You know that thing of when you and a bunch of male friends are sitting around, shooting the breeze and maybe drinking a few beers, and suddenly your friend’s friend Kyle (who sucks, by the way) makes a sexist joke, you feel your jaw unhinge, and suddenly you’re giving everyone an important but extremely loud lecture on the history of feminism? No? Well, Saoirse Ronan clearly does, as she demonstrated in a viral clip from her recent appearance on The Graham Norton Show with Paul Mescal, Eddie Redmayne, and Denzel Washington.
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In the clip, Redmayne has just discussed working with a combat expert for his new Peacock series, The Day of the Jackal, and learning how to use his phone against an attacker. “Who is actually going to think about that?” Mescal remarks, laughing. “If someone attacked me, I’m not going to go, phone.” Then Ronan jumps in. “That’s what girls have to think about all the time,” she says, swiftly and calmly, before responding to the audience’s applause with a perfectly timed: “Am I right, ladies?”
To be clear, do I actually think that Paul Mescal is some sort of evil brute who doesn’t know or care about the ways women struggle to feel safe? No! He’s just a guy in short-shorts, doing his best to get a laugh on a talk show. The exchange, though, demonstrates just how maddening it can be to live in a world where so many of the men you interact with (especially the cis, straight, white ones) simply don’t understand why it’s necessary for you to walk through dark parking garages with your keys between your fingers—or even to alter your route entirely, because you know that if anything does happen to you, God forbid, the first question some people will have is: “Well, why were you walking alone at night?” Let them know, Saoirse!