The case of Sarah Everard should make us all stop and think

At the time of writing, we don’t know what happened to Sarah Everard. However this story ends, it should be an important national moment of reflection, because the way it has made a lot of people feel deserves serious attention.

When I say ‘people’, I largely mean ‘women’. And that reflection should come from men. Men need to learn some lessons about the way this case makes women feel.

Perhaps there is something jarring about me, a man, writing a column about women’s feelings and thoughts. Should I even be trying to describe and report the experience of a group to which I do not belong? There’s a lot of identity-based thinking and argument that would say ‘No’ to that question. In other contexts, it’s become common to hear the assertion that a person who does not belong to a category of people cannot speak for that category.

I don’t buy that assertion, not least because it’s based on a category error.