Please wear a safety pin.

Its not like I haven't experienced mild racism in the UK before, but this referendum seems to have legitimised the fact that migrants are now apparently open targets. I've had friends have racial slurs yelled at them, openly, on streets and tubes and buses, and apparently 52% of the electorate endorsed this.

I am suddenly so very angry and so very terrified.

Home isn't home anymore, it turns out, and public transport is a waking nightmare of not meeting anyone's eyes while making sure i'm near other people of colour because at least we can maybe have solidarity in numbers.

Seeing a safety pin is a nice little reminder in this weird scary new world that actually, maybe it's not everyone.

At a time when the politicians are too busy ignoring their responsibility to their electorate, it's a welcome reminder that Britain is made up of decent people doing decent things, every single day.

To everyone who thinks I'm being a little melodramatic here - its not even that race crime is up 56% that terrifies me so, it is that 15 days ago one of these people caught up in this rhetoric shot and stabbed an MP in broad daylight, and, in the collective fugue state following Brexit we seem to have somehow stopped being horrified by this.

To my well-meaning liberal friends who've been engaging in earnest debates about whether really a safety pin is enough and whether going along with it is discouraging bigger, more long term action aimed at tackling xenophobia and racism - I love you but get over your fucking privilege.

Of course bigger, more direct action is needed. A lot of the people who voted to leave and who will be hardest hit by the ramifications because they felt overlooked and disenfranchised did so because they have been let down by every major public I institution in this country. We need better education, more public infrastructure, a less virulent media, dots joined up between globalisation and colonialism and the economic benefits of migration and whatever else.

But actually, where all of this starts is in the next two days, and two weeks and two months. It starts with everyone taking whatever small step they can to say 'Not in my country and not in my name'.

If even one person sees your pin and feels a little better for it, a little less like an unwelcome leech and a little more a part of the community, then good job, and let's get to work on the bigger things.

*This whole spiel is predicated on you not being a closet racist; if you are then kindly unfriend me and fuck off out of my life.

(So I understand this is all caveated with the fact that the issues of free movement and labour within the EU and general racism got horrendously mixed up during this referendum campaign and the post above wasn’t trying to address all of it — it was more a very personal and somewhat visceral reaction to the bit of it that affected me. It’s not trying to be all encompassing political commentary, just one slice of the collective trauma that the country is currently going through…)

Work drinks. Friday night, everyone’s tired, and this guy I’ve never met before decides he’s going to spend the next ten minutes telling me all about how he could definitely find information about me, where I live, my boyfriend, my ex-boyfriends- because most people don’t care what they post on Google.

‘I already know where I live, and who my ‘boyfriend’ is. No thank you’

No, he tells me, he’s just saying that he’s capable of it, and that I should be careful. We all should. And anyway, he doesn’t look anyone up who’s a colleague unless they really want him to. Do I want him to?

‘Nope. No thank you’

No but really. He really could. Am I daring him to do it?

‘No’

Well alright. He’ll only do it if asked. But it’s amazing what you can find out about people these days on the internet. He’s done this with a couple of his male colleagues before; it’s hilarious, the men find it worrying but it’s all a bit of a laugh.

And really — I should, apparently, Google one of the senior women at my workplace. The internet really raises some questions about how she got her job. Have I got a phone on me now? Why aren’t I googling her right now? I should look it up when I get home, and he will come and find me Monday to continue this conversation. He knows where I sit.

ii.

Every time I see someone write about being harassed and going ‘To the man who ‘x’’, I can feel the bile rising.

It’s not that we didn’t want to say anything at the time or place, more that the most sensible thing you can do when someone is throwing unwanted attention at you is to keep your head down and try and survive. Damage limitation. Non-provocation. If you don’t piss them off too much, maybe they won’t follow you home, or look up where you live, or-

iii

Sunday night, out dancing with a friend. We step outside for air and get interrupted mid-chat by a guy who’s decided to join our conversation about exercise, unprompted.

‘I mean, I’ve started running too, girls. I’ve started running to work every day with a backpack, but the problem is, my haircut means I give off a bit of a neo-Nazi vibe when I run. Do you know what I mean?’

No, not really.

‘Well, I mean I know you girls run, but you really should watch out. I mean Paula Radcliffe’s a great runner, but those muscles. She doesn’t look good naked’.

He does realise plenty of women work out for reasons other than to look good naked? If he doesn’t, he really should re consider his opinions.

‘No! I mean you all say it but you don’t really mean it, do you? I mean come on!’

iii.

Later that night, on the way home from dance, a well-lit part of a big road just by King’s Cross. I’m tired, I’m sweaty, I’m trying to get home, and I hear a man yelling from across the road.

I make the mistake of turning my head, and he gestures with his hand from his window while I try and block out what he’s saying.

I keep walking.

He starts the engine, cruises alongside me with one hand on the wheel and the other still dangling outside, ‘compliments’ turning into insults at my refusal to acknowledge him.

I go faster, but wonder if this is wise — there’s a crossroads up ahead and he could easily turn in and block me in/force me up a less well-lit road.

He flashes his lights and speeds off.

Half a minute later, another car peels by and someone starts commenting. I ignore the first couple, but they end with ‘Get home safe, sister’, and I pick up my tired feet and step up the pace even more.

iv.

At home, I run the shower and wish that carrying a switchblade in this country was legal, that I could wish karma into existence, that the insufferable man in the car on the road would crash into a lamppost and get his eyeballs impaled.

v.

I get my things together to go to work tomorrow and I think — should I report that guy? But what he said was merely creepy, not illegal. And making people uncomfortable isn’t illegal, it’s just bad manners.

But maybe I’ll wear trousers tomorrow. Or at least, that long skirt. And I shan’t wear heels, because they make running away much harder.