Emily Atack has spoken about the horrendous sexual harassment she deals with on a day-to-day basis. Speaking in an interview with Unilad, the actress recalled the moment she was followed home by a man on a bike who continued to sexually harass her. ‘He was just like sort of saying all these things in my ear, like saying, "I know what you like, I know what sort of girl you are. You f**king, you love being single,”’ she said. But Emily receives this kind of abuse on her phone constantly, too. ‘That was physically in the flesh, and I ran indoors and I was so upset and so frightened,' she added. 'So it’s that, I have that man on the bike, in my ear, but just constantly online.’
In the video, Emily also reads some of the vile messages she's sent by men, one of whom is a father to four children. She also wrote about these unsolicited messages for Grazia last year{
While we can guarantee no woman wants to be sent unsolicited sexual messages or pictures, the sheer volume of messages Emily receives shows sexual harassment online is something which far too many men still somehow think is OK. Of course, Emily isn’t the only one who receives such harassment - it's something many women just have to tolerate online.
According to a 2017 YouGov poll, 41% of 18 to 36-year-old women had received unsolicited photos. This abuse is traumatic enough to see online, but it also has real life ramifications. If people think that they can get away with this online, why would they think there would be consequences for anything you do in real life? ‘This is a sexual harassment blind spot that’s being ignored and tolerated,’ as Emily wrote. ‘It's a new form of harassment we now have to just get used to. The boundaries have been obliterated.’
But no woman should have to put up with this form of harassment{
I would say that online harassment needs to be seen as unacceptable as flashing or harassing women on the street, but still - as national conversation the past few weeks has proved - this is still a daily lived reality for women, often with little to no consequence for the perpetrators. None of this is as unacceptable as it should be. We’re all used to it. We often tell ourselves it’s ‘nothing’ if we somehow escape physically unscathed. But it isn’t nothing, even though nothing will often happen to the men. (And there's often no consequences for men who abuse their partners, either - which desperately needs to change.)
Simply saying 'educate men' often doesn’t work when men know harassment and abuse wrong, and know this kind of harassment can be incredibly distressing and intimidating for victims. There needs to be real life consequences for men who think it’s OK to sexually abuse people, whether that's online or in real life, or nothing will change.
READ MORE: Emily Atack: 'I Want To Change The Stigma Around Being Single'