and one with two sons, to boot, not daughters. And you won’t get one.
So I’ll just let the angry eloquence of an Instagram post that one of those sons forwarded to me this afternoon explain what, until now, I have never truly got. You are probably light years ahead of me in all this already, but here it is, for what it is worth:
‘FFS lads. Looks like we have to break this down again, so how about this: there are about 500 species of shark. Only three eat people. So yeah, your chances of being eaten by a shark are pretty slim. But that doesn’t change the fact that the chance exists. Nor does it mean that if you go for a swim, and a big fish with a fuck off fin starts swimming towards you, you can go: ‘Oh well. Statistically that’s probably not a Great White, no need to panic.’ Now imagine that you find yourself surrounded by sharks, not just when you are swimming, but all the time. Yes, sharks have legs in this analogy, but just go with it. Sure, most sharks are harmless. But literally every person you know has been hassled, attacked and followed home by a shark. And/or forced to listen to a shark’s shit jokes about eating people like you, while all the other sharks in the room just laughed and ignored it. OK, it’s possible that we’re taking the shark thing too far. But our hearts are broken today, and they are full of rage. Shout-out to the nice sharks, thanks very much for not eating us. But please stop telling us not to be afraid of the Great Whites.’
RIP Sarah Everard.
We let you down.
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