Driving Home For Christmas (Totally F***ing Bankrupt)

This post mentions sexual assault.

Picture this.

It’s Friday night.

I’m a young woman of 25.  I have several friends. I celebrate Christmas. These two facts have combined to create FESTIVE OPPORTUNITY! So I’m going to a house party in East London. I’ve dressed up a bit and everything.

It is snowing heavily. I’ve wrapped up warm, but it’s obvious I’m a bit dressed up; mini skirt, tights, thigh high socks over the tights, stompy boots (OK, I’m a bit of a goth). I feel good about the way I look.

BE CABWISE! Text this number, and find out where you can be overcharged for being out of the house! You hussy! (Image: Transport For London, 2010)

The party goes great. I leave at about midnight, and am juuust too late to make the last Tube home. On the way out, I catch sight of the new poster encouraging me to take a licensed minicab. It says, IF YOUR MINICAB’S NOT BOOKED, IT’S JUST A STRANGER’S CAR. It seems to have replaced the triggertastic, victim-blame-loaded images from a couple of years ago, which showed a woman’s screaming, tearslicked face and bore the headline “STOP, PLEASE, NO, PLEASE, STOP… taking unlicensed minicabs.” I was not a fan of that campaign, well-meaning though it was. It was a giant neon cultural signpost as far as I was concerned: ladies, rape is your problem, sort it.

The streets are covered in thick ice. I have to pick my way very slowly through it, even in my stompy-but-relatively-practical boots, to avoid falling.  A couple of guys outside a pub have things to say about the delectability of my arse as I do this. Their commentary isn’t particularly appreciated.

There are barely any nightbuses running. I realise, shivering and fumbling for my wallet, that I want a minicab. A licensed one.

The rest of my night is an expensive nightmare which opens my eyes to just how much quite a lot of people are happy to exploit my need to get home safely. And how many people out there think that if I want to be safe without paying through the nose, I shouldn’t be out at all.

Leytonstone’s not the life and soul of London on a Friday night, but there are quite a lot of people out, so there must be a few house parties going down. There are several women, at varying levels of party-dressed, in varying states of sobriety. It just so happens that tonight I’m sober. All of us are looking for a way home. A fair number of us are travelling alone.

There is one minicab office in the area I’m trying to navigate. It’s the only one I can see. I’ve used it before and it’s usually been fine. The office has several women milling about outside it. Encouraged, I go in.

The man behind the counter studies me with a faintly critical eye. I tell him I want to go to South London – a long journey, so I’m prepared for some outlay.

“Normally,” says Counter Dude, a little nervously, “that’d be £35.”

Okay.

There is some nudging and muttering going on behind the glass. I wonder if my skirt is rucked up or something. It all looks okay.

“Tonight is fare-and-a-half night.”

Ah. Fare-and-a-half-night. That famous British institution WAIT WHAT.

“It’ll be £53.”

What the shit.

“We’re charging extra,” says Counter Dude, “just for tonight.”

I look out the window at the snow, and the shivering lone women. Is it just the snow that’s suddenly made the petrol so expensive? Or is it more the crowd of women the snow has delivered into the arms of the minicab company that’s occasioned this spontaneous jolly price-hike? I look back at Counter Dude.

“Just tonight,” I say pointedly.

“Yeah.”

There’s an awkward silence.

“Unlucky,” he proffers, after a brief conversational abyss while he searches for a word with which to label my predicament. “You’re unlucky being out tonight.”

What follows is essentially a Paddington Bear-style stare-out, which I win. My prize? A “discount” taking my fare down by a fiver. Still £££ more than I’d usually be charged. You’re damn right I’m unlucky. I’m already drafting a My Fault I’m Female submission as we speak.

The previous safety poster, with bonus feminist stickering. Image via Flickr user jonanamary.

Here’s the deal, guys: I know it’s snowing this week, GUYS, EVERYBODY CAN SEE IT IS SNOWING THIS WEEK. I know that in all likelihood, you’re charging dudes the same amount.

But here it is, right, here’s the thing: hardly any dudes are in this cab office. More women are taking your cabs, because (cis, at least) men do not have the same sense of personal risk going home alone at night after a thing like a party. Most of my male friends rolled home. My boyfriend regularly rolls home when he’s had a few at a party! I’d love to be able to roll home in the same way! But often I don’t feel able to. Especially not since a female acquaintance of mine from the same area was sexually assaulted on public transport less than a year ago. I went past a yellow police SEXUAL ASSAULT poster for weeks after that knowing precisely who it related to.

ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY THAT when you notice a predominantly female bunch of customers need cabs, and rack up your prices in kneejerk response, on a night when it’s particularly difficult to do anything but take a minicab, and not doing so may result in Judgement and Scrutiny if something goes wrong…  well, guys, what you are doing there is helping create a LONE LADIES: STAY HOME kinda vibe.

I’m not saying that women are more likely to be attacked than men; this would not be true. But there is an atmosphere, a culture that we live in, that frequently suggests that women walking alone at night, especially if they are dressed for a party, are at least partly asking to be attacked and that if they do not take appropriate measures, it is their fault if such a thing should occur. That is the difference. And minicab companies, it seems, who provide Said Measures, rather like to capitalise on that.

As I wait for my cab – which presumably runs on petrol of molten gold! – I’m curbcrawled, basically, by unlicensed cabs, twice. They offer me a cheap way home. £20! £15! No dice.

But the majestic fee for my licensed cab is coming right out of my Christmas overdraft. I wonder how many women are tempted by the riskier option.

Probably quite a few.

In the cab, which is not, ALAS, plated with gold and drawn by a unicorn, my driver’s so annoyed I’ve argued the fare down further to a “really very reasonable” £42, he spends our journey informing me that I should be “grateful” his boss “felt like being nice” to me. Eventually I just slip my headphones into my ears and overlay his voice with a nice Christmassy choir. Much better.

What I really want to do here is offer some positive advice at the end of this post – it’s one of BadRep’s policies to try and go beyond ranting as far as we can, and recommend what you can do with your voice, your money and your time to change things.

I’m a bit stumped here, though.  Maybe there’s a Minicabs Ombudsman Person, or a Price Regulating Committee I can give a shout? I dunno. I’ll have to try to find out.

But don’t hesitate to argue your corner if the little voice in your head reckons you’re being supremely bloody fleeced.

Have a safe Christmas.