18 Jun In Memory of Eurydice Dixon
Last week Eurydice Dixon, a young Melbourne woman, was raped and murdered while walking home from work at a comedy club. Part of the police response has been to advise women to make sure they have “situational awareness” and “be aware of their own personal security”. They are talking to the wrong people. Women are already constantly vigilant. The people who need to change their behaviour are the men who rape and murder.
Here’s a piece I wrote for the Christchurch Press in August 2014:
For the last two weeks I’ve been banging on a bit about a woman’s right to be safe in our neighbourhoods, and the madness of blaming victims of sexual assault. It’s something I care about, what with being a lady and knowing lots of other lady-people and so forth.
In fact, I’d suggest all women think about this at a conscious or unconscious level every day. So just in case anyone thinks, in this current discussion we’re having on rape culture, that women are running around half-dressed and half-cut with nary a thought to their personal safety, let’s take a moment to think about what all women do every day to keep themselves safe.
Here’s a tiny story. Last Thursday I spent part of a sunny afternoon looking for an appropriate car park. There were several spaces tucked down an Auckland side street in walking distance from where I needed to be. But I knew without thinking about it hard that this wasn’t a road I could confidently walk down seven hours later when my gig finished. Too quiet, too dark, too isolated.
Instead, I spent a long time searching for a space on the main thoroughfare under a streetlight, outside something that would be still be open at 10pm.
It is a small thing, but it is daily, this constant vigilance. It becomes automatic and unconscious but, if you press us, then yes, all women can think of places we don’t go, bus stops we don’t wait at, trips we don’t take, events and opportunities we miss, jobs we don’t do and careers we don’t pursue.
We lock our cars when we get in them as well as when we get out, and walk with keys between our fingers. We dress, not just for style and comfort, but at times also for the ability to run. Second nature. It becomes part of who we are.
This is daily, tangible evidence of what people refer to as “rape culture” – the idea that sexual violence is linked to the culture of a society in which the prevailing attitudes and practices normalise, excuse and tolerate violence against women.
Not all men are comfortable with that phrase. Innocent people don’t like to be labelled or blamed. We get that. And of course, not all men are rapists. Though it is a woman’s job to assume that all men are, until proven otherwise. “What do you mean you were on that street? In that park? In that bar? Did you not assume that every man there would be a rapist?”
And yes, men must be vigilant, too. There are bad places where they might be robbed or punched. But these are perhaps not as ubiquitous as the places where bad things happen to women. And a man is not encouraged to think of every stranger as brutal thief.
But women are required to imagine that all men might do them harm and take the appropriate measures. And none of this is doing any of us any good.