‘This is what happens to women... walking home with their friends’

Victoria Curtis is a bit of tomboy. She likes to dress in jeans and wears her hair cut short. In other words, as she puts it herself, she is “identifiably gay”.

None of that would normally matter, but at 2am on Sunday on Camden St in Dublin she had an encounter that was anything but normal.

She was walking home with friends when they passed a man who started taunting them and shouting abuse. He started calling her and her friends “feminist feckers” and “faggots” and shouted at them to take their clothes off.

“It wasn’t cool for him to tell us to take off our trousers, pull down our knickers and show him our arses,” she writes on her Facebook page.

Victoria, 34, responded in the only way she knew how — with a verbal broadside at the stranger for his unwelcome and abusive remarks.

The result, she says, was four punches to the face that knocked her to the ground and the immediate terror that more was to come.

Showing a photograph of her bruised face online, she writes: “This is what misogyny looks like. This is what being a faggot looks like.

“This is what happens [to] women on Saturday nights walking home with their friends.

“This is what being punched four times in the faces looks like.

“This is what happens when we call them out.

“This is what will keep happening if we keep ignoring and accepting their behaviour.

“This is Ireland 2016.”

Victoria said she decided to share her story online because she was “tired of people saying this kind of stuff doesn’t happen”.

Go raibh mile for all the gra from you all. My eyes maybe be bruised but my chin is firmly high. This won't change me.

— vickey curtis (@raginspice) March 8, 2016

Still smarting from the attack, she said yesterday that assaults like this are constantly happening to women.

“It’s street harassment against females,” she told Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ radio.

She explained that she had responded to the man’s derogatory comments as she and her friends passed him on the street.

“It escalated from there. He started calling us feminist feckers,” she said, adding that after the verbal altercation, she and her friends had walked away, believing it was all over.

She described how one of her friends began to shout back at the man but she took her by the arm and told her “It’s over, let’s go home”. The women then began walking away from him when he started directing homophobic comments towards Victoria again.

She said the man said he had voted yes in the marriage equality referendum last May but added: “I didn’t vote for that.”

She told Tubridy: “He said he wouldn’t hit my friend because she was a girl but that he didn’t know what ‘that’ was — directing it at me.” It was all directed at me because I’m identifiably gay, I have short hair, I wear jeans, I dress like a tomboy — not that that even matters.

“He then put his hand out and was like ‘hey there man, let’s resolve this man, shake my hand man’ and I was like ‘mate I’m not shaking your hand, fuck off’.”

The man, who she described as not being “legless” drunk or incoherent, then hit her in the face four times.

“I lost my balance and I hit the ground. I curled up and put my hands over my head... I was thinking I’m really lucky I have this wall because he could kick me in the face.”

She immediately rang the gardaí to report the alleged assault and went to hospital to get her injuries treated.

Unfortunately I had to deal with the Gardaí last night, I have to say they were brilliant. Hats off to them.

— vickey curtis (@raginspice) March 6, 2016

“I’m OK but a bit shook after it all,” she said.

“I woke up yesterday morning and had a few hours in and out of tears. I’ve never experienced an attack like that that ended up so violently. How dare he? I’m a proud queer woman. How dare he make me question that.”

Her Facebook post has already attracted hundreds of shares and messages of support for Victoria have coming flooding in.

Irish writer Louise O’Neill wrote: “I just saw your FB post. I’m so sorry.”

Irish band Le Galaxie tweeted: “Just heard what happened. Furious. Hope you’re not to shaken and that the cops get their hands on those ignorant cowards.”

Gardaí have confirmed that the incident is being investigated.

Victoria said that gardaí acted “brilliantly” when she reported the attack.

“Hats off to them,” she said.