Why Russell Brand is so triggering

Or why we lived in different times but that isn't an excuse anymore

I’ve moved around in the music world. Aged 17 I ran away to Amsterdam and ended up with a musician 12 years older than me. I reflect now and I feel uneasy, more than uneasy at the thought of my daughters leaving home to shack up with an older man (in Amsterdam of all goddamn places).

I have had enough therapy to know that I was looking for safety, that I had issues with feeling abandoned, that an older man felt like they’d look out for me (this wasn’t how it ended up- quite the opposite in fact).

It was the nineties and then the noughties and both eras were full of weird messages about femininity. There weren’t a plethora of female role models. I remember the ladettes once I started uni and they behaved like men but were also expected to show their tits to the world. They drank but wore heels. The implication was that they were up for it and sexually promiscuous. Also judged as being slags if they went too far. In the dance world, when I was in a band, then the role of the female was to dance and look good (I couldn’t dance but looked good-ish). I remember a much older man, old enough to be my Grandfather, our manager at the time, saying in front of everyone that he would like to buy me off my boyfriend and use me for one night.

‘I could do a lot of damage in one night,’ he said laughing, his wonky teeth sticking out a weird angle.

The rules were not the same for men. Men could be desperately unattractive and wield power. They could in fact dictate the shots even if they had teeth like a human/Beaver hybrid. I remember people sniggering. I remember feeling shame. I wanted to wear less revealing clothes because it was obviously my fault. I had asked for this unwanted attention. I was also disappointed that nobody in the room saw it as wrong.

In my teens I had some truly awful experiences. I went to a party full of fashion models and photographers and drank too much vodka. My friend was assaulted in the kitchen downstairs, whilst a man upstairs pushed me onto a bed and then masturbated in my face.

‘You’ve ruined my top!’ my best mate laughed when she saw me staggering downstairs again.

I laughed. We laughed in the taxi on the way home. We both knew I’d had a narrow escape and felt lucky. We hadn’t been raped. This was a good thing. We were happy. It could have been worse right! Sometimes just before I dozed off at night, the image of the man would come into my mind. How had I actually drank so much? I had been downstairs one minute and upstairs the next and didn't remember the transition between these two spaces. I look back on it now and can see it was all part of a plan. The bottle I’d been offered to drink from was 80% vodka. I was 15.

Then there was verbal violence too. I had numerous experiences where men told me I was ugly. Too fat. My legs were disgusting. They wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire. I needed to smile because it wasn’t the end of the world! I needed to wipe that smile off of my face right now! What was I looking at? They were said as jokes. Shouted out of vans. Said under their breath in queues for night clubs.

When I was 14 walking to school a man lunged at me. He grabbed my breasts. I stood at the bus stop and wondered whether I’d imagined it. I must have imagined. I always thought about how I’d made the thing happen. Why was I attracting these things?

Like the man who stood at his bedroom window naked every morning, looking directly into my eyes.

Or the one that jumped out from behind a tree on Clapham Common at 8pm as I bicycled furiously over the grass to get home from my drama summer school.

I was lucky because it could have been worse. I laughed.

A holiday with a man thrusting away on top of me, but I can’t remember his name or how I am alone on the beach (another incident of being given more alcohol than I thought). Another trying to sleep with me whilst my best friend slept quietly beside me. A group of men shutting a door behind them at a house party. Then when my friend came to find me they said ‘you look like a bloke so we won’t bother.’

This sense of being continually under threat. The mixed message to be feminine but also hide. When I went into TV, as a runner, it continued. The role of women was to be pretty and do all the things. A well known TV comedian belittled the women on the team - one woman bit her nails down to the quick. The other had large patches of baldness triggered by stress. He was rude and domineering. I realised he was the same as the manager I’d encountered in the past. A free pass to be frightening despite his ugliness and lack of talent.

When he was in a good mood, the whole room rejoiced and the women breathed a sigh of relief. When he was in a bad mood, everyone ran and blamed one another. Why did this happen? What did we do to deserve it?

What does this have to do with Russell Brand? Well for many women it will be triggering.

For the women who went through the ordeals first hand, but also for many who came of age in the nineties and noughties.

The ladettes who drank beer and were expected to show their boobs on the cover of Nuts. The ones who had to detail the things they got up to in bed or were called a prude.

These times have been repackaged as ‘different times.’ The idea being that we can’t hold people to account because expectations were different. They were different but that doesn’t make the trauma experienced any less real.

We must stop feeling ashamed. Blaming ourselves. We must make it stop.