the times | Tuesday May 17 2022 7
times2health
compared to a cup of tea by a freshers’
rep at university.
We were warned about rape at
school, but it was labelled as something
that could be done to us in dark
alleyways by the bogeyman — not
something that could be nuanced, or
with someone you might know.
The idea that you didn’t have to just
laugh off a man’s persistence was a
revelation. It reframed countless
teenage sexual encounters for me and
women I know. It taught us that we
didn’t have to put up with the more
“everyday” unwanted behaviour from
men, like wandering hands, catcalling
and upskirting.
Not so when I was a teenager
dancing all night in my wellies. We
didn’t have the tools or the language
around sex that exists now. We
certainly didn’t have festivals pledging
to tackle sex attacks, or issuing their
definition of consent, as those 100
have done before this year’s schedule.
Thanks to the change in public
discourse around sex, how I felt a
decade ago about men’s behaviour at
these events has changed dramatically.
I am now hyper-aware of it.
I find unwanted hands on me more
than you might think, especially when
there is booze involved. The difference
is that if it happens now, or in crowds
when I am at Glastonbury, Secret
Garden Party or Wilderness this
summer, I know that I can cause a
scene and move away. I know that
the men I am with will support and
facilitate that. I know that the
perpetrator might even be removed.
At a festival ten years ago? I would
have laughed it off and moved on.
I would have had to. Like I said, I
would have thought it was normal.
Frankly, it was.been attending them for more than a
decade. I can remember my first: it
was the summer of 2009. I was 16 and
had only just persuaded my mother to
let me go to Hop Farm — a small, folky
affair in Kent. I watched Florence +
the Machine and Mumford & Sons
play small stages before they hit the
big time. I smoked cigarettes, met
hundreds of strangers and camped
with my best friend. When I trawled
through Facebook writing this piece,
I found a picture of us posing with a
much older man in his pants. Weird?
Inappropriate? Who knows — we look
like we are having a riot.
Graduation to the Reading Festival
followed (moshpits! Guyliner! Peak
Indie Sleaze!), then Bestival on the
Isle of Wight, V Festival and finally
(finally!) Glastonbury. By the time Iturned 20, festivals were the done
thing every summer among my
friends. We would camp in enormous
groups of girls and boys, not wash,
binge-drink and have the time of our
lives. Back then, it never occurred to
us girls that we might be at risk of
sexual attacks. The truth is, we didn’t
even have the words to identify them.
There is a misconception made by
older generations that women my age
have always been clued up on consent.
Actually, I did not have a meaningful
conversation about it until it was beingW
as I groped at
a festival as
a teenager?
Probably.
Frankly, I
can’t really
remember —
because back then I just thought it
was normal.
Oof. I bet that makes for
uncomfortable reading. Imagine how
I felt when I realised it was the truth
— when my polled friends echoed
the sentiment back to me. I am 29
years old: too young to be a proper
millennial; too old to be Gen Z. When
I was getting my first taste of warm
cider and live music in a field, sexual
attacks weren’t called as such. They
were, to an extent, par for the course.
A caveat: I am not referring to the
worst type of sexual violence here.
Every woman knows there are scales
to assault and the experiences of my
friends and I fall on the lighter end.
But having your bum grabbed in
a crowd? Upskirted while on
someone’s shoulders? It was not
only seen as something I would have
felt I had to be “cool” about in the
circumstances when I was a teenager,
but something that older women
might have attributed to the length
of my denim shorts.
I’m thinking about this now because
100 music festivals yesterday said they
were pledging to tackle sexual attacks.
Leeds, Reading, Boardmasters and
Latitude are among those that will
commit to a charter that states that
all allegations of sexual harassment,
assault and violence will be taken
seriously and investigated.
Generally, I have found festivals to
be safe spaces. They are one of the
great love affairs of my life — I have
If it happens now,
I know that I can
cause a scene
and move away
‘Being groped was pretty normal’
Over 100 festivals have pledged to tackle sexual assault. Hannah Rogers,
now 29, says that as a teenager she simply accepted harassment by men
Isabella Arthur
20, Durham student
Y
ou start going to music
festivals in your GCSE
summer. I went when I was
16 and heard a lot of stories
of girls walking back to the
tent at night, and things happening
to them. Everyone’s really drunk or
intoxicated in some way when they’re
heading back. You walk through fields,
it’s night, and you don’t know who’s
gonna jump out and grab you from
a bush. I felt more uncomfortable
because I grew up in a city
environment, so I’m used to more
lights and more people around. I heard
about one girl who was really drunk
walking back to her tent at two or
three in the morning. Some guys
grabbed her, took her back to a tent
and sexually assaulted her. Now my
friends all put locks on the zips of
their tents. That girl left the festival
at 5am with one of her friends.
When you go to all these festivals,
you’re so young — 15, 16 — and you
just don’t know what to do when
things go wrong. You wouldn’t tell
security about situations like sexual
harassment, because you’re afraid of
getting caught for other things. When
we went to Reading, we were under
age, so we weren’t meant to be
drinking. But we snuck all our alcohol
in, inside shampoo bottles. My friend
ended up sneaking some substances
in, and he wound up in a tent for
people who got in trouble during the
festival, which they call “Reading
Court”. So we were very much hiding
away from security.
At Reading you have all these
GCSE kids, but then you also have
these weird 25-year-olds. There’s
definitely a lot of groping in the crowd.
The crowds are so tight and so intense
that it’s easy to pass it off. Like, “Oh,
sorry, I was just a bit too close to
you because everyone’s pushing
me.” When I saw Brockhampton
play, they didn’t expect such a big
crowd, so the tent was way
smaller than the audience. One
of my male friends got trampled
on the ground, and there was a
lot of squashing and groping.
When I went to Latitude, it’s really
hippy-dippy. It’s much more of a
family festival, so we felt much safer
at night. But even there we all still
had our rape alarms with us.
Festivals encourage “laddy”
behaviours. Like, “Let’s all sit
around a tent, put some meat
on the barbecue, drink beers and
talk awfully about women.” It’s
a problem that needs to be
tackled. I appreciate the
measures festivals are taking.
If there are procedures put in
place to prevent harassment,
that’s a positive thing. But I
don’t know how much it will
help. It’s a difficult situation
because there are so many
different camps and so many
different people, you can’t
really prevent stuff like
that. It’s more of an
institutional
problem.TOM JACKSON FOR THE TIMESHannah Rogers at
Glastonbury Festival.
Below: Isabella ArthurGlastonbury: Hannah, 20
Isabella Arthur