Kirstein Rummery: The key step we must take to bring women equality

Abstract

First paragraph: My 13-year-old daughter and her friend got their first unsolicited dick pic this week. She also had a disagreement with a boy who then slammed her against the wall. It felt like a rite of passage that no girl should have to go through, but all girls do. I did my Outraged Feminist Tiger Mum thing, insisted we report it, gave her the whole spiel about how she doesn’t have to put up with that. My daughter is, of course, a much cooler feminist than me. She’d already reported it and spoken to the boys in person in No Uncertain Terms. As she does taekwondo and can kick a hole in a wall, I am fairly sure neither of them will do it again. But what emerged that was shocking to me was that the dick pic sender – who was also only 13 – did this because he genuinely thought this was how, in the online text-savvy age, you flirted with girls you liked. The violent boy thought it was OK to slam my daughter into a wall because he was “angry”.