A space of our own.

Men own public spaces.

I see evidence of this all the time.

Like a few months ago when I hopped in my office lift. A few floors down, the doors opened and a bunch of dudes hopped in.

“Going down” the elevator voice said.

“What about you? Do you go down?” one of the men asked me. His mates laughed.

I behaved the way I always do in these situations. I looked at my phone, pretending to be enthralled by my Twitter feed.

“Dude you’re such a creep, don’t be a creep” said one of his colleagues.

“What? I wasn’t insinuating that. You’re insinuating that. You’re the creep,” he retorted.

When we finally reached the ground floor, the man and his mates blocked my exit. They wouldn’t get out.

“Ladies first,” he said.

I had to force my way through their wall of bodies as they stood firm, laughing.

I still see these men all the time, because this happened in my lunch break in my office building in World Square. I know the name of their company. This is seemingly of no concern to them.

Here’s another example.

I’m walking down the street alone on the way home from work. I’m listening to one of Carly Rae Jepson’s many bangers and I’m having a thoroughly good time. A man taps me on the shoulder and says something but I can’t hear him because of Carly. I take my earbuds out.

“Excuse me, Miss. You dropped something.”

Frantically, I search the ground around me. I’m thrown, I’m embarrassed. But mostly, I’m confused, because there’s nothing there. I look back at the dude who stopped me.

“…Your smile!” he beams, laughing at his own joke.

I put my earbuds back in and keep walking, but it’s no use. My banger fuelled strut is gone and I just want to get back home to a space of my own.

I’ve collected hundreds of these examples over the course of my adult life. I’m betting most women have. Examples of men feeling such an entitlement to public spaces and the women who occupy them that they see no problem in behaving this way. Worse, they feel women should be glad about it.

Men own public spaces. I understood this. But I didn’t really know it until a few weeks ago when, for the first time, I found a place where men weren’t allowed to go.

McIvers Baths have operated as a women’s-only space since at least 1876. Tucked into the cliffside, the baths are mostly hidden from view. Protected by a big green fence and a member of the Randwick Ladies Amateur Swimming Club, the baths are open to women and children only. No boys allowed. And it’s a whole different world down there.

On any given day you’ll find countless women sprawled across the cliffside. They’re snoozing, chatting, reading. Music fills the space. It’s sunny. Some are here for cultural reasons, others just want a space of their own. But whatever their motivation for being here, everyone is smiling. Everyone feels safe.

Here’s the other thing about McIvers baths; if you’re on the rocks, bathers are optional. Duck under the guard rail and you’re greeted by beautiful bare bodies. All different sizes, shapes, colours, ages, everything. During my first visit I felt completely in awe of the naked women around me. I wished I was that comfortable. I wished I loved my body enough to bring it out in public.

By my second visit I did.

I have always looked at my own body with contempt. I saw it for what it wasn’t, instead of what it was. I lamented how much space I took up in the world, always wishing I could be smaller or better yet invisible. Never was this more pronounced than when I slept with someone new. I remember a man I had just slept with laughing as I tried to casually cover myself up with a throw pillow. He lay stretched out, blissful in his own naked skin.

But after a handful of hours in the baths, all this changed. I stopped seeing my body through the eyes of the men around me. For the first time, my body was my own. Before stepping foot in McIvers I hadn’t even realised men owned more than just the spaces I occupied. I’d let them own my body too. But not anymore.

Bare-breasted I stretched out across the rocks, blissful in my own naked skin.

That’s not to say men feel any less entitled to the bodies in this space. Look up at the clifftops above and you can see them, hiding in the bushes, leering at the topless women below. But unlike everywhere else, this space doesn’t belong to them. And that makes all the difference.

Once you climb the concrete stairs and exit the green fence you’re suddenly back in the world of men. You can feel it instantly. Like a shift in the wind. Walking around the winding pathway to my ride, I spot a man in the bushes peeking over the cliff to the women below.

“Do you mind not staring at the women? Don’t be such a creep,” a woman about to enter the baths yells.

“I’m not being a creep, I’m just daydreaming” he replies.