No, you are not all rapists or even predators. But when 97% of women in the UK have been sexually harassed and most likely all women feel unsafe when alone in public, most of you will have at least inadvertently made a woman uncomfortable. Why? When you hear stories like the sickening one about Sarah Everard far too often, you learn that assuming all men could be dangerous is the easiest way to try to keep yourself safe. Those lists circulating social media about the measures women take to feel safer and those sharing their stories are not a minority being overly paranoid. What you see as a harmless compliment could easily be a precursor to assault, in our minds.

Where does the mistreatment of women even come from? There’s no excuse for assault or harassment but, like every behaviour, it has its roots. I recall the shock on a boy’s face in a nightclub after he, a complete stranger to me, had shouted over at me asking for my name and my immediate response was ‘I have a boyfriend’, as if I was to assume that a stranger would shout and ask for my name to be polite when I wasn’t even near him. ‘I have a boyfriend’ is usually a more readily accepted phrase than ‘no’ or ‘I’m not interested’. Or the stranger who wolf whistled me on a dark street, despite me holding hands with my boyfriend. Or the man dancing up against me who I didn’t even know was there until my friend pulled me away. Or the drunk man who got in my personal space, close enough to touch me and grunted at me in the middle of a busy high street, in broad daylight when I was 16. I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. These men have never heard the word ‘no’ growing up so they don’t believe in boundaries. Even more men have never learned to read body language or notice when someone is uncomfortable.

Devastatingly, we will struggle to eradicate attackers but there are so many small steps that men can take to ease women’s fears. What is sad is that I consider myself lucky to have men in my life who I know will cross to the other side of the street to be less threatening to a woman walking on her own, who will stay on the phone with me while I walk home, who will step in when they see another man making a woman uncomfortable. This isn’t to say that men who don’t do all these things are inherently bad but they do fail to understand that the power to make women feel threatened or safe is entirely in their hands. You would want your female relatives and friends to feel safe, so be the person to make someone else’s feel safe. Yes, you should treat women with respect no matter who they are to you but if imagining it happening to people you care about makes it hit harder then so be it.

As women, we can tell men until we’re blue in the face what makes us safe and we can teach our children to treat people with dignity and respect. But ultimately, the best role model for men and boys is other men. When raising children, it is crucial to remember that they do as we do, not as we say. As a parent, especially as a father, it is so important that your children don’t only hear your morals but that they see them too.

This isn’t a political issue. This isn’t something to polarise men and women or to raise debates about misogyny and feminism. This is about safety. By taking these small steps to make women feel safe and standing up to seemingly ‘harmless locker room talk’, you could make someone think twice before harassing a woman which could stop the slippery slope into unacceptable acts of assault. We won’t eliminate these things overnight but at least I might feel safer walking down Worcester High Street at 3pm in the middle of the summer.