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“For a lot of the girls that we deal with, these experiences can be paralysing and you’re the one who changes,” Becky points out. “It’s how we’ve been told to deal with it, but that’s not the way it should be. When girls get catcalled for what they’re wearing they’ll change how they dress and I’m just bored of girls changing the way they behave just to be safe. I wanted to put on a night where we didn’t have to contend with any of that.”
Since an early report on Reclaim Blackpool Map was plotted here, Bootleg Social, our venue for tonight, has been central to the campaign, offering free space for events, displaying posters and ensuring staff respond appropriately when women raise concerns.
“I was wary at first,” admits bar owner Stephen Skelly who also hosts the Reclaim Blackpool men’s group and built the campaign’s website. “I thought that having a story of sexual harassment at Bootleg highlighted would make people think it was an unsafe place. But, talking to the women in the campaign about their experiences, I realised that they experience it everywhere and that it’s better to take responsibility, call it out and make it clear that this behaviour won’t be tolerated here.”
Tonight Stephen has hired female bar and door staff but mans the entrance himself. A few men have asked to come in, most of them surprised but accepting that it’s women-only, but the most surprising thing to him is that, for the first time ever, no one has asked him to watch their drink – routine for women on an ordinary night.
I lose track of my drink more than once throughout the night but drink it without fear when I eventually locate it. It’s the kind of confidence Serena Paige had in Bootleg a few months earlier.
“I was there for an emo night – a night I’ve been to so many times. I know the people that work there, I know the crowd and the kind of people who go,” she says.
Serena can only think of a few split seconds when she was stood alone and rooting around in her bag for her phone when her drink could have been spiked but a check of CCTV revealed nothing.