On Saturday, the Long Suffering Husband and I had a rare argument. It was a disagreement of such magnitude that I'm still not sure I've forgiven him now. It was also rather embarrassing because you don't expect to find yourself on a footpath angrily shouting at someone you love.
We were walking the dog. These are the times when I try to start a conversation. When you are spending all your time with someone there can be a tendency to run out of things to say. If I left him to start the conversation then we would only talk about food.
"What do you fancy for dinner?" he would ask and the conversation would be doomed from then on because I haven't really fancied eating anything for the last three years.
So I try to find some little thing in the news to discuss.
"What do you think about the police turning down this Clapham Common vigil?" I asaked him.
Now, you have to remember this was early on Saturday morning. Before.
He didn't know anything about it, so I started to explain.
"There's a group called Reclaim the Night. A feminist group, who.."
"Want to lock men up?" he interrupted.
That was it. I was furious. Not from being interrupted. I'm used to that. It's not all men but I find that men often feel their voice is most important and rarely listen to the end of a sentence before adding their views.
It was the misogyny of it.
It's not all men.
The LSH isn't one of those. He doesn't believe women deserve to be attacked on the streets but he clearly does believe that any woman who wants to protest their lot, hold a peaceful vigil, have pockets in their coats to spread sedition are man hating harridans who should probably be stopped.
"And that's the effing problem," I shouted at him. (I did say 'effing' - we were in public!) "Why would you think that? If you think all women hate men then we will never get any equality. We're not against you, we just want to be able to walk in a park at night without it being our fault if someone attacks us. We'd quite like you to stop thinking we are your enemy. If even you think that then there's no hope. We will always be enemies."
He smirked.
"Carry on then. Who are Reclaim the Night?"
But I was too furious. The conversation was over. I couldn't bring myself to talk civilly to him.
"It was just three words." "It was a joke."
I knew he wouldn't back down. I knew that he would never admit that those three words were a problem. Saying it was a joke was a stupid defence that enabled him to not have to admit to any wrongdoing.
I wanted to have a conversation about whether the Met Police were setting themselves up for a whole heap of trouble by refusing the vigil. I thought they should have worked with the organisers to make it a Covid safe protest. I mean if football supporters in Glasgow can rampage the streets without any arrests then surely a few women sitting in a park at night and lighting candles could be accommodated? I realised that these were difficult policing decisions. The Covid laws must be very difficult to enforce but to not allow this when it had been a Met Police Officer that committed the crime seemed like they were picking the wrong side.
I had the conversation later, with my son, who didn't make any jokes. It's not all men. Some of the younger ones have been brought up to ignore the social conditioning.
Watching it unravel was the most depressing thing I've ever seen. The LSH is still thinking that the police did the right thing. He thinks that they can't start making separate Covid rules just for women (Ranger fans are fine but not women). Unfortunately, my anger has backed him into a corner and he can't back down. He doesn't see a police response to a peaceful protest that was out of proportion and I have to take some of the blame for that. I pushed him into not being able to back down without losing face. The police statement was similar. "Look what you made us do," it said. "You uppity women. Be quiet. Stop making a fuss or we'll have to give you a slap!"
It's all too depressing.
No comments:
Post a Comment