Women’s Autonomy

First, let me say this post is especially for the men out there. I have something I want to share and I hope you’ll take note.

I am, as you know, a male author of sapphic fiction. For reasons I’ve made clear elsewhere, I use the pen name Kate Clarke. When I was looking for beta readers for Beachcomber, I created a Facebook page for Kate Clarke Books. At the time, my only thoughts about using that name was to honour Kate, and I didn’t make clear that I was a man in the page bio, an oversight that has since been corrected.

However, and here is the important part, during that time, when the implication was clearly that the page belonged to a female author, I was contacted by a man offering to be a beta reader. That was fine, we passed a few messages about the kind of feedback I was looking for, and he seemed to be genuinely interested.

That’s when the shoe dropped. He was a professional editor/beta reader trawling for work. I politely declined, explaining that I was in no position to pay him. End of conversation, I assumed. Unfortunately, I assumed wrong. He persisted. I told him in explicit terms that I had no wish to continue the conversation and that he was making me feel uncomfortable. Still, he persisted, until I was left with no option but to block him.

This is where it gets bad. This guy, who I won’t name, was living in a country a whole half planet away from me, none of his language was overtly threatening, but I felt a gut deep nausea from interacting with him. He was convinced I was a woman and had decided that, despite me making it crystal clear his conversation was unwanted, that my wishes were irrelevant. I won’t lie, it left me shaken and in tears, partly because I felt violated, but more because I got a tiny, miniscule taste of what every woman I know has to deal with on a daily basis. Intellectually, I have been aware for many years that this is how the world is, but it took this one incident to make it all too real for me.

So, to the men out there (and don’t give me the “not all men”, how is a woman supposed to know which ones are safe) I say this. At the very least, you had a mother. Chances are you have female relatives and/or colleagues. You might have sisters, daughters, nieces, wives, friends. Respect them. Respect their autonomy. When a woman says she doesn’t want to continue a conversation, take it as gospel and stop.

No man has the right to override a woman’s wishes regarding who she talks to about what and for how long. No-one. Ask yourself the question, what would it feel like if someone treated me like this? When you find you don’t like the answer, and you won’t, change your behaviour.