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Clara Hill
Mar 12, 2021
Sarah Everard’s disappearance has sparked lots of talk about women’s fear merely walking home
PA
Women are sharing how prevalent the phrase “text me when you get home” is in their life in the wake of Sarah Everard’s disappearance.
The trend was shared by Lucy Mountain, a fitness trainer who took to Instagram share a photo of a WhatsApp message.
She was inspired by the disappearance of Sarah Everard, who was walking home from her friends’ house in Clapham in London before she went missing on 3 March.
Giving examples of precautions women frequently take, such as sharing their live location via GPS with friends and walking with keys between their fingers, Mountain wrote: “What’s so insidious is that these things don’t even feel like ‘special safety tools’.
“They’re literally just engrained behaviours and actions we’ve had to pick up since we were little girls. Because ’that’s just the way it is’.
“‘Text me when you get home xxx’ is a standard procedure amongst women. Auto-pilot.”
The post has received nearly a million likes, showing that it hit a nerve with people all over the internet.
Twitter was also brimming with women sharing what that phrase meant to them, showing its dominance in women going out after dark.
There’s a reason all my friends say ‘text me when you get home’ and chase me up if I forget, and there’s a reason I… https://t.co/sUbP3tXiGz— flamin nora (@flamin nora) 1615413679
To my sisters and friends when I say text me when you get home, I mean it. I don’t care what time I just want to kn… https://t.co/tUuGbgxPJ2— Madison Scott (@Madison Scott) 1615494761
‘Text me when you get home’. Something me and my friends have done without even thinking of why we do it for years.… https://t.co/QwkWPEdaLc— Becca Knight 🐠 (@Becca Knight 🐠) 1615494053
I’ve always said text me when you get home safe and had it said to me on nights out, nights in pals etc and I never… https://t.co/V43j8etu2K— Kathryn McIntyre (@Kathryn McIntyre) 1615487801
'text me when you get home' It doesn't sound scary when we say it to each other. We say it with smiles on our fac… https://t.co/5YTXdAVhJv— Amy Churchman (@Amy Churchman) 1615538869
“Text me when you get home safe” is something I say to women I know before we part ways, and I’ve never thought abo… https://t.co/Ta5hYcONH5— Miriam Brett (@Miriam Brett) 1615397231
How many times have you said to sisters, your Mum or friends “text me when you get home yeh?” I feel sick & heartb… https://t.co/CZ1h2jnZqV— Beth Fisher (@Beth Fisher) 1615396250
"Please text me when you get home" is said mainly by women to women for a reason.— Eve Barlow (@Eve Barlow) 1615472871
Chilling. Taxi drivers wait until we close our front doors. When we say good bye to our male friends we say "se… https://t.co/b9fpz1Q1ho— Cllr. Juliet O Connell (@Cllr. Juliet O Connell) 1615535044
Do men tell eachother ‘text me when you get home’? I doubt it very much. https://t.co/IlJevJLsJL— Natasha Guiotto ⚡️ (@Natasha Guiotto ⚡️) 1615406484
I searched my phone earlier, and I literally have hundreds of ‘text me when you get home’ texts between my gorgeous… https://t.co/gDRaSutCKU— Rachel Ellen (@Rachel Ellen) 1615523375
Every woman you know has taken a longer route. Has doubled back on herself. Has pretended to dawdle by a shop win… https://t.co/LWZWVSsgnQ— Harriet Johnson (@Harriet Johnson) 1615401146
Do men say “get home safe/text me when you get home” to their friends? Genuine q— who is hunky dory? (@who is hunky dory?) 1615385759
i can’t wait to head home from a bar again and have my friend say “text me when you get home so i know you didn’t d… https://t.co/pW10p4ZKOH— #3 sisterwife but #1 in his heart (@#3 sisterwife but #1 in his heart) 1615397547
This follows on from the announcement from Dame Cressida Dick, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police stating a serving Metropolitan police offer has been arrested on suspicion of kidnap and murder on 10 March, and she was aware it was “every family’s worst nightmare” but it is “incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from streets.”
However, this was little comfort to some women online as they felt terrorised by the fear, causing “Reclaim the Streets” to sweep Twitter, inspired by the 1977 movement “Reclaim The Night”.
More: The matriarchal societies around the world that embrace the power of womanhood
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