My history of utilising protest as a form of political action is quite frankly pants. It’s only in the last year that I’ve had the confidence to even contemplate going on marches and each time I’ve tried nothing has quite worked – RTN London 07 I was ill and couldn’t march, Million Women Rise 08 I injured my ankle two days before the event and couldn’t walk for three months never mind march, RTN Oxford 08 my friend and I got the date entirely wrong and took our kids to the fireworks display only to turn up the following evening and realise we had the date wrong.
So I was pretty determined to make RTN London 08. And make it I did, and so did the 1,999 other women who gathered in Whitehall Place yesterday evening to remind London that violence against women still happens and it’s still shouldn’t be.
The march was, in a word, amazing!! Everyone was really happy, the chanting was great, there was singing, the public seemed generally supportive and I got to meet some really nice people.The only downsides for me really was the random guy who accused us of ‘demonising gender’ and the conflict between the sex workers rights group and the rest of the marching body.
Whilst I am strongly in favour of sex workers rights and am pro porn I do think that a march which is highlighting the need for an end to VAW is not the place for this conflict to be played out. I don’t know though, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a sex worker and thus have no subjective understanding of the need for sex workers rights, but I am deeply conflicted about where I stand on the tension that occurred on Saturday night.
Ending VAW is a massively important issue. 8 out of 10 women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime¹ and in the UK 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes and on average 2 women are killed a week by their former/current partner. Internationally VAW accounts for between 40- 70% of female homicide victims. This is in comparison to the figure for men which is 4-8% ². These figures for me indicate that this is a serious problem – and it’s something we need to do something about, whether that be by taking part in marches to highlight the issue or by fundraising for women’s shelters, rape crisis centres or otherwise.
On a person al note I’d like to say thanks to Louise and her husband for helping me GET to the march. I have issues with agrophobia- whilst I’m generally quite comfortable travelling on ‘known’ routes around my hometown or with my partner/friends, going to London on my own to places I am unfamiliar with is a real issue for me. Thanks are definately due to Louise and Matt for being supportive by text and for meeting me in Trafalgar Square and showing me where the march was and then introducing me to people so I didnt feel quite so ‘ARGHHHHHHH’ about the whole thing.
I’ll definitely be going to RTN next year…. and other accounts of the march can be found here, here and here .
¹Taken from Liz Kelly’s book ‘Surviving Sexual Violence
²From the Womens Aid website
http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic_violence_topic.asp?section=0001000100220036§ionTitle=Statistics