Over 75,000 people saw it live, and many more millions saw it televised. A man grabbed her face and kissed her, without her consent. We all saw it, we threw up in our mouths a bit, but women’s football was having a moment, so we let it go.

What happened next is what happens to nearly every single woman you know in some shape or form at least once in her lifetime.

She was told to issue a statement downplaying the incident after her and her family and her teammates were pressured.

The story was it was an ‘innocent gesture’. Then the story changed because we all saw through it, and it became she ‘consented’, even enthusiastically participated, which anyone with eyeballs can see didn’t happen.

She says she didn’t, in fact, consent, which is the truth, and is now being gaslighted on a global scale. And the cherry on the shit sandwich us women have been forced to choke down our whole lives, is now the team has come out in support of her and are being threatened with legal action.

The players are different but the playbook remains the same.

An act of sexual violence act happens – in private, in public, in the workplace – and a woman is told it’s no big deal and to keep quiet.

It is, in fact, a big deal, and she says so. She is told she is crazy, and doesn’t really know what happened, that is is lying, (despite the fact she was there and it happened in front of millions of people!!).

When she and others stand up for themselves, the legal system – set up by men to protect men – is used to put them back into their place and to serve as a warning to other women who dare speak up.

And the final play is to blame the feminists, who of course are ruining society.

No one should be subjected to any act which violates their personal boundaries without consent. This could have easily been addressed as a stupid thing to do by an excited dude who could have genuinely apologised, accepted his suspension with grace, and sought some fucking sexual harassment training.

But no, because dudes who do this don’t actually ever want to believe they did anything wrong. So the pressure starts, the gaslighting starts: She consented, she asked for it, she’s lying, she’s crazy, she hates men, she’s trying to get money, she liked it.

This is a very public example of what has been happening to women for hundreds of years – and is still being allowed to happen.

And then, the breathtaking hypocrisy of him likening what’s happening to him to witch hunts – witch hunts which were used to silence dissenting women, millions of them, which is what he is using our still patriarchal society to do now. How convenient something men perpetrated on innocent women is now being used to defend men! What the ACTUAL FUCK!

And of course – let’s not forget the shaming. Feminists are ruining everything! The stupid annoying feminists who don’t understand fun! Why won’t they let us just have our fun with women who don’t want to fuck us and stop bugging us about it! They hate men! They’re lying lesbians!

Well the pettyfogger jizzbuckets out there who would silence women better fucking believe I’m a goddamn feminist raising feminists and ensuring women step into their power and their voices because this shit is still happening and even when it happens in front of millions, the first thing – THE FIRST THING – they do is try to silence the women involved by calling them liars instead of changing the behaviour of men.

The society of equality is a fallacy; where male domination exists, covertly or overtly, rape and sexual assault will continue and women will continue to be disbelieved by the very system that claims to protect them.

So yeah, I’m a fucking feminist and anyone who think women (or anyone) shouldn’t be subjected to sexual acts without their consent should be one too – male or female or non-binary.

And just quietly, last year, 57 women were killed by male violence in Australia. In the first 30 weeks of 2023, 35 Australian women have been killed by their partners or ex partners, the Taliban, which were heartily allowed to take over Afghanistan, have now banned women from national parks, and female scientists don’t feature in Australia science textbooks.

This is why we all need to be feminists.