Holly Tunstall

This week felt difficult to be a woman. So was the last, and the week before that. That is not however, to suggest that this is an experience isolated to women and girls. Everyone would be justified in feeling unsafe in the current climate.

Worries of overdose, sexual assault and dirty needles fill me with dread every time I’m queuing up outside a nightclub.

The recent reports of spiking are gripping national media, with victims reporting ‘spiking via injection’. For someone who particularly dreads going for her flu jab, the idea of someone with probably no professional medical training, injecting me with an unsanitised needle makes me want to hang up my heels and retire from nightlife altogether. Worries of overdose, sexual assault and dirty needles fill me with dread every time I’m queuing up outside a nightclub. I know I’m not alone in these paralysing premonitions.

The recent ‘girls night in’ boycott of bars and clubs began with a group from Edinburgh, as a response to local reports of spiking via injection. The movement spread to cities nationwide who set up their own individual ‘teams’ under the larger umbrella of the boycott. Students’ unions, bars and business’ around the country got involved to push for change surrounding safety in night-time establishments.

The campaign calls for a set of ‘demands’ to be implemented in clubs, including but not limited to: easily identifiable, dedicated welfare officers to direct people to safety and receive medical help; the provision of anti-spiking devices, and compulsory bystander intervention training to educate bar and door staff how to intervene and support someone if they suspect they have been spiked.

The main split opinion separating the individual campaigns under the larger figurehead is supporting the government petition calling for increased searching of patrons on the door. With 100,000+ signatures the discussion will now be brought to parliament. Among others, teams in Belfast, Nottingham and Manchester came forward directly opposing this petition under the belief that this would disproportionately affect marginalised groups, which does not provide an effective solution to the problem. ‘Belfast night in’ organised the city’s boycott on Wednesday the 27th of October.

Northern Ireland in particular, is a challenging environment in which to identify as a member of a marginalised group or as female. Pregnant people lack proper access to abortion, and we are without an official strategy to tackle gender-based violence. Only the other week did Sinn Fein and members of the SDLP abstain from voting in the first minister’s latest abortion bill. The severe fetal impairment abortion (amendment) bill, if passed, will ensure that pregnant people will not be able to terminate a pregnancy after twenty-four weeks (Nicole Lang, Derry Now).

Did I mention that this was on the second anniversary of the decriminalisation of abortion in the North? It is vital that the public, private institutions and the government work to support and protect women and those who are gender diverse – not against them.

It was only last year when a man was cycling round Belfast in a bunny mask attacking girls simply trying to walk home. The epidemic is gender-based violence and it’s happening now.

Holly Tunstall is the Queen’s University Belfast Students’ Union part-time women students’ officer

The epidemic is gender-based violence and it's happening now