Role Models - Rachel Ellen

Tuesday 21 April 2015

Role Models

Yesterday when it was lovely and sunny, a friend and I took a walk around a few parks in Sheffield, but today's post isn't about pretty parks and the sun unfortunately. 

The sun brings out the best and the worst of people, we all know that (well in Britain we do, since the sun rarely makes an appearance).

Whilst walking around a lake appreciating the sun on a Monday afternoon we walked past some fishermen, about 5 of them with two young boys. One of these men are holding a can of beer. And we got some very unwelcome comments (not entirely accurate dictation but accurate enough)

Beer holding guy: "Oh witwoo ladies"
Other guy: "behave mate"
Beer holding guy: "check out them two though, wow. And check out the arse on her"

And there was more but we were out of proper ear shot by then. I have to say me and my friend were more than uncomfortable. 

Now, catcalling is one issue, it is unsolicited, it is verbal abuse. It is completely unnecessary and makes girls very uncomfortable. Especially when the speaker is around 40 and the girls are 21. 

What made this so much worse was the two young boys, probably no older than 9, sat listening to this man. This man might be an influential man to these boys, could be their father, uncle, cousin or maybe that friend of their dad that they think is extra cool. This man could be their role model. This then means that these boys are learning that a cool and fun way to speak to women is to catcall them, to make them physically uncomfortable in public to disrespect them and try to assert dominance over them.

These boys may well go to school today and say to their friends "look at the arse on her" and here starts a brand new generation of ignorant, sexist, pigs, and they won't even realise it's wrong.

If you're above the age of 18 (and especially if you are 40+) realise who you are to children, you are an adult. You are therefore inadvertently a role model and you need to be responsible. Be careful what you say be careful what opinions you put in their absorbent little brains.

Oh yeah, and don't catcall. This isn't the 1940s, somewhere along the line men discovered women are actually human (but of course the women had already worked that out).

Sorry for no pictures and a bit of a rant, but it is something that is important to me.

And the sudden influx of views of my blog last night was super exciting. I'm thinking of making a Twitter page specifically for my blog so keep an eye out for that.

Thanks for reading

Rachel xx

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