ITV Lorraine star rages at ‘epidemic of violence against women’ after ‘humiliating’ catcalling incident: ‘I want to cry!’
ITV Lorraine regular Emily Clarkson has unleashed a furious rant about the “epidemic of violence against women and girls” at the hands of men after being a victim of cat-calling in London.
The presenter and daughter of Jeremy Clarkson shared a candid video shortly after the incident in which she was left “angry, scared and humiliated”. “See, I just wanna cry right now,” Clarkson began in the first of two clips about the ordeal.
Detailing what happened, Clarkson explained: “I’m in the park with my five-month-old baby and on my way here, three men leant out of their van to shout at me, to jeer at me and my friend.
“And as I arrived in the park by myself, just me and my baby, a man stood up off a bench and he started following me down the path, telling me how gorgeous I was.
“I said, ‘Please stop, I’m with my baby’, and he didn’t,” she continued before reflecting on her thought process during the worrying scenario.
The podcaster went on: “There’s a part of my brain that’s like, ‘Shut up, Em, he’s complimenting you because you’ll miss it when it’s gone’, that’s what I hear, that’s what I know people will be thinking, that catcalls are just compliments, stop overreacting.
“I know it’s exacerbated the fact that I’m with my baby and it doesn’t make it right that it happens when I’m not, but the fact that I’m with her, pushing her buggy through the park and these men still feel this sense of entitlement to me and her, it makes me want to scream.”
Clarkson continued by outlining exactly why catcalling represents a danger. “A catcall isn’t a compliment, a catcall is a threat, and we all f***ing know that.
“It’s a display of dominance, of power, of entitlement, and a reminder to me of my vulnerability.
“We are living in an epidemic of violence against women and girls, and amongst all that, a catcall doesn’t seem so bad… but catcalls are representative of so much of this male entitlement, a patriarchal society that boys will be boys and girls should shut the f*** up… It scared the s*** out of me.”
Clarkson was soon on the receiving end of hundreds of supportive messages from her followers in the comments of the Instagram post, but in a follow-up video, she revealed some of the responses had been exactly what she feared.
In a video captioned “So that’s on victim blaming I guess”, Clarkson shared screenshots of comments from critics who claimed she should’ve dressed more “modestly”.
“I knew that fact that I was angry and scared and humiliated wouldn’t matter…I’d been asking for it… It was my body that made this crime inevitable,” Clarkson furiously began in the second video.
She then read aloud a message from a follower who claimed she was at fault, with the critic saying “men can’t control their lust” and that “I, as a woman, should shoulder this responsibility”.
The Lorraine contributor fumed: “What did I expect? She asked. Never mind that we associate traits like self-control and discipline with masculinity.
“That, we say, is what makes men such great leaders, and famously, it’s a woman’s inability to control herself that makes her so unsuitable for a position of power.
“Men just can’t control themselves,” she added before she signed off by delivering haunting statistics about male violence.
“Men have to kill a woman every three days in the UK. Men need to sexually harass 97 percent of women in the UK aged between 18 and 24. Men have to rape one in four of us, that’s just common sense, she said,” Clarkson concluded.
Clarkson’s honest account of the “humiliating” ordeal prompted waves of support from fans and several famous faces, with the likes of Sharon Gafka and Rachel Stevens “liking” the clip.
The likes of Gabby Logan and Susanna Reid similarly reached out when Clarkson first shared her account of the incident.
If you’ve been affected by the subject matter of this story, you can contact Refuge on 0808 2000 247 or head to https://refuge.org.uk/ for 24/7 help.