I'm a survivor of domestic violence. Asylum hotel protests do not speak for me – or protect me

As a woman in her 30s, I know all too well how common violence against women and girls (VAWG) is. From the seemingly innocuous – the jeers from men in vehicles, the ‘accidental’ brushing up against you as they walk past, the hand that lingers for too long – to the more insidious – surviving domestic violence and rape, I know that VAWG is something that has penetrated the lives of all the women I love in some form or another.

We all know how it plays out in our every day life, the ‘text me when you’re home safe’ when we say goodbye to our girlfriends, to walking the long way home to make the most of the streetlights. Sometimes we joke about it – perhaps as a survival mechanism, perhaps because it’s become the norm. But the dark nature of it always lies beneath.

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I am a survivor of domestic violence. I know what it feels like to live in fear, to monitor my every word, every gesture, every move, hoping it won’t trigger a violent episode. I know what it means to survive violence – not from strangers – but from someone I knew, someone I trusted, and someone who claimed to love me.

This is why I find the recent protests that claim to ‘protect women and girls’ so deeply disturbing. The banners, the chants, the rhetoric – they pretend to be about women’s safety. But they are not. They are about stoking fear and fuelling division. They seek to blame the ‘other’ and to scapegoat. They allow perpetrators of VAWG to hide behind lies and to point the finger in the opposite direction. This doesn’t protect survivors like me. In fact, it does the opposite.

Let me be clear: VAWG is an epidemic. It permeates every element of our society and is perpetrated by men from all walks of life. We should be outraged by this. It is an injustice. A tragedy. Survivors like me do need men to speak up about this too, to take action, and to dismantle the misogyny and patriarchy that harms us all. But the protests we have seen in recent weeks are co-opting women and girls’ pain to further their own political agenda.

When protests target people seeking asylum under the banner of “protecting women”, they do two kinds of harm. Firstly, they exploit women’s pain and fear to fuel an agenda that has nothing to do with us. My trauma is not a weapon to be used in the service of xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia. Secondly, they divert attention from the real crisis: the epidemic of violence against women and girls that is happening – largely behind closed doors – across every town and city in this country.

The greatest danger to women and girls is not a nameless stranger. It is overwhelmingly someone they already know. Partners, ex-partners, relatives, colleagues or neighbours. This is where the statistics point and this is where lived experience confirms the truth.

These protests do not speak for me. They do not protect me. They do not address the violence I survived or the violence women and girls endure every single day.

If we are serious about protecting women and girls and tackling VAWG, we must confront the reality that the majority of danger is not ‘out there’, but it is ‘right here’. To those who claim to protest in my name, I say: stop. Survivors like me do not need your scapegoating, your misplaced outrage, or your false claims of protection. We need solidarity, resources and an honest reckoning with where violence really comes from.

The very people that the protests are aimed at – people seeking safety from war, persecution, violence and other torture – too deserve the opportunity to heal. Every act of violence is an injustice. We all deserve to live in safety – no matter who we are or where we come from.

If the energy of ‘protecting women and girls’ was truly channelled into something meaningful: investing in refuges or shelters, support services, therapeutic mental health services, prevention programmes, legal protections and culture change – real work of safety and justice could happen. Until then, the racist anti-migrant rhetoric hiding behind the false claims of ‘protecting women’ will continue to harm survivors of violence and impede the very work that urgently needs doing to protect women and girls. 

Jane, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, is a domestic abuse survivor who now works to help other women and girls who are subject to violence.

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