Poem: asking for it
girls aren’t afraid of the dark,
they’re afraid of who’s in the dark.
they’re afraid of the strange space between themselves
and whatever is waiting for them, in shadows.
they’re scared of what they cannot see because they see the rest so clearly.
they’re scared of the monster man in the dark.
everyone is scared of something, the saying goes.
but men do not fear like women because female fear is specific.
it’s navy blue and smooth and bleeds like thick syrup down our entire bodies,
coating us until its residue can be felt everywhere.
it’s rooted in vague stories about women driving alone down dark roads
and bad men with sick intentions hiding in the backseat.
it’s based on horror stories that have been passed down to us by grandmothers
about strangers in bushes and silly girls who walked home on their own.
it’s the tales we told at sleepovers as children about phone calls from hidden numbers and those familiar footsteps that seem to follow us down every silent alleyway.
it’s little red riding hood foolishly straying from the path
and handing herself over to the wolf, naive and innocent and “asking for it”.
“if a man’s ever following you,
put your keys between your fingers and turn it into a knife”.
isn’t it ironic that women have been taught to weaponise domestic objects? that’s why female fear is political.
it’s wrapped up in strange sentences that convince us we’re crazy,
or exaggerating, or lying entirely.
fear keeps us obedient.
it keeps us complicit in limiting behaviours and tells us we can’t walk our dogs after the sun has gone down,
it tells us to fake phone calls with imaginary football-playing boyfriends in taxis when we feel the driver’s stare penetrating us through the rear view mirror. our fear is camouflaged.
it’s been romanticised and twisted into something wholly unrecognisable,
but it’s terror all the same.
women’s fear is still fear, but it’s been made palatable to men,
so that even our terror asserts male dominance.
it has us needing men to walk us home,
it has us texting him at 11.45pm saying “babe, come over. i’m scared”.
It has the half-naked girl in the horror film crying “hello? hello... who’s there?” down the stairs, clutching a wooden spoon
whilst waiting for the policeman to come and rescue her.
female fear is not simply an experience, it’s an aesthetic.
our fear is so sensationalised that the threats have become mythology. we’re so scared of the stranger hiding in the bushes
that we’ve dismissed the creepy teacher who touches our waists
and the jealous boyfriend who controls what we wear.
they’ve told us we’ve lied and misinterpreted the situation. they’ve told us that “boys will be boys”.
they’ve woven this narrative into every facet of lives, hoping that we don’t realise that the danger is real.
but we’ve been looking in the wrong direction.
whilst we ran home clutching our absurd DIY key-knives and
looking over our shoulder at every shadow,
we locked the doors securely behind us and didn’t notice
that what we feared was already inside.
as we climbed into bed with a man whose fist talks more than his mouth and felt his hands slide over our stomachs,
we realised that all the stories were wrong.
little red riding hood’s wolf never dressed up as the grandmother,
he dressed as the woodcutter -
saving her from abstract monsters only to tear her apart
and make her thank him for it later.
it’s here that the stories have failed us,
when we’ve unknowingly locked ourselves up with our nightmares, surrendering ourselves right into the monster’s cave.
