My brother, who was a press officer for a police force saw things that led him to give me similar advice, pressing home the point that rapists build up in their boundary pushing, from creeping on women to horrific opportunistic attacks. He advised me to react with violence to any unwanted touching or boundary pushing (somehow missing that for years I had in fact been punching gropers, in the balls, the face, anywhere my fight reaction landed, but hey ho, my brother, I gave him a pass).
Then he started working for the GMC and suddenly I was supposed to be ok with creepy men invading women’s places and ignore all his previous advice. We haven’t spoken since, as he was pretty shitty about it and I can’t unsee how the mask dropped. I sometimes wonder how these fuckers will walk this back, certain that it somehow won’t be their fault, or even admitted as an error of judgment.
The public sector has been so enthusiastically crushing women’s rights to safety for years, it cannot just be stupidity, there’s wilfulness here. They just leapt on the chance to push us back in our place.