IN Thursday’s edition of BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, they ran a remarkable piece of direct and highly emotional political reporting. Chilling and inspiring in equal part, I’m sure it caused more than a few listeners to wipe away a tear on their way home from work.

What was remarkable was that Eddie Mair and his team devoted a significant part of their broadcast to play an unedited, full recording of a speech made in Parliament that afternoon. It had no frills or extraneous commentary, instead listeners were presented with the unadulterated demonstration of the power of speech delivered with elegant, truthful simplicity.

Conveyed to a silent and captivated audience of MPs, my friend Michelle Thomson’s speech detailing her rape three decades ago is one of the bravest personal acts I’ve witnessed in Parliament since my election last year. Even thinking back to when I heard it for the first time last week, it sends shivers up my spine imagining the personal courage and strength that it took to open up about such a deeply personal and private experience in such an exposed setting.

But this wasn’t just a personal act of bravery. It shone a light on the real and human reaction too many women have experienced in a society which viewed, and in some cases still views, women who have faced rape or sexual assault at best as victims, or at worse complicit in the crime committed against them.

I think that’s why the unprecedented reaction by other MPs from across the chamber, who paused in silence to reflect on her words, and then sought to embrace her in this moment of raw emotion was also such a positive and potent statement.

But for me, the most powerful and inspirational section of Michelle’s address was when she concluded that she wasn’t a victim of this abominable act. She was a survivor.

Her strength and courage is an inspiration to me, and I expect to many others.

I hope that by discussing her experience, and humanising the consequences of such an inhuman act, others will be able to follow in her wake and confront the demons of their past. Because it takes great personal bravery like this to forge a path for others to follow.

And out of this darkness have emerged some rays of light.

Elsewhere this week, it was encouraging to see the attempts by online abusers to shame my fellow columnist Vonny Moyes following the publication of private, naked photographs of her being met with a wave of vocal and positive support for her and condemnation of the bullying behaviours she has been subject to.

We are not victims. We are not objects to be subjugated or ashamed into silence. We are not the silent partner in a society which for too long served to sweep abuse under the carpet. We will not be objectified, cowed or shut up.

I’m proud to be part of a generation of women who are now standing tall and speaking up about our experience and the injustices we face.

So while some backward media reduce the debate between female Westminster politicians to a pointless argument about expensive leather trousers, I’m glad that others are abandoning the damaging stereotypes of the past and creating a positive space for women to confront criminality and the constraining values of the past.

It’s always been my hope that increasing the number of women in public life, in parliament, in our media and in leadership roles throughout the country will serve to advance true equality at all levels of our society. It’s why we can’t let up on efforts to modernise our institutions and make them reflective of the country at large, because we can’t afford to fall back into the old ways.

It’s why I believe that we’re now witnessing a reordering of political priorities, evidenced by campaigns like the SNP MP Eilidh Whiteford’s attempts this Friday to bring forward legislation to require the UK to ratify the Istanbul Convention and take concrete steps to prevent violence against women. We must be able to prosecute perpetrators who are nationals or resident in the UK wherever they commit their horrifying crimes.

Perhaps just as important as this reshaping of the policy agenda is that by elevating more women with the strength, courage and dignity of Michelle Thomson and others in public life, we can forge a new normal, where women take their rightful role at the centre of a fairer, more equal society.

Like Michelle, we should not be victims any more.