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I’ve talked before about being there. 1988, the Istanbul bus depot at night. My friend Pies and I got in a cab. Another man climbed in next to the driver. “Get out,” I said. Pies’ eyes were huge: “Can’t. No door handles.” Another driver saw us bashing the windows, screaming. He let us out and copped a belting while watching security guards laughed.
So if Sam Kerr and her fiancée Kristie Mewis say they felt scared, I know firsthand fear can make anyone do things like kick out cab windows, especially with adrenaline and alcohol in the mix.
But being scared doesn’t give anyone a free pass to act badly. Vomiting in someone’s car and refusing to pay the cleaning fee when first asked crosses lines about entitlement and disrespect. It impacts a livelihood. It’s shit house.
I don’t even know what to make of the racial element. While calling anyone who is white “white” might be stating a fact, context matters in confrontations. That said, charging someone with a crime for pointing out whiteness feels like an overreach.
Straight up, the police officer plays as a sensitive snowflake who could have recognised the situation as a drunken outburst, not a calculated insult. But if it crosses a legal line, it crosses a legal line.
What’s really frustrating is how this case undermines both women’s safety concerns and personal accountability.
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The “Sam was drunk and paranoid” narrative misses how legitimate it is for women to fear being taken off course in a cab. And the “Sam was protecting herself, this is a storm in a teacup” crowd ignores there are ways to handle fear that don’t involve abuse and showing off your stonking bank balance to further belittle.
Instead of picking sides, maybe the win would be in learning how to be better at ensuring women’s safety, better at respecting service workers, better at de-escalating situations.
And better at examining why a female athlete’s drunken belligerence generates more headlines than cases of male athletes facing allegations of serious violence.
Sam Kerr is superhuman at soccer but now clearly very human. Interesting to see what the price for that will be.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.
I’ve talked before about being there. 1988, the Istanbul bus depot at night. My friend Pies and I got in a cab. Another man climbed in next to the driver. “Get out,” I said. Pies’ eyes were huge: “Can’t. No door handles.” Another driver saw us bashing the windows, screaming. He let us out and copped a belting while watching security guards laughed.
So if Sam Kerr and her fiancée Kristie Mewis say they felt scared, I know firsthand fear can make anyone do things like kick out cab windows, especially with adrenaline and alcohol in the mix.
But being scared doesn’t give anyone a free pass to act badly. Vomiting in someone’s car and refusing to pay the cleaning fee when first asked crosses lines about entitlement and disrespect. It impacts a livelihood. It’s shit house.
I don’t even know what to make of the racial element. While calling anyone who is white “white” might be stating a fact, context matters in confrontations. That said, charging someone with a crime for pointing out whiteness feels like an overreach.
Straight up, the police officer plays as a sensitive snowflake who could have recognised the situation as a drunken outburst, not a calculated insult. But if it crosses a legal line, it crosses a legal line.
What’s really frustrating is how this case undermines both women’s safety concerns and personal accountability.
Loading
The “Sam was drunk and paranoid” narrative misses how legitimate it is for women to fear being taken off course in a cab. And the “Sam was protecting herself, this is a storm in a teacup” crowd ignores there are ways to handle fear that don’t involve abuse and showing off your stonking bank balance to further belittle.
Instead of picking sides, maybe the win would be in learning how to be better at ensuring women’s safety, better at respecting service workers, better at de-escalating situations.
And better at examining why a female athlete’s drunken belligerence generates more headlines than cases of male athletes facing allegations of serious violence.
Sam Kerr is superhuman at soccer but now clearly very human. Interesting to see what the price for that will be.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.
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