Every few years, the same idea crawls back into public debate like damp in an old building: women-only carriages on the Tube.
A recent petition has gathered thousands of signatures calling on Transport for London to introduce women-only carriages as a response to rising sexual harassment on public transport.
And yes, of course women want to be safe.
Of course we want protection.
But the great feminist dream is not to spend our commute in a gender-segregated holding pen so the rest of society doesn’t have to confront the behaviour of men.
why is the “protection” always about moving women, restricting women, adjusting women, containing women?
Why is it easier to redesign train carriages than to say the sentence that actually names the problem:
Men assaulting women.
Women-only carriages, curfews, whispered safety tips — all of it is a band-aid slapped onto an infected wound that needs amputation. Because if this society were honest, it would finally admit that the danger isn’t the carriage. It isn’t the route. It isn’t the time of day. It isn’t the clothing.
The danger is the men who harm women — and the institutions that choose to protect them.
But every solution we’re offered works like a box.
Another enclosure.
Another workaround.
Another way of organising the world around the continued entitlement of men.
And maybe that’s why people panic when you start naming responsibility — not abstract “crime,” not faceless “risk,” but men. Because naming men breaks the spell. It stops violence from floating in the air like fog and forces it back into the hands of the people actually responsible.
So before anything else, before statistics, before analysis, before you have time to intellectualise or minimise or defend — here is the truth written plainly.
Men harm women.
Institutions absorb that harm.
Women are asked to adapt.
Naming responsibility interrupts that normalisation. It insists that violence does not simply occur. It is enacted, repeated, and sustained.
And before anyone starts shouting about “false accusations”…
False accusations of sexual assault occur in only 2 to 8 percent of cases — the same rate as false reports for any other major crime.
The real danger in our society has never been women lying. The real danger is men committing violence and being protected while they do it. The real risk is men raping women — and getting away with it.
If reading that feels overwhelming, good.
Women live inside that overwhelm every day.
