As someone in the business of writing, I know what a column is supposed to be. A certain number of words on a topic, one argument followed through a few twists and turns (seasoned with a couple of jokes, if that’s your thing), and a concluding paragraph delivered. But it’s been a hard few weeks.

The Kavanaugh hearing and then confirmation (my fingers weaken with fury as I type this) was almost too much to process by itself. And of course, it is not by itself. It is simply the biggest turd floating on a rising tide of sh*t, comprising things like Philip Green shutting down a pop-up in Topshop for a book about feminism which is aimed at the teenage girls he depends on to make his living; Rebecca Humphries’ letter recounting her partner Seann Walsh’s “controlling” and “hurtful” behaviour towards her; student Melissa Gentz being threatened with legal action by her boyfriend’s family for Instagramming pictures and audio of her apparently being beaten up by him. It increasingly feels like it’s going to engulf us all.

My mind is full of hot, painful, scattered thoughts united only by their subject matter: the scale of the injustice that has been, is being and seems set to continue to be done to women. I sit on the sofa and wonder why we are expected to endure countless rape scenes and shots of broken, brutalised female bodies in all forms of ‘entertainment’, made by people who insist it’s necessary for ‘authenticity’. But when we come forward in private or public to state what happened to us in real life, we are dismissed, mocked or reckoned to be lying.

“The last few weeks have been overwhelming – but women must keep fighting”