Page 96 - Writes of Passage
P. 96
from THE GUARDIAN
[On unasked-for attention in the street] I don’t take it as a compliment. Because it’s not a compliment. It’s a statement of power. It’s a way of letting me know that a man has the right to my body, a right
to discuss it, analyse it, appraise it, and let me or anybody else in the vicinity know his verdict, whether I like it or not.
Laura Bates
The echo between the pioneer of women’s rights and freedoms, Mary Wollstonecraft, writing in 1792, and Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism movement, writing in 2014, gives me pause.
It turns out that women have been saying the same thing about unasked-for compliments from men for more than 200 years, and it is still necessary to say it.
94
