Thirty years after I was taught about male violence, nothing has changed for my daughters | Emma Brockes

Today's girls are more alive to tricky adults' than we were, but I feel a nuclear rage that they still have to learn this

It must have been around 1991 that a police officer visited our school and stood on the main stage in the hall. She was a lady police officer, which struck us as mildly outlandish and also signalled the nature of what was to come. A year or so earlier, a male officer had come to our single-sex high school to talk about bullying and civic responsibility. This was different. As we sat, cross-legged and sniggering, it was clear that she was here to talk to us, woman-to-woman.

For many of us, news of the disappearance and death of Sarah Everard earlier this month triggered public horror and a private reckoning with our decades-deep conditioning about personal safety. In the event of being attacked, said the WPC that day, we were to stick our fingers in his eyeballs. We were to take the heel of one hand and ram it hard into his chin. We were to grab his nose and kick his shins. If all else failed, said this valiant woman staring down the embarrassed girls of year 11, we were to dig deep and vomit on him. That was it. Huge laugh. She'd lost the room.