Did I Not Say it Loud Enough?

Summer, it was hot. I was outside in the garden of a stately home, at a formal gathering. Everyone looked uncomfortable in high heels, tight dresses, and borrowed suits. I knew a handful of people, mostly acquaintances.

A couple of years ago one of them had messaged me on social media – Amelia! I want to be a yoga teacher! Do you think this is a good place to train? – followed by a link to a school that has since gone out of business. I wrote back. Sure! Someone I work with trained there. How was I to know, really?

She was now a yoga teacher. We met at gatherings like these every so often. We were in the wedding, christening and 30th birthday party era and our lives overlapped on such occasions. The fresh yoga teacher was tall, blonde, and wore pink; we stood chatting with anther woman who wore pale blue. The one in blue asked the one in pink: ‘how’s it going, this new yoga teaching venture?’ Pink exclaimed that it was great, she hadn’t quit her day job but was teaching five classes a week, every evening after work.

‘But I want to go to India next, to do some more training’, Pink said. She gestured towards me with her wine glass. ‘Oh, I know you won’t approve but I want to go to [city] and learn with [teacher], learn from the authentic source, you know.’ This caught me off guard and I said nothing. She continued, ‘I don’t really believe all those things happened that people talk about, anyway’.

Something rose inside me but clenched my teeth together to prevent it from escaping and managed to say, ‘Oh what kind of things do you mean?’

‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ replied Pink.

‘I have actually met some of the survivors, people who told their stories,’ I said, trying to smile as I spoke, quietly, to avoid drawing attention in this very polite crowd. ‘I’ve heard them talk about being sexually assaulted there. I’ve met some in-person at a panel in Brighton – you can watch the whole thing online actually.’

I tried to hold my clutch bag, a glass of champagne, and search for the link to the panel, all at once. The woman in blue, who was not a yoga teacher, looked nervously from me, to Pink, back to me again.

As I entered a password for the WiFi I thought about Karen and Jubilee, how I saw them, with my own eyes, and heard them, with my own ears. The event they spoke at was the first in the UK, to my knowledge, to platform survivors in a yoga space. I listened to their experiences of sexual harassment and assault, of how other people knew, saw it happening and brushed it off as nothing, nothing important. I had read versions of their stories online but hearing them, again, in their own voices was moving, powerful. What struck, me were details about what they would be doing if they weren’t at the yoga festival, hundreds of miles from their homes in America. It was Jubilee’s birthday when she arrived in the UK. She’d probably be with her family, with loved ones, celebrating. Karen talked about missing an annual queer community gathering on the beach that she was missing. She was in Brighton, instead, which does have a beach and a queer community but on that particular day we were in a school hall, filled with rows of empty chairs.

The tall blonde woman in pink did not react to my retelling of what I heard in Brighton. The WiFi password was rejected again. My polite smile made my cheeks ache and I became aware of my uncomfortable shoes.

Pink carried on, ‘Oh but I do think [this other guru] was bad – he hit people!’

I started breathing again, and said, ‘Yes. Did you hear me speak at that studio a few years ago? The organisers put it out as a podcast after. One of the women on the panel at that studio, a different one, not the Brighton one, she was a long term student of [that guru] and spoke about this. He did hit her in class’.

She looked around at the rest of guests as they drifted towards the shade of a large oak tree. Was I boring her?

‘No. I didn’t hear that. But I don’t like that kind of yoga anyway, and I want to go to [city]. Maybe I’ll go in August’.

A few hours later, I spoke to the women in blue – the one who wasn’t a yoga teacher – and asked her: ‘did you hear what I said, about the survivors, that I’ve met some of them and heard them speak? Did I not say it loudly enough? Is that why she ignored me?’ Blue had heard me; I did say it loudly enough.

Later still, on the dance floor, Pink, the newly enthusiastic yoga teacher shouted about her work in my ear. She wanted to give up her day job and teach yoga full time. Her boss calls her ‘Babes’. She’s the only woman in the office and they expect her make the tea, despite her seniority.

‘So misogynistic, right?’ she screamed over Pulp’s Common People. ‘My husband tells me to ignore it but I knew you’d understand; you’re a feminist, yeh?

The music was loud but I nodded along as if to say, yes, being called Babes, how awful. What else was I supposed to do? Pretend I couldn’t hear her?