What would it be like if the tables were turned? Many women have wondered this, during moments of varying degrees of fear or frustration, and now we have a chance to find out.
A new TV show called The Power depicts a world where men are physically afraid of women.
It’s based on a sci-fi book by Naomi Alderman, in which women discover they have the ability to unleash deadly bolts of electricity from their hands.
It’s hard not to wish this premise was real life, even if only briefly, for educational purposes.
As Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood famously said, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
Not quite the same, is it? One party will have their pride dented, the other their life ended, like Zara Aleena, Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa, Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman, and far too many more.
The idea of a world where women could potentially zap men into oblivion, like one of those electric flyswatters – and men are aware of it, so adjust their behaviour accordingly – makes me almost giddy. Imagine being able to go out after dark and walk home down any street you fancied without a minute of thought or concern, without having to hold your keys between your fingers and hope that if push came to shove you wouldn’t be too paralysed by terror to use them.
Imagine never having to worry about unwanted advances, or being forced to laugh off, or out and out ignore, constant misogyny for fear of looking uptight or like a bad sport, and there being negative consequences for you .
Imagine being allowed – radical concept this, so you’ll need to suspend all disbelief for a second – to go about your life, exactly as you please, without having to consider, second guess or be frightened of what men may or may not do to you?
Instead of living with the constant threat of being verbally or physically abused, attacked, raped, patronised, cat-called, underestimated, discriminated against, belittled, overlooked, diminished or killed. It’s like a fantastical fairy tale, isn’t it? The Sisters Not Grimm.
Incidentally, in The Power, which starts on Amazon Prime on Friday, the men respond by getting together and forming little groups, which sound uncannily like the Incel movement.
Something which, it could be noted, exists now, today, in reality, and if women are currently (pun intended) capable of shooting electricity out of their fingers I need to call E.ON because mine have been on the blink my whole life.
Comedian Katherine Ryan, whose teenage friend was murdered by her boyfriend, has admitted that since that time she’s never been in a room alone with a man without being conscious that if he wanted to, he could kill her. After reading that quote, neither have I. Hearing that women think like that probably sounds very dramatic and over the top to some men. But those men are not the ones we need to worry about. Probably.
