Thread by @TweetsbySimone

#ThisIsNotConsent and nothing-no way of dressing or behaving-nothing protects women from the patriarchal system. I’ve been assaulted and harassed by barristers at work, where I was dressed like a Victorian. Rape culture does as rape culture says

To be clear, I talk about these experiences of assault in the legal profession (the very people tasked with upholding the law) because I can. I have privilege and as @monaeltahawy says: that privilege obliges me to fight 10 times as hard as someone who doesn’t
#ThisIsNotConsent

My first end of term, a barrister I’d given work to, took me for lunch with some colleagues. One of them slapped my bottom so hard it silenced The Bailey, meant every other legal prof saw me grab his arm and say to him - you never, ever touch a woman without her consent

He walked out of The Bailey only to return with a bunch of flowers from the sellers on Grafton St., doubling the humiliation. So, my host, who was mortified (but didn’t intervene+later blamed it on the man’s drink problem), took me to Grogans where his devils were drinking. ..

It was so packed we were jammed against a pillar with only one high stool. A young barrister insisted I sat up on the stool and as he talked at me he rubbed his penis and testicles on my knee. I thought at first it was by accident but every time I moved my knee away he‘d follow

...not move so that it was his thigh or hip on my leg. That would be fine. I love a packed pub. I enjoy human contact. This is not ‘sex panic’ (as so many trying to orchestrate the backlash to #MeToo like to say). This is an objection to structurally condoned sexual violence.

On the most recent occasion while we were all standing for the judge to enter and as I ‘leaned in’ to speak to a client, a male barrister put his hand down the back of my trousers and grabbed my bare bottom. I shouted, jabbing my finger at him:

“I’ve punched more important barristers than you for less. You FUCKING WATCH IT”. The whole courtroom made this face 😱 (I presume because I shouted an obscenity). But not one of them asked me what happened. All colleagues. All know I wouldn’t behave like that without reason

It turned out when I asked a colleague - he’d guessed why, said that man “had form”.

This is rape culture. We all benefit from saying nothing about a society that gives a few crumbs from the table if the table requires the rest of us-the poor, the poc, the women-are under it

I talk to women + men starting out in the legal profession hoping this is getting better. It’s not. It’s worse. The women don’t want to be “that woman”. They don’t want to be me. They don’t want to object + risk losing the massive effort they put into getting to the start line

At first this made me profoundly sad. What has been the point? But I realise we’ve been dealing with this case by case, woman by woman, man by man - the structure that is patriarchy distracting us with our own outrage from the fact that this is structural. It’s how it works:

Make her a victim. Allow her that status (but not a status of knowing). Blame her, get her to blame herself for what she’s wearing-blame her lace thong and if she’s dressed like a Victorian-for networking at the bar, and if all fails, default to - for simply existing as a woman

So, I don’t want sympathy. I am no one’s victim. I know. And I don’t want those individual men to be singled out as scapegoats for ‘all men’.

I want to set fire to the whole pathetic crumbling structure. To the system I say - #ThisIsNotConsent - I do not consent to patriarchy

I have sexual agency and autonomy, as all women should. I own my desire and pleasure. Consent matters now but we have a right to more than consent-the acquiescence to someone else’s desire or sense of entitlement. Only sexual justice and equality carry power enough to end this