OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER? THEN IT’S TIME TO SPEAK UPA game. Pretend for a moment, if your imagination can possibly stretch to such fantastical scenarios in these halcyon days, that one day life deals you this hand; an ill partner, a hell of a lot of overtime, and a deluge of domestic duties. Feeling stressed and overwhelmed after a tough day at work, do you: A: Hurry home, slide a pack of paracetamol under the bedroom door for your partner, check your emails as you feed the dog, read bedtime stories and try not to think about that shitty reply you just sent your boss, call the in-laws to update them on the patient, send a horribly emoillient Whatsapp to your boss full of wildly optimistic promises, empty the washing machine, realise the clothes have been in there since Saturday and are 20% mould, stuff them back in and switch it on, write EMPTY WASHING MACHINE in marker pen on your hand - and pour a fat glass of wine? B: Drive to Barnard Castle? C: Sexually assault someone on your way home? Daren Timson-Hunt - a senior government lawyer from London, chose C, filming up the skirt of an unsuspecting woman during his commute. While he was sentenced to 60 hours community service for upskirting, he wasn’t struck off because at the time he was “working very hard...while subject to domestic pressures” as his wife was ill. These “unusual personal circumstances,” the tribunal concluded last year, “provide a reasonable explanation for the behaviour.” I found myself contemplating Timson-Hunt again in recent weeks (not something I’d recommend you do for too long) while watching the explosion of attention around Everyone’s Invited. What began as a website for girls’ to share their stories of sexual harrassment, rape and, you guessed it, upskirting, by boys in British schools and universities has led to over 14,000 anonymous testimonies and turned in to a global anti-rape movement. Much of the blame for the boys’ behaviour has centred on the combination of porn and smart phones, and hands up, I’m no apologist for either. Like countless other parents, I swiftly added ‘discuss consent’ to my to-do list (it’s laugh a minute round here, believe me), drafted an email to our school essentially saying the same, and wondered if an old Nokia 3310 might be lurking in a drawer for when we finally relent and give our kids a phone. But sexual entitlement isn't just entrenched in school cliques or spawned from smart phones. Society has myriad other ways of telling boys and girls that female bodies are fair game, and it’s been doing so for generations. The reason Timson-Hunt’s case came to mind for me wasn’t because his was the worst of the many sexual crimes we’ve heard about over the last year (more’s the pity). But because it felt like one of the most pernicious in terms of how it was normalised, showing boys how low the bar is for ‘reasonable’ behaviour, and reminding girls just how much they’re expected to endure. “Do as I say, not as I do” has never been a very effective way of influencing anyone. And yet that’s the message we’re sending kids when a ‘hectic schedule’ is ‘reasonable’ grounds for a man to assault a woman. No wonder then that many of the girls posting on Everyone’s Invited say they felt like they had to comply with a boy’s demands because he seemed angry or upset. ‘I’m not sure if this really counts,’ write others, before outlining some horrible anecdote. So while we’re applauding this generation for so often mobilising en masse and speaking out about many issues, let’s remember that on this one they’re still second guessing themselves. And why wouldn’t they be, when such mixed messages are so publicly given? Amid all this came the strident voice of Sharon Stone, in a slew of interviews publicising her no-holds barred memoir The Beauty of Living Twice. In it, she reveals how she was tricked in to exposing herself in that shot from Basic Instinct, and had no idea what the camera had captured until she saw the final cut. Normally I find reminders of how little has changed for women soul-crushingly depressing, but alongside the E.I phenomenon, her stories felt like solidarity. Reading her excoriating takedown of sexism in the film industry in this extract from her book (which really does have to be seen to be believed), all I could think was ‘I hope those girls are reading this too.’ Because it doesn’t matter if you’re on a film set, a train or a smart phone, male entitlement to access female bodies without consent is alive and well at any age, and at every level of society. Just in case you were wondering. And it’s not just one generation’s responsibility to call it out. Just as boys need positive role models right now, so do girls. Not to show them how to behave - god knows there’s enough of that around - but to show them that they’re not imagining it, that it’s not ok, and it never has been. Who better than women like Stone, who thanks to age can speak with certainty and a new found fearlessness? Who better than women like us? “Yes, there have been many points of view on this topic,” said Stone about that infamous scene, “but since I’m the one with the vagina in question, let me say: The other points of view are bullshit.” If that’s not a mood for a multi-gen movement, I don’t know what is. You in?
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