‘Opening a conversation:’ Saoirse Ronan speaks on the reaction to her ‘gagging’ men

Saoirse Ronan never expected an off-the-cuff comment she made to become a lightning rod for discussion of female safety and male privilege. But that’s exactly what happened.

Ronan made the comment while appearing on The Graham Norton Show alongside Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, and Eddie Redmayne. Redmayne got talking about his new project, The Day of the Jackal, and the self-defense training he’d done for it. One thing he’d learned was how to smash a phone into an attacker’s neck, but the men thought the idea was laughable. Mescal joked, “Who is actually going to think about that? If someone actually attacked me, I’m not going to go ‘phone!’”

But then Ronan pointedly said, “That’s what girls have to think about all the time,” and there was suddenly utter silence in the room. The men, including host Graham Norton, had no idea where to put themselves. “Am I right, ladies?” she went on, to applause.

None of the men on the show that night did anything wrong, exactly. However, they were completely unaware of their male privilege when it came to self-defense techniques. That’s why Ronan’s comments struck such a chord. Before long, the clip of her “gagging men” was circulating all over social media, and then media commentators started writing articles about the situation. Marina Hyde wrote for The Guardian that she knew all too well how women “get quite good at thinking about how boring little things like phones or keys could defend you in those moments … We all dream of a future without this forever hum of fear, where we too could join in the absurdist joke.”

Ronan reflected on the storm she’d caused during an interview this week with Virgin Radio UK. She said, as reported by the BBC, that the reaction to her perfectly timed comment was “definitely not something that I had expected, and I didn’t necessarily set out to sort of make a splash.” But that just makes the whole incident all the more relatable. What woman hasn’t felt the pull to unexpectedly speak up when men are making light of something serious?

“I think there’s something really telling about the society that we’re in right now and about how open women want to be with the men in their lives,” she went on. It was, she thought, “opening a conversation.” And women had already begun talking to her about what she’d said. One woman she’d met had relayed to her a talk she’d had with her husband about the “fake phone call.” This is where a solo woman pretends to be on the phone in order to deter attackers. This woman’s husband had no idea what a “fake phone call” was.

Ronan said, “And of course, you wouldn’t understand if you’ve not had to go through anything like that. But she somehow, throughout her life as a female, has gained these tools without ever talking to other women about it and understanding that this is sort of a survival tactic.”

It’s great that Ronan’s viral moment has made women talk more openly about what they do to protect themselves. But let’s hope that eventually there will come a time when such things are not needed.