Last night at eleven, I was getting off a train at Manchester Piccadilly after a day in the countryside. As soon as I hit the streets, I realised it must have been a football day or something, because the city was one huge chant. Teenage bullying and general life experience makes me wary of large groups of men, so I kept my head down and power-walked onwards to the bus stop.

So there I am, pressing the wait button at the traffic lights, one earphone in blaring Fun’s Some Nights on repeat to distract me from the world, when I feel someone behind me. A man snatches the hat off my head and keeps on walking. I turn around to see a group of five or six “lads” jeering, pointing and shouting at me whilst the thief in question adjusts my hat on his head.

It all happened so fast that I was astounded. Usually when people jokingly steal things away from you they give them back after a bit of “banter”, but these guys were moving jauntily away from me, albeit backwards. Over the noise of the music they shouted obscenities at me and I just lost it. I started screaming at them to go fuck themselves, giving them the finger and generally being very angry. I’ve never done that before.

What was worse, after I resigned my hat to it’s depressing fate and continued walking, swearing to myself under my breath, was that I felt embarrassed. There were people around and as I crossed the road and headed towards the bus stop, I wondered what they must think of this girl shouting “fuck you!” with such venom. That was the kicker for me, I think. I felt embarrassed for causing a scene.

When someone treats you like that it’s not just a hat or another minor personal possession that gets taken away from you. For the rest of my thirty minute journey home I felt like I had a target sign on me. I felt vulnerable. What if they’d made a grab for my bag? My boyfriend was in London, and if I’d lost my keys and my phone I’d be sleeping on the porch. What if they had come back with my hat? They could have gotten aggressive if I’d made a grab for it? I’m a twenty-five year old woman and my fighting skills are limited to logging into Steam and clicking a mouse repeatedly; I don’t fancy my chances of defence with six drunk men. All the way home, whenever I passed a large group of people I felt nervous, jamming my hands deep into my pockets and clenching my fists.

It gets worse, because I started wondering “why me?”. What had made me such an easy and appealing target opposed to all the other people out tonight? I was wearing jeans, a green jacket, trainers. I was make-up-free, greasy and wind-swept from a day walking over the hills. Most importantly, I was minding my own business. I thought about this a lot on the bus ride back, why these men thought it was acceptable to do this to me and concluded that it was nothing to do with who I was, just that I was female and wearing a hat. They knew that I would be embarrassed and let the hat go without any fuss (which, let’s face it, I basically did). They knew that I wouldn’t want to get into an altercation with six guys bigger than me and they knew that verbally abusing me would make me more likely to step away from the situation.

No, I’m not saying these guys planned this. They are not a gang of hat thieving criminal masterminds. When I say that they knew, I mean that they didn’t think about it, they just knew. That innate knowledge that society bestows on you, the same knowledge that enables men to cat-call and harass women on the street. They can follow you asking for your phone number or they can shout “slut” out of their car at you because they know they can get away with it. Because we are typically told that it’s embarrassing and we are told to not make a fuss. Just let it go. I watched my hat disappear around the corner attached to a man’s head and the worst I could do was wish I’d had nits.

That sense of entitlement that some men have, that women on the street are there for their own entertainment, is dangerous. The reasoning behind taking someone else’s property or abusing someone based on their physical appearance is a taught behaviour, learned through years of being able to get away with it. No-one came to my defence and now that guy has a hat with bear ears and a funny story to tell his mates because he can.

When you’re a teenager you accept bullying and rationalise it, because you’re not as pretty or outgoing as the other girls. The fault is your own flaws, which others were just perceptive enough to pick up on. You massively internalise it to the point that it becomes another childhood right of passage. I developed agoraphobia and almost got kicked out of sixth form due to online bullying by my classmates, but I don’t think I ever reported it. Head down, try to get on with it. Don’t make a fuss because then you open yourself up to judgement. I have felt ashamed telling others that some guy on a train tried to kiss me because I’m worried they will think I’m full of myself, that it’s somehow a sort of compliment. It isn’t. It’s harassment, plain and simple.

I feel very angry today, and it’s an anger born out of hopelessness. That these situations are out of my control and I have no way of fighting back or standing up for myself. No one should feel that sense of vulnerability and no one should act like it’s okay to treat another human being like they’re a game, a joke. It’s disgusting.

I want my hat back.

(ETA: I decided to write OUT my thoughts  on depression. specifically mine. Warning: It’s self-indulgent, rambling and  off the top of my head so maybe even I won’t agree with it in the morning. If you don’t want to read about how mad I am, keep scrolling. all opinions are my own and i’m not claiming my experience is everyone else’s etc etc etc.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about depression recently. Well, who am I kidding, I think about depression most of the time. Occasionally I devote bus journeys to wondering why certain people’s brains came attached with happiness-seeking-missiles, but generally I’m thinking about how great I’ll feel when I’m not sobbing and clawing at the walls of my bathroom.

I thought I would die this year, man. And I guess there’s still eight months left of the year to place your bets on, because my brain is always telling me it wants me to die. Most times I know I’m not being 100% serious, but this year, if my brain was a dam there weren’t enough beavers attempting to fortify it. This recent sparring match with depression has knocked me out. After briefly going back onto medication and then stopping again when its ineffectualness meant that spending my last £8 on Citalopram seemed wasteful, I’ve experienced some of the lowest lows since 2011.

I’m not trying to be dramatic; I just have. My skin turned purple and I transformed into this crazy Depression Hulk, one that could not be reasoned with. You’re unemployed, you’re too reliant on alcohol, you’re a bad person, a shit girlfriend, you’re totally and utterly fucked. Then I solved a problem or too and these feelings didn’t go away. I was body-slamming myself around the corridors of my brain. I sat at my desk at work unable to comprehend that there would be a next day. I went from living week to week, to day by day until eventually each minute made my chest ache and bile rise up into my throat. Some of the damage seems embarrassing now; the freak outs, the breakdowns. It always does when you calm down. Some of the damage is permanent and I’ll never be able to wear a swimming costume again without the ugly reminder of how I lost control of my life.

I wish I could say that I have something profound to tell you now that I’ve come out of the other side. But I haven’t yet and, to be honest, I go a little crazy almost yearly.  I need to write about it though, because it feels impossible to talk about it. I make jokes and odd references to it but the thought of a full frontal confession gives me a panic attack. I feel sick when my boyfriend says the words “mental illness”. The majority of the last month has felt like I am hovering over an unsent email draft which just reads, “HELP ME.”

It’s really hard trying to describe to someone something neither of you can see. It’s hard to describe things in general because we are all different humans with different ways of seeing. I might think something smells of garlic and someone else might say onions. We get where each other is coming from but we’re more on adjacent pages than the same one. Sometimes I wish I could cut a piece of my depression out of me and slam in down on the table, all red and glistening like a heart in a horror movie, and say “See? I wasn’t being dramatic. This is a real thing.”

Some of these real things include:

• Waking up one day feeling like something is wrong, like something changed overnight
• Little Issues suddenly seeming awfully like Big Issues
• Unease which turns into paranoia. Something isn’t right. Am I happy? Why aren’t I happy? I’m in bed with my furry family watching Buffy and I am in love and on paper everything is fine but why do I feel so terrible?
• Inability to think short-term ie. “I don’t have a job. Why won’t my boyfriend marry me and have babies with me? I’ll never be happy ever again because my life isn’t where I want it currently. It’ll never happen. I AM SO FUCKED.”
• Inability to think long-term ie. “Well, I can’t see myself being around for much longer.”
• Paralysis of the body and mind; long hours in bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling nothing. Totally exhausted.
• Anxiety, panic attacks and not being able to leave the house
• Leaving the house, having a panic attack in Morissons and coming home perspiring madly
• The very real sensation of all productivity flying out of the window along with all optimism, social skills and rational thoughts
• The “Fuck This Shit” approach to life where you stop caring about anything, like you’re playing a game of chicken or something. Self destructive thoughts
• How do I shift these feelings? They are invisible and intangible, I need to make them physical so I can see them
• Intense feelings of “There is nothing for you here. Why don’t you please go and jump in front of that nearby car so no-one has to deal with your stupid face any more?”
• Crying and hurting and WTF-do-I-do-nowing

Even listing it out like that doesn’t feel right at all. It’s inside my head and it’s intangible. It’s more than that, or maybe it isn’t.

It’s even harder to explain why I have such strong, bizarre reactions to things and why I feel so immovably miserable 90% of the time. “Chemicals.” I say, desperate not to be challenged. Please don’t blame it on me. Please don’t suggest than I’m weak and pathetic for not being able to put my shoes on and leave the house like any old person without crying for an hour. When all you see in the news is the hate for the unemployed, the disabled and the working class in general, the last thing you want to do is gingerly put your hand up and say “Actually, sometimes my brain stops me from functioning correctly”. Why not? What makes you so damaged? And why do you keep referring to it as “your brain” when it’s actually just You who is the problem? Get your fucking lazy butt out of bed and start looking for work. I don’t know, okay?

Certain people are practical and demand reasons as to why I’m totally flipping out right now. Others smile sadly and sympathise. I have triggers, such as never being able to land a proper long-term job and feeling like an absolute failure, but so do other people and they’re not fantasising about killing themselves in their living room all the bloody time, no pun intended. I’m a twenty-five year old white woman from a nice financially well off background. My parents didn’t get divorced and I’ve not had anything happen to me than most more-unfortunate women in their mid-twenties have had happen to them. I have no reason to feel so utterly zonked out by depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, but I’ve had them since I was eight. Just turn these thoughts off and get back to living your life. It’s far too easy to rationalise it and just as difficult to practise it. I think Allie of Hyperbole And A Half says it really well:

Some people have a legitimate reason to feel depressed, but not me. I just woke up one day feeling sad and helpless for absolutely no reason. It’s disappointing to feel sad for no reason. Sadness can be almost pleasantly indulgent when you have a way to justify it – you can listen to sad music and imagine yourself as the protagonist in a dramatic movie. You can gaze out the window while you’re crying and think “This is so sad. I can’t even believe how sad this whole situation is. I bet even a reenactment of my sadness could bring an entire theater audience to tears.” But my sadness didn’t have a purpose.

It’s all-encompassing, until you forget that there was anything other than this feeling. I feel guilty, like I suddenly dyed my hair blonde without warning my boyfriend. This strange, unprompted descent into madness must feel jolting, like, where did my girlfriend go and I really resent that. If I was rich I would buy two houses and one would be my Depression House where I would live in alone when my emotions made me unbearable. The guilt sucks.

I probably seem much the same on the outside but this time around I feel unrecognisable. Sometimes I forget to have feelings and there are days where I feel like my personality has been replaced by a basic operating system. REDDEST-DOS. Other times, I have too many feelings. Overpowering sadness! Anger! Frustration! Die, die, die! Pretending to be in good spirits is a frequent exhaustion. Most of all I am scared that one day I won’t be scared, and that I’ll do something really stupid. I walked to Accident & Emergency last week and stood at the reception desk before leaving. Still scared. Good.

Here are some things that I have learnt, though.

Don’t Drink Alcohol - Hell, I don’t even want to drink. It doesn’t make me feel good and it doesn’t help my mental health. But when nothing else helps you self-medicate to remove yourself, temporarily, from your situation. I don’t want to feel like me, just this horrid stumbling, slurring version of me that I refuse to take responsibility for. When you feel like you’re not going to be around for much longer, it’s hard to think in terms of “consequences”, or hangovers. So you instantly-gratify a couple more pints and feel like a dick in the meantime. Don’t drink on an empty heart, guys, this is very important.

Don’t Listen To People Telling You It’ll Get Better - This might seem like a weird piece of advice, but I believe it. I’m not talking about disagreeing with the sentiment, but when the token wisdom told to me is “soon you’ll be okay”, I sink into the most awful guilt and worry. What if I’m not ok soon? What if it takes even longer and everyone I love is disappointed in me and doesn’t think that I’m very nice to be around any more? People give the most default, optimistic advice to me when they don’t know what else to say and I want to kick and scream and rage, even if I know it’s coming from a caring place. I don’t want to be constantly wondering if it’s “ok enough” yet, though. I can’t force myself. It’ll happen when it happens, and one day (hopefully very soon) I won’t want to kill myself and that’ll feel excellent.

Don’t Choose Something Seemingly Practical Over Your Important Human Body - Don’t wait for a more convenient time to go on medication. I was worried that starting a new dose of drugs would affect the job I needed my brain to concentrate for, but now the job has ended and I’m stuck with scabby scars and shame. I’m not talking about signing off sick because in my experience unemployment is unbearable when you’re already unable to bear. I knew I didn’t have the luxury of turning the job down, but if you do have the luxury of taking two weeks to a month out and focussing on therapy, pills or clarity I would strongly recommend it.

Routine, Routine, Routine – Not even talking about planning out your day, because who is capable of sticking to a list when they’re going through a depressive spell? When I’m not working, I’m vegetative. This is going to sound ridiculous but I ate nachos as a main meal almost constantly last month. It’s all I wanted. And that comfort of the familiar, the expected (if unhealthy) staple of my day makes me feel safe. I think it’s important to have some sort of constant in your life, even if it’s a stupid one. Even if it’s a kiss on the nose in the morning or sitting with a piece of paper and a pen for an hour at 2PM every day. Routines are calming, I have found.

Don’t Feel Embarrassed About Talking About It – I realised that outside my cats and my boyfriend, I’m not super vocal about stuff. I thought I was, but what I meant was in that offhand, casual way that makes people not take you seriously. I don’t mean pull everyone you know aside and tell them that you spent five hours crying into your pillow last night, but I do mean being honest if you’re having a bad day. Sometimes I don’t want to talk to anyone and then I feel guilty because they don’t know why I’m not answering my phone. I am far more scared about being judged on my battles with mental health than I’m comfortable with letting on. I think there still is a stigma, whether it comes from ignorance (with no immediate physical symptoms I can understand the average person not getting the debilitation that depression can bring) or the way that people with mental health issues handle it. It’s part of my identity and I feel passionate about not letting it be a taboo, but I don’t want my conversations to centre on it. I don’t want people to think I wear it like a fashion.

When you reach a point, when you’re hitting the walls quite literally with your fist and thinking/saying “Enough! I refuse to live like this! You’re not going to kill yourself so you might as well fix it!”, it’s really hard to get help. This is another thing I have realised. I was spoilt in the past; two years ago I had a breakdown and my Dad picked me up and drove me five hours home to the family doctor who helped me immediately. I was basically under house arrest. But twenty-four hours before Dad picked me up I was in A&E until five in the morning, waiting and waiting to be seen. I’m not suggesting I’m so special that a doctor or medical professional should personally helicopter over to my house and set me up with an IV-drip full of liquid that makes me explode with joy, but it’s difficult to wait a week for a doctor’s appointment after you’ve had a Must Get Better epiphany. Mine is on Monday and the stress of waiting isn’t worth thinking about. I wish there was something more, like the Samaritans but present, physical. I guess you could get yourself sectioned but I’m not sure how that worked. In A&E I kept getting pushed back in the queue because I hadn’t harmed myself yet, which isn’t a good incentive not to harm yourself. Medical services, like depression itself I guess, don’t have a quick fix option. Maybe they are underfunded. Regardless, it’s understandable that people can’t last that long though after holding out for so long already, and it breaks my broken heart.

I don’t think I will ever be able to adequately write down every thing I want to say on depression. This isn’t it, this isn’t The Official Red Newsom Essay On Depression. I think typing down even a fraction of what I’m at least thinking about it in my current state of mind is healthy though. And I think for me, doing it in a public forum like this blog makes me less afraid of it. I don’t want to insulate, hide away in myself. I don’t want to make it all about me, walking around like I have a deep dark secret that nobody knows. Obviously I hope people don’t look at me like I’ve stood on the street and waved my knickers around, but I am tired of feeling like I’m lying about myself. I have depression and sometimes it gets really bad. It’s stupid and it’s unfair and it doesn’t make any sense. I am resentful because I know it’s directly affected a lot of my poorer life decisions, and I am frustrated because I don’t understand why I can’t just power down my brain when it hits me, going into standby mode. I am sad because mostly I feel like I am in an abusive relationship with myself.

One of my friends on my Creative Writing course wrote a story once with the opening line, “It’s days like this when I think I can just reach in and pull myself out”. Well, drag me out; the real Me. The Me capable of being happy, being present. Living in the moment and enjoying life without the constant doubt and distrust of it. The Me that laughs rather than crying over seemingly nothing. The Me with scars that are from the past, not the present. The Me capable of being a good person. I am both of these Me’s though, because I am not a separate person from my depression. We are not twins. I might feel possessed but I am not possessed. I am accountable and I am responsible for trying to make me the best Me I can be. I am both sides of the dice.

Alright.

Testing, testing. One iphone with voice recognition. Two or three terribly exaggerated accents. Eleven first lines from famous novels, read out in these voices and transcribed exactly as twenty-first century technology receives it. Can you guess what these opening gambits are supposed to be?

1) Oldies have been more or less

2) I was born twice first is a baby keel on a remarkability Mobleys beautiful day in January and I consistently and then again is a teenage boy in an emergency room nitpickers give me seeking Intel-based as that is 74

3) For a long time I went to bed early

4) If you really want to hear about it differs here Valleywood today is level was Bell homiletic check this was a luck and have a Peris was occupied and overfolded had it in order David Copperfield Cardioquin but I Defynnog only do it if you Wanna get the truth

5) Easytrieve universally I damaged any single menu position I would bufotenine must be more of a wide

6) Dallas is wise a faulty media lab a bigger really validated juice

7) Go mediation mail so maybe go nevermind I found precisely Headingley building their money and Muppets – in particular Deedrick clearly shows I thought I was set sail about it at dry up a little faith cedarwood Vyapari do world

8) So consider sorts of a few notes wish on board

9) He was the Queen sultry sambas December dielectrically did you Rowson Boyds and I did not know what I was doing in New York

10) In my John Brown Morborne know about the years my father give me some advice that I’ve been Telenor made my mind MR since

11) a story house now beginning or when I’ll be trebly one chooses the moment of this periods from wasting the back of four weeks Duke and David

Have a stab at these, and if you guess the most correctly I will send you one premium, new-but-slightly-housewarmed copy of Socrates Adam’s début novel, American-print edition! Send your answers here to rednewsom at gmail dot com.

(NO USING OF THE GOOGLES.)

Most of you won’t know this about me, but when I was fourteen I used to be pretty big on the Wizard scene. I’m not talking about party tricks, where you pull multicoloured silk scarves out of a tube or guess whichever card someone picks. No, I’m talking about hardcore, magicballs-to-the-wall wizardry.

I used to play a lot of games when I was a teenager, the sort of Windows97 CDRoms that used to take about forty minutes to install. My favourite though, hands down, was Wizards Way. It was cool because it was online, so you were actually playing with other people. Wizards Way was the world’s premier online wizard simulator. It was also one of the first popular MMORGs, with it’s own laws, customs and quests.

My handle was Wizard3562, or “RedMage2002″ if you knew me when the game started letting you customise your usernames. I started out as a youngling, but within a week I’d attended my Bearding Ceremony and became a fully-fledged wizard. I mainly practised ‘witching’, with spells such as dying all the sheep in Wizarderia red with my menstruation charm.

Wizard’s Way is more than just a simulator. Firstly, the map is massive and the spells you can cast are endless. You haven’t experienced anything like a Level 37 Warlock casting the Ritual of Golden Pants using a Rune of Persperia. I once killed a baby dragon using a combination of only enchanted fire-staffs and rosewater potions. That was a big deal in the wizard community for a while. In game, you can be better than yourself.

I know people say fourteen is too young to get married, but HalvardThePoignant was different. He wasn’t like the boys in my class, he had forty-five more body points than the average wizard and he co-owned a cattle-training school in the far northern regions of Wizarderia. We met by chance, when I was exploring a swamp looking for blue mushrooms. It was an instant connection and he took me back to the ranch to be his bride. I guess you could say he was the first guy I ever loved, but we don’t talk much any more.

This year, Compusoft shut down the servers for Wizard’s Way. They said there weren’t enough wizards constantly in game to justify keeping them running, which didn’t make sense because I know at least twelve Level 62 Extreme Wizards who are constantly logged in and training. A decade of mind and body points; gone. All the gold I had collected… I was bankrupt. We’d all worked for years to be the best wizards we could be and suddenly it didn’t mean anything any more. I tried emailing the moderators at Compusoft but never got any reply.

Barry and Windows, some of my friends from the game, have created a video to help promote Wizard’s Way. If you can help at all, even if it’s just spreading the word on twitter or facebook, maybe there’s a chance we can Wizard’s Way back online. Maybe more people will get the chance to experience the game.

Please, I miss my sheep.

It seems impossible for anyone to still insist that video games are a male past-time now. With a games console in practically every home that can afford one, anyone can play from five year old kids to eighty year old pensioners. Yet there is still a stereotype, an opinion that women don’t understand games, aren’t very good at them or just don’t fit into video game culture.

The evidence stacks up. Female characters are usually super-sexualised or placed in frail, supporting roles. Peach longs to be rescued and Bayonetta “can pick up an enemy’s spear and use it as a stripper pole”. Sexy, slim and beautiful but without the muscle definition, obviously. Something nice to look at. The idea seems to be that if you have a strong female character at the forefront of the game, men will not be able to relate to her. Good luck girls, because sex is still selling. You’re just not allowed to buy it.

Firstly, yeah, women have breasts. I get that. But my tiny B cup can’t relate to the hardened spheres high-fiving the sky which are glued onto the chest of almost every female character in video games that I’ve ever seen. What role do they serve? Are flame-throwers attached? I guess you could definitely poke someone’s eye out.

Take Ivy for example. In Soul Calibur, what could have been a bad-ass female character with great weapons and combo moves turns into a tacky dominatrix, all butt and boobs. I’m not the most physically active, but I certainly can’t imagine fighting to the death in a thong-leotard. I can’t even wear short skirts without extreme fear of gusts or accidental knicker-tucking.

Frankly, the appearance of the majority of female characters in video games is laughable. And a massive double standard. The Hawkeye Initiative addresses this really well on their website, where contributors draw and model Hawkeye into the standard poses that women pull in comics, games and advertisements. And he looks ridiculous, go figure. Male characters are clothed, wearing armour, have strong characters and are just generally tough. Meanwhile, in bikini-land it’s not the same for female protagonists. Even if they are tough, they still have to be as scantily clad as possible. When game developers tried to address this, Lara Croft went from “sexy” to “victim”. It’s almost like we need more female writers on board…

What does this mean for those young, impressionable types? Games are accessible to children in a way that adult movies aren’t, but both pose the same problem. As a child finding their own sexuality, what are they supposed to think when these games show that the most important thing about women is their bodies? In this sense yes, we really do need to Think Of The Children.

On Twitter, the hashtag #1ReasonWhy was created to address the unbalanced ratio of women game developers in relation to male ones. According to Game Developer, just under 11.5 percent of game industry employees in the U.S (across all departments) were women. It’s worse in the UK; women here make up 6% of the industry.

Female game developers also encounter resistance when they point out that many elements in games are designed to cater to heterosexual men. “I got blank [stares] when I asked why a female soldier in a game I worked on looked like a porn star,” said designer Caryn Vainio.

With the basic lack of contribution and silencing of women into the industry is it any wonder this is how we are presented? Women in the games industry, from development to journalism, are just straight up dismissed. You wear a skirt, how can you play first person shooters? Jennifer Hepler, a writer for Bioware “ended up deleting her Twitter account to escape the hatred and abuse of gamers calling her an obese cunt, a fat bitch, a whore, a plague and a cancer, advising her to commit suicide and making harassing phone calls to her home” because she dared to include a gay romance storyline in Dragon Age II. An optional gay romance.  Turns out if you’re not a straight, white male your work and your opinions are worthless.

Anita Sarkeesian created a kickstarter to deal with these issues. Her aims were as follows:

This video project will explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games.  The series will highlight the larger recurring patterns and conventions used within the gaming industry rather than just focusing on the worst offenders.

You know what people did? They created a game where players could punch Sarkeesian in the face. ”She claims to want gender equality in video games,” says one comment. “But in reality, she just wants to use the fact that she was born with a vagina to get free money and sympathy from everyone who crosses her path.” Need any more proof of sexism in video games?

It’s a question that the industry still doesn’t appear to be asking; what if the player is female? Even though 47% of gamers in America are women. And maybe it’s not so clearly divided; if I was a man I’m sure I’d be rolling my eyes at these billion dollar companies treating me like a caveman. The graphics advance, the gameplay advances, but don’t forget to include the boobies or else the lads won’t be interested. It doesn’t say much about what the industry things of you, does it boys?

It’s hard for anyone to relate to women characters in this gaming-porn culture where the female body is fetishised. I don’t want to play the new Hitman if I’m going to end up punching S&M nuns in the face. Violence against women in games is sexualised in way that violence against men isn’t. The simple act of playing a video game online, a past-time and an act of enjoyment, is not a safe space. My teenage years were spent watching boys shout at each other, “I’m going to rape you, I’m raping you!” I don’t want to contribute to that.

Will attitudes from both industry and audience eventually change, or will they get worse? Will games just totally segregate, with the only appropriately dressed, fleshed out first person perspective female characters being shelved into a special “For The Ladies” section in Game? Even if you aren’t interested in video games, the problem is reflective of our culture in general and attitudes toward women. It needs to be addressed.

Let’s address it.

With intensive coverage of the gang rape of a woman in New Delhi, people have been quick to condemn India and it’s relationship with the female body. “A Dark Day For India”, “India Should Be Ashamed” is the general opinion of bloggers, journalists and people on the street. This mentality is strange to me, because of it’s utter hypocrisy.

In small-town Steubenville famous for its football team, two high school teenagers are being investigated for sexually assaulting an unconscious girl at a party. Rape and abuse were laughed off by these kids hailed as heroes of their town for their sporting prowess. As if that wasn’t enough, they filmed it and put the footage on the internet.

Twitter posts, videos and photographs circulated by some who attended the nightlong set of parties suggested that an unconscious girl had been sexually assaulted over several hours while others watched. She even might have been urinated on.

This is the world we live in, English-speaking angels. Whilst you sit in front of your televisions feeling outraged over New Delhi, your sons think it’s acceptable to piss on a vulnerable teenager at a party. It’s scary because it’s real. It’s not a bus in a foreign country, it’s in a house at a party that could have been thrown anywhere in the States or the UK. It’s social media shaming the victim, and it’s cold-hearted sociopathic boys with little remorse for how they humiliated and violated a human being.

But are we surprised? Rape is so much a part of Western culture that it’s ridiculous. Comedians tell rape jokes, rappers write rape into their lyrics (“Rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome” - Tyler the Creator). At the other end of the spectrum is indifference, which feels just as terrifying as a rapist’s intent. It’s a football coach defending his criminals, it’s commenters on an article saying “she shouldn’t have gotten so drunk”. It’s every person who uses “rape” as a verb for kicking someone’s butt at computer games or hijacking a Facebook account. The normalisation and desensitisation of sexual abuse and assault is common and frightening.

This week, I had to watch The Evil Dead for a discussion on Zombie Cast. I like horror movies generally, but when I mentioned it to a friend the first thing he said to me was “you know there’s tree rape in it?” You what? I didn’t take those seemingly unrelated words into account and watched it. Yup. Tree rape. Branches pull a woman’s legs apart and violate her whilst I watch, feeling sick to my stomach. I support any creative work where rape serves a storyline but that scene was so unnecessary that it made me angry, saddened and triggered. There’s your horror, Sam Raimi. Gratuitous rape is everywhere, usually done to women in stories written by men. Some people find it funny.

Sex sells, especially when it’s a woman in a red dress sitting on the bonnet of a sports car. Or maybe not even a woman, maybe just a pair of breasts and no head. Women as props, plot devices, attractive scenery. Lynx adverts that tell you using their product will get you laid. The feminine form is taught to be desired in a way that is detached from the woman herself, just a pure form of sexuality that must be obtained. Like rape, it’s about  power. Is it any wonder some men feel like they are entitled to it rather than asking for it?

This is why we’re scared. This is why we walk home clutching out keys, the jagged metal patterns pointing outwards as a pitiful defence against the extreme. This is why there are groups protesting street harassment. It’s only a man shouting “show us your tits” until it’s other man forcing himself against you to feel them. It’s about being scared to take the short-cut home through the unlit car park. It’s about your creepy ex-boyfriend who sends you threatening emails after you broke up with him. It’s about the guy who offers you a place to stay for the night and then takes advantage. Not every male member of our species is a threat, but some of them are. What are we supposed to think when statistically, most rapes are committed by someone who knew the victim already?

We’re so quick to criticise New Delhi, but it’s written all over our culture. It’s our responsibility to tell people not to rape, rather than to avoid being raped. Women are more than bodies and objectives, flattering pictures on a bus shelter poster. Why aren’t we trying harder?

This week, the tabloid news tells us that Taylor Swift has split from her brief relationship with One Direction singer Harry Styles. I don’t know why I felt the need to mention his band’s name, as I’m pretty sure even my Grandma knows who Harry Styles is by now. You can’t buy a scrunchie from Claire’s without squeezing past a gondola of 1D-themed keyrings, bags and necklaces. Suffice to say One Direction are huge, which has led to some assuming that “Haylor” was only a PR stunt to begin with. But hey, they went to the zoo. That’s a pretty cool marketing contract to have with someone.

Taylor Swift is one of those starlets who seems to receive a disproportionate amount of criticism for living her life, which is odd because I’ve never seen a photo of Swift with a joint in her hand. The flack she gets is for dating boys, breaking up with them and writing a song about it. Because if you’ve ever properly written something I’m sure you can clarify for me that no-one writes from experience ever. We don’t draw from our own lives, we completely fantasise and dream up situations alien to us and then stick them in a poem. That’s how the creative process works, duh.

Sometimes it can suck going out with a writer. Worrying about that sentence with that character who sort of seems like you, who is doing or being something less than perfect in the author’s eyes. Taylor Swift certainly doesn’t hold back in drawing from situations in her life, but who can say how real those moments really are. She’s got a rhyme scheme, she must be exaggerating a little bit. Still, the media likes to use words like “unsubtle” to justify the page spaces for picking apart Swift’s lyrics, guessing which boy she is writing about this time. That must be awkward for the male ego.

I don’t know about you, but when I was in my late teens and early twenties, the media would have ripped my lyrics apart. My relationships were like Taylor’s; short. I would do something stupid, they would do something stupid, and I would sit in my bedroom and tearfully write a poem about how I was feeling. I can accept an album full of breakup songs, because which teenage girl with delusions of authorship hasn’t considered it herself? “Who will she date next?” wonder the internet journos in their green room circle of media hell. Like it’s a game. “Expect another breakup song coming your way soon!” Imagine having complete stranger criticise you for your relationships, blaming you for problems that are incredibly personal to you, not the armchair psychologists of the internet. I’m sure Taylor has other interests, and hobbies, but she seems totally defined in the media by who’s hand she is holding.

The thing that people forget about young celebrities is that they are people. Kristen Stewart got about one million times more angry, high and mighty coverage for her affair with married director Rupert Sanders. “Trampire” was a legitimate headline in a legitimate newspaper. The memes and the wordplay is all very amusing, and the more conservative trash-eaters get to feel all moral. But these are young girls lives we’re tracking every hour of the day. Taylor Swift writes songs about how she feels when she’s in love because she’s still becoming a person. She’s learning about her feelings and what she wants or doesn’t, and she’s putting them into a catchy PG-13 song that other young girls can relate to. Sorry that she’s not writing songs about renting a truck or joining a knitting circle. (I don’t know, ok?)

Taylor Swift throws herself into the moment, and I respect that. We all like a bit of romance, and that typically happens when you date someone just enough to not really get to know all their huge flaws. The media has a weird love/hate relationship with young women who date around. Check out this ridiculous article, slut-shaming Swift for the frequency of the man-rotation in her life whilst criticising her for painting herself as “sweet and elegant”. Big deal. Taylor Swift could have slept with one hundred people by now; her sexuality is 100% her business. Not everyone when they are young is perfect and faultless, keeping the same sexual partner for ten years without ever falling out and breaking up. Good. At twenty-three, Swift is learning who she is. It seems a cruel facet of the media to criticise someone on the number of men a young girl can be linked with. How many is acceptable? Five is fine, but at six you instantly become a whore? Please. 

I love Taylor Swift’s album, but that’s beside the point. I love dancing around the kitchen to “We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together”, but this fascination with “who will be Taylor Swift’s next victim” is disturbing. Let the girl date, fornicate, live and love. And let her write about it. Sometimes writing about our experiences is the most powerful tool we have.

Personal Statement:

I am a human being and I am doing my best.

Education:

The Job Centre told me to lie about my education in case I came across as overqualified. I’m not sure how a dual honours English and History Bachelors and a Masters in Creative Writing could possibly over-qualify me for anything, except the painting and decoration apprenticeship I was turned down for. And McDonalds, who told me I wasn’t what they were looking for.

I think really all these degrees show is that I can read and write to a more-than-acceptable standard. I am also good at meeting deadlines (ie staying up all night) and am skilled at passing off other people’s opinions as my own, which is useful when you consider things like “company manifestos”. Basically, if you needed me to write or communicate with someone I could do that.

Work Experience:

Because the only positions I have been successful in getting over the last three years have been temporary and part-time, my CV is a total mess and it feels embarrassing listing all the companies I’ve had to leave after a matter of months. I have never voluntarily left a job, except once in 2010 when I was made homeless unexpectedly. Does that count? I don’t like leaving jobs because failure disappoints me and change scares me. I’ll pretty much kick around forever if the work is interesting and the pay is reasonable.

I have had on-and-off jobs in retail since I was fifteen, ranging from hanging up old lady knickers in British Home Stores to managing a charity shop on weekends. So a lot of “using my initiative” there, especially with the latter. If the job I’m applying with you isn’t retail, I personally don’t think it matters because the skills I have are transferable and I am probably so bored from being unemployed that everything will seem exciting to me. I can learn fast.

One non-retail job example: I have worked as a Publicity and Marketing Assistant for two non-profit organisations. I worked for them simultaneously because the two directors “fought over me” because I gave a good interview. One of them calls me up occasionally to offer me the odd bit of work, so I must have been good at publicity and marketing. And admin. I’ve done a lot of admin.

At the moment I work at a bookshop, but they don’t have enough money to pay me so I will be unemployed again in January. I love working there because, as suck-uppy as it sounds to write this, I love ordering in books for customers and seeing their happy little faces when they arrive. Generally I try to be very chirpy and interact with my colleagues, although I am rubbish at the crossword. I try very hard not to take days off and recently worked an entire week whilst dying from the flu. I come into work even when I am hungover, which is serious dedication because my hangovers are really bad.

Other Experience:

I was an editor of an arts magazine that a couple of friends and I brought over from Keele University to Manchester. I did a lot of marketing, editorial decision making and layout design. I only left because the magazine started to take a turn for the fashion photography and that’s not my thing, but I’m involved with another group now who are putting out an ebook and a print publication next year.

I podcast weekly on a show called Zombie Cast, which speaks for itself in terms of content. I do seem to discuss what I would do in the event of an apocalypse a lot, ie; I am very forward-thinking. It airs live at 12.30AM our time, so being a podcaster has taught me great time management (fitting in a nap before the show) and how to function on very few hours sleep.

I am a responsible person with two cats who haven’t starved to death or gone feral at the time of writing this. I am pretty organised and love making lists. It really bugs me when my flat is messy and I’m thinking of alphabetising my books. I definitely walk the right distance between “enthusiastic” and “desperate” when it comes to having a job. You know, the constant fear that if you say no to working a Sunday you’ll instantly get sacked, that kind of desperate. Generally I do honestly believe I could be good at whatever I put my mind to. Unless it was something to do with bees.

*

I hope you will consider me for a job, Potential Employer. I know this isn’t how you’re supposed to write CVs but I have tried everything else. Everything. I thought maybe telling you honestly about me as an employee and a person thus far would be more useful than using the kind of “stock phrases” and blatant lies which end up in you employing someone who turns out to be rubbish.

It’s not a good time to be British.

I suppose I should relinquish the shock and surprise of another Conversative Party attack against the poor, since news reports seem to pop up every day now. Telling people what they can and can’t buy on benefits, making the unemployed work for free, and generally more cuts and hate-fuelled propaganda, with working people also coming up short. The stagnant “living wage” ensures the working poor continue to rely on benefits, leading the government to pit them against the “lazy, scrounging” unemployed.

At this point, you’d have to be a millionaire in order to justify voting conservative. Even our small-c, middle class parents must be questioning the wisdom of David Cameron as he advises twenty-somethings to move back home rather than claim housing benefit. Whether policy or a whacky idea, the Conservative mentality is a dangerous one that is dividing the country. Cuts to essential services, prohibition rather than education… It’s easy to sit in front of your laptop and feel doomed. How far will they push?

I feel scared this week because on Sunday I become one of the Invisible People again. Someone who is unemployed but not able to claim the fifty-something pounds a week that an under twenty-five year old is allowed to apply for. I live with my boyfriend, so obviously I don’t get financial security of my own. He has to support me. Whilst paying off his own debts and looking after himself, of course. Sure, there are tax credits and the like but they seem increasingly hard to come by and I have little faith in support from the job centre. Last time I was there they made me cry. I never thought that little jobskeers form you fill in would make me feel like more of a person, but at least I was “in the system”. I don’t even count as a statistic now.

What does this mean, then? Do I even exist? By all accounts I fade away, in a weird half-human limbo for the foreseeable future. Sitting in my knickers applying for jobs and crying. I’d love to assume that it won’t last for long, but in my experiences from 2009 – 2012 have shown me, this Judge Judy induced coma could go on for months. Last year, I felt invisible. Ghostlike. Rarely leaving the house. It feels weird to be overlooked, shrugged off. I’m Mrs Adams without the ring, as the government expects my unmarried partner to fully provide for my little lost lamb of a self whilst I look for work. Is that fair? Only with serious means-testing.

I’m tired, guys. All I want is a job. Some financial security and a routine. Healthy food rather than pasta. The prospect of moving out of the bedsit and into a flat that is more suited to housing four creatures. I got my hopes up at the end of this year thinking everything was going to be ok, but there’s a reason I struggle with optimism. Each time, and there are few times to begin with, my job has come to an end and I’m back to the start. Applying for sales jobs wondering if this is going to be the next ten years of my life.

Christmas. A time for everyone to relax, forgetting the cold commutes to work and the stresses of the everyday to spend quality time with the people they love. Presents are torn from their festive wrapping and we all sit around the table gorging ourselves on turkey and parsnips, pulling crackers.

Unless you work in retail that is. The companies that pay large sums of money to put warm, cheerful advertisements on our televisions and in our magazines about this lovely quality family-orientated time also conveniently rota in their staff to work straight through Christmas.

Just take a holiday, then. Except that employees in retail are generally paid minimum wage which has still not risen to match the high cost of living. A lot of people are on temporary or part time contracts which means they don’t have the luxury of a two week holiday each year, or even sick pay. I recently worked through the flu because I couldn’t afford to miss out on a couple day’s pay. And because both unemployment figures and the turn-over for large retail companies is so high, asking for a break can often induce a panic because cashiers are deemed instantly replaceable.

In 2009 I was on a three month contract at Waterstone’s in Manchester. It was temporary, so all the seasonal holidays went to the full time staff. So I ended up working the Christmas Eve shift.. Because people who leave present buying to the last minute must be humoured. Christmas is a time for family, but I spent mine with someone else’s because I couldn’t get a train to Sussex at 7PM on the 24th. And get this – my contract ended on Boxing Day. Thanks guys!

What’s going on with this obsession with consumerism? Sure, it’s our jobs to supply humans with material goods but where’s the heart? Let people take it easy for three days, especially after the intenseness of December and it’s desperate, stressed customers taking their frustrations out on the staff. My friend Cos is down to do a 5AM shift on Boxing Day. Is it really so important that people buy a heavily discounted book or perfume so immediately after receiving their own presents? Retail companies make a lot of money from After-Christmas Sales, but that’s their choice. If everywhere decided the sales were going to be a few days later, it wouldn’t make a difference. Go crazy with the pricing gun on the 28th and leave the underpaid slaves to sleep off the sherry and have time to themselves for a while.

Honestly, the idea that not everyone is entitled to a few days off for Christmas makes me fume. I know, it’s a religious holiday made capitalist but once you get past all the commercial bullshit the idea that you can simply sit down for an extended period of time sounds pretty good to me. And I know we’re not firemen or other worker groups who have to suffer through the festive season but really, shopping is not that important. You can scout the sales a few days later and nobody gets hurt.

Edit: I’ve got the 23rd to the 28th off this year, so whilst I work in retail and am biased I’m not that biased. Fellow man and woman, yeah!