Despite the more invasive modern methods of digging dirt on me- after hacking my emails and my mobile, after searching my hard drive and my laptops- the whisper network has had need to fall back on some old-fashioned gossip. This gossip stems from my village from when I was a schoolboy. Back then it petered out no sooner that it started. As I have come back to the village over the years, I have always been well received by women in pubs, and I would be asked to dance at ceilidhs, and I have been invited back to women’s houses for a drink when the pubs shut. It was only after the whisper campaign in Berlin, over two decades later, that suddenly every woman put on that I was a predator. This had never been the gossip in the village. It wasn’t what was whispered about me in Berlin either. It is hard to explain this sudden disconnect between past and present, a rupture that re-writes the past and re-writes the present to determine my future.
This gossip is from the time before laptops, when home computers were rare, and you needed to call the world wide web and listen to it ‘ping, beep, and splutter’ while you waited for an answer. This gossip is from a rural community that could not be more different from the activist group in Berlin, and that is no bad thing. I’m from a small rural village in Scotland at the confluence of two rivers that wind down two parallel glens, to meet at the head of a loch that is over 30km long. There is a string of Munros that rise up from the north side of the loch and beyond these lie the Scottish Highlands. That’s the backdrop when looking north. If you head south you need to rise over a pass, but after that, it’s a couple of hours drive downhill to the central belt, where the towns and cities lie. So, we are in the heartland looking down on the lowlands, and there is about a thousand of us, including the farms and the odd Hotel in the surrounding area. There were seven bars dotted down the main street before Covid kicked in. Now there are four bars which are full of tourists in the summer. Most of them come for the castle, the waterfalls which are traversed by an old stone bridge, and the hill walking.
Each bar gets it’s time in the spotlight for a while as the locals favour it to regale themselves with stories of local heroes, characters and steamers. There is the classic hall at the heart of the village where the concerts and ceilidhs, and charity fundraisers are held. You might have a birthday bash in the hall if you were inviting whole the village, but for a family affair, you book the Hotel. ‘The Hotel’, the first in the village, was built in the 17th century. It was renovated to accommodate Victorians arriving on the steam train, but the trains are long gone now. The hotel has a large breakfast hall with tartan flashes hanging on the wall and a solid wooden floor where Queen Victoria once dined. This is where we celebrated my Gran’s eightieth with a disco. On the night in question, I was celebrating my Gran’s birthday in the Hotel.
My Gran was from Lincoln and a lot of the family had made it up from down south. Four generations were on the dance floor. The grandads were in suits and tie, the uncles in a shirt and tie, and the cousins in a shirt with the top buttons undone. I was in my red tartan kilt, of course. I liked the kilt, but I was under strict instructions in any case. In the photos I am holding onto my sporn with my elbows sticking out either side for the Sassenachs to have their photo with me in the kilt. I was on my best behaviour for a seventeen-year-old, although all the family wanted to buy me a pint. It was a good night, I tried to pace myself, but my instincts at that age were to get steaming. As the night progressed, I felt I timed it well. That was until the Hotel curfew was called abruptly. It was normally my older cousins who were up to mischief, bringing their own gear up to the village, knowing as many locals as I did. This time I was on my own. Standing outside the entrance to the hotel I could hear the far-off sound of a rare thing in Scotland- a Barbeque.
As I walked up the Monoblock drive and around the side of the house, I seen the last people were leaving the dance floor patio on the right-hand side. While on my left, those who had made it into the wee hours were sitting drinking under the gazebo. I wanted to keep the party going so I asked the nearest woman to my left to dance, and she accepted. Even as I approached her some men began making a scene about this. It continued while we walked the 3 meters onto the patio dance floor and we turned back to look at them. I resented their attempt to shame us and so did she. I felt by the pause on the dance floor to look at these men that we both felt the same. So I mocked them. As soon as we started to dance, I started moved my hand a bit lower very slowly. I did this in an exaggerated manner and looked at Elisabeth to see that she was in on it. There was hardly any contact involved. When my hand was hovering over her bum she said very warmly, and conspiratorially, ‘You better move your hand Kieran before you get in trouble’. Elisabeth was in total control of that situation. She was being protective of me, which shows that she did not feel threatened while she played along.
I had a drink in my hand, and I chatted a bit, but the party was clearly over. As I went to leave the garden there was a football sitting up plump on beautifully flat bit of grass, like the left wing of a football field. The barbeque was in the grounds of the old Royal Bank of Scotland and the house had a huge stone gable end. I was quite a good footballer back in the day, so I gave it a kick with my left to collect the rebound on my right. I did not see the window in the kitchen extension at the back of the house. The ‘fitbaw’ went straight through the window. The barbeque was being held by the local metal worker who is about as wide as he is tall. He is a really nice cheery guy, but he has the reputation of being a bit wild with a drink in him. So, I bolted from the garden like a hare. This was quite serious, because I was in my kilt. I always thought those words from Hugh MacDiarmid about wearing red applied, above all else, to a red kilt:
WHY I CHOOSE RED
I fight in red for the same reasons
That Garibaldi chose the red shirt
-Because a few men in a field wearing red
Look like many men – if there are ten you will think
There are a hundred; if a hundred
You will believe them a thousand.
And the colour of red dances in the enemy’s rifle sights
And his aim will be bad- But, best reason of all,
A man in a red shirt can neither hide nor retreat.
This was not the end of the matter. Earlier that night, wee Tommy the painter who had moved from Glasgow had been refused entry to the Barbeque for being drunk, and some other gossip perhaps. When his window was broke, Gordon the metal working heard footsteps running at pace up the side street across the street. Poor Tommy the painter lived at the bottom of this side street. I estimate that 10 minutes after I kicked that fitbaw, Gordon was at tommy’s front door throttling the painter, presuming he had returned to break the window out of spite. When I called the next morning to apologise for breaking the window, and for legging it away, all this was relayed to me. Gordon’s wife had seen me running up the street in my kilt from the window upstairs, but she could not catch her husband as he took off to Tommy’s door. She decided not to tell him who the real culprit was until the morning.
I do not feel as bad about the incident with Elisabeth because I only made myself vulnerable to village gossip, while Elisabeth was the adult in control of the situation. I didn’t fear my reputation would be slighted to anyone who mattered to me. I had a lot of female friends at school who confided in me and looked to me for support. I even accompanied a friend on a couple of busses to the sexual health clinic in Stirling while I was at school. She wanted to go on the pill, but her older boyfriend would not go with her. As a 17-year-old before the days of social media, I felt my world was no bigger than all my friends. These women knew who I was, and they who would have my back. I was the class clown at school, and it was women who explained to me that I was being ironic about my masculinity. This has been said by a few women in different cities since, so I presume a lot of female friends have picked up on this as well. The accusation of these old men felt preposterous. I resented the old-fashioned men shaming me and Elisabeth for dancing together. My way of defeating men like that was always with ironic humour mocking their masculinity, and women always understood that, even if the men were oblivious.
I might have been arrogant when I dismissed and mocked those men, but I was a drunken teenager. However, I think Elisabeth knew that I was just acting the goat. Why else would she play along? Our society has been accused of infantilizing women- denying them any agency and treating them as helpless. Even though women grow up quicker and more concerned with status hierarchies earlier. The thereby become more adept at perceiving and exchanging social cues and, while men can catch up, this gender difference generally continues into adulthood. Women are generally more communicative and sensitive. It is worth considering all the ways a woman could communicate in Elisabeth’s situation, if the man were acting against her wishes.
A women can just look at a man to make him question his behaviour. Or, give him a look out the corner of her eyes, or raise her eyebrows, or tilt her head and glare. She might jolt her right hand down with his, to get his attention, while making any of the above expressions. She might clear her throat, or make the thoughtful sound “ehhhh…?”. Maybe she would wait until the man’s hand had moved 2 or 3 cm to be sure, then she would say his name, or “no”, or “ehhh…. No”, or “excuse me?”. She could always speak in full sentence- “don’t even think about it”, “what are you doing?”. Once the man had moved 5 or 6 cm down her back, even if she didn’t mind and wanted to be protective, she could have said “Kieran, you better not, or you’ll get in trouble”. Why would she pretend she didn’t notice what he was doing, and that he was looking and throwing her glances at her. I was looking expectantly for her to play her part; Why did she wait until he had slowly moved his hand down to her bottom, and then speak conspiratorially in full sentence?
I did not use any privilege over Elisabeth, nor any power or strength, nor any speed or sudden movement. She was very much in control the whole time. I do not offer any further explanation to protect ‘a lady’s reputation’, that is not my concern at all. She needs to explain her own behaviour. I only want to explain my behaviour and how it was in tune with the people around me. I do not blame people for asking what Elisabeth was doing. Equally, I do not blame Elisabeth for not trying to explain her thinking to her husband. She needn’t have lied to him, of course, just let him think what he wants. Meanwhile, many women believe whatever they want to believe to justify the public acceptance of anonymous networks systematically drugging and abusing men.
Despite the latest statistics on the rates at which women are cheating, we are supposed to believe that women do not lie. It is still scandalous to believe that a woman might accept that kind of attention from another man. Clearly, without context the man would be being presumptuous, and the woman would be offended. However, it is context dependent. The point is Elisabeth did play along. We all know this is a form of communication, we’ve all waited for a response. For my part, I don’t think there was anything sensual in it. I think she understood my reaction to those men because she felt the same. It was clear she did not feel threatened, in fact, she felt protective of me. For feminists who abuse, drug, and sexually assault men to claim they are acting in Elisabeth’s name, when she was protective of me, is more than just cynical. It performatively undermines their demand, “Believe women!”, not because women are lying about their experience, but because they are lying about other women’s experience to support their campaign.
This is another central point. Elisabeth did not report this incident to the network of young activists who run campaigns abusing and drugging British men in Berlin. Feminists have appealed to this incident, as an instance of groping or sexual assault, to stoke hatred in thousand of people online, but there is no woman who feels like she was groped. There is no woman you should believe when she says she was groped or sexually assaulted. There is no woman saying this. Whatever has been said, has been said by the daughter of a friend of Elisabeth’s. This woman suffered an alcoholic father growing up and would become an active member of a network of women who take revenge on toxic men. Some two decades after the incident in question, thihs younger woman has put herself at the centre of attention by taking up the rumour about me and retelling it for her own reasons.
It is not unusual for activists to take ownership of other people’s experience and use it to rationalize their own hostility. Many of the women I met in Berlin involved in these networks had a history of father absence, or an alcoholic father or a religious father. Most felt that they knew what men really are and held normie women with contempt because of their ignorance. They felt justified in taking other people’s experience and interpreting it as a sign of sinister toxic behaviour that portends sexual violence. When you read headlines of ‘1 in 4 women experience sexually assault’, the responses of these women have manipulated to mislead. Unwanted contact or touching while fully clothed has been counted as sexual assault in the survey. However, most people would not consider this sexual assault. The thousands of female freshers who have such an experience every year dancing in clubs offering £1 shots do not all believe they have been sexually assaulted. Neither do the men on the dance floor. Other people’s experiences are being appropriated and misrepresented in this way to drive up hatred and anger by activists. They want to justify, what they claim are, the expedient measures of sexually assaulting, emotionally abusing and drugging men.
The context from my village might explain why Elisabeth did play along. My sister told me years ago that some women in the village didn’t like my mum. Some thought that she thinks she is better than them. Elisabeth and her friend Margaret are two such women. One night I went up to Margaret’s house after the pub and she betrayed as much. For some reason, her youngest daughter wanted me to go in and see the scene in the kitchen. Margaret’s husband was drunk with his head on the kitchen table, and she said smartly ‘what’s he doing here?’. Her husband’s drinking buddy, Donald, vouched for me since we had worked together before, but Margaret said, ‘but he’ll tell his mother’. I think both Elisabeth and Margaret would enjoy the idea of taking my mum down a peg or two. Elisabeth could see that I was just acting the goat, while wondering what my mother might think when she found out her golden boy was behaving this way. Whenever I went to the Hall with my folks on Hogmanay, and other occasions afterwards, they were conspiratorial in their mocking of my mum, more than me. She was playing by the rules of village gossip in the 90’s. Elisabeth could have no idea of the consequences this would have for me 20 years later when a younger generation took it out of context. As my harassment started in Glasgow, Margaret’s oldest daughter started to appear in the coffeeshop where I worked to accompany my harassment and present herself as my executioner. For someone who has suffered abuse helplessly at the hands of a man for years, the thought of being able to have such men exiled from every job, emotionally abused in every relationship, systematically drugged for over a decade must be some recompense. It is not justice, however, for the victims are not her father, nor are they ‘such men’, the toxic Other.
A different story from my village
One year, on the run up to Christmas, I joined some pals from school who were out with Hotel staff. The nurses from the retirement home were having their Christmas night out as well. There was one teenage girl amongst them who was already steaming. Her were rooted to a spot slightly off stage from her circle of pals, while her upper body moved around like an erratic pendulum. She had a pint of lager and blackcurrant in her right hand against her belly. As the night went on, her left foot took on the job of a buttress holding her up against the flow of the banter and the bevy. As she seemed to tip one way or tither, her left foot was thrown out and planted with leg fully extended. She would then leaver herself back up with that leg. Lastly, her left foot was swiftly tugged back in over the carpet tiles as her head was flung back straight. A few minutes later the pattern was repeated. All the time she would slowly and nonchalantly look around the bar oblivious to the battle her left leg was waging.
At some point she appeared to hover on the periphery of our group. Among our group, among the hotel workers, was a man who was hilarious but daft, but his antics might seem harmless and at another a little, well, ‘off’. He had a round face, with only so many teeth and protruding lips. It was hard to know whether he had some sort of disability or whether he was just dodgy. At one point this girl stumbled around asking for a kiss. All my friends ignored her or laughed it off. However, this crazy guy who spun round with ”you want a kiss?”, put his hand behind her head, and gave her big slobbery kiss over half her mouth. My friends found this hilarious but mostly because it was disgusting. A big “awww…” was let out as people recoiled. The man took a look at the young women and decided to do it again. This time holding her in while he gave her a sloppy forceful kiss. I stepped forward and in between them, saying, that that was enough. The guy was taken aback, asking my mates who I was. Of all my group, only one guy said that ‘that was not OK’. The rest gave me a hard time and called me a ‘timothy tight arse’.
I ushered the young women stand beside me, and away from that man. Now and then I put my arm round her shoulders to keep her away from him. The young women said sorry, but I could tell she didn’t know why. It was now just an awkward situation spoiling my night. A woman from her group came over to say she noticed what I was doing and thanked me for it. Another woman did the same. Again, I did what was right, regardless of what other people did, and what other people might think. If women wanted to take one moment from my life it could be this one, and the many others like it, when I have protected or supported women. However, it is the select few radicals who run anonymous group chats and their agenda is mounting hatred and disgust of the toxic Other. It’s unlikely that women will admit to the pleasure they derive from drugging, dehumanising and abusing people. Nor is society ready to admit that ‘their women’ are capable of such a thing. It is rather that ‘their women’ are threatened by the disgusting Other and violence is permitted against it. However, women might well ask what they gain from Gone Girl Feminism, and if they want the violence to continue in their name.