I don’t want more prisons and punishment for men – I want to help prevent sexual assault so women are safer in the first place
“In 2017, at British Summer Time Festival, a man stuck his hands between Gina’s legs and took a photo of her crotch.” This is how most people begin to write about me, regardless of the context. Interviews often start like this. Events I am hosting for the release of my new book will begin like this. And I get it: the campaign I led to change the law, making upskirting a specific offence in England and Wales in 2019, was a big news story. It also had a global impact; Gibraltar and France changed their laws in response and it was even featured on Saturday Night Live. I knew it had changed my life when I was nominated for an OBE.
Since I was 26 I have been known as “the upskirting girl”. I still receive emails from those who’ve used the law and get stopped on the street by people thanking me. Sometimes they pass me a note with their story hastily jotted down, because repeating it will make what’s happened to them feel too real. I cherish these interactions and I’m proud that my political activism has had a lasting positive impact, but I also have a complex relationship with it.
The upskirting campaign was my first campaign. I see it as part of my work, not the extent of it, and it’s also intimately tied to pain. For the public, being upskirted was an exciting origin story, but for me it was trauma. I was assaulted in public, and everyone knows the details. They want to hear the story from my mouth so they can enjoy the triumph at the end. The plot twist.
Gina Martin is a gender equality campaigner, speaker and writer whose work focuses on gender, misogyny and sexual violence. Her book, No Offence, But … is published on 27 July
Join Gina Martin, Ben Hurst and Cathy Reay and writer Natty Kasambala, for a Guardian Live event about her new book, on Thursday 27 July 2023, 8pm–9pm. Book tickets here.
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