The following post contains distressing information.
Sarah Everard wasn’t safe. She was walking home from a friend’s house in South London and now her remains have been found more than 50 miles away in Kent, during the same week as International Women’s Day.
Kim Wall wasn’t safe. She was a journalist doing her job when she went missing in one of the safest places in the world to be a woman. Ten days later, her torso without limbs was discovered by a bicyclist on a beach. She was killed in August. Her head, legs and clothes were found in bags in the sea in October.
Jyoti Singh wasn’t safe. She had gone out to watch a movie with a friend.
Schoolgirls in Nigeria aren’t safe. And this isn’t the first time this has happened.
Karen in Mexico wasn’t safe. The 20-year-old was in her car, driving in traffic when she was kidnapped and murdered. Read The New York Times story linked here.
Banaz Mahmod wasn’t safe. She had asked for help from the police five times before she was murdered. She was asleep at home when she was raped and strangled to death by three cousins in a plan plotted by her father and uncle. Her body was stuffed in a suitcase and buried in the garden of a house. The “honour killing” was because she chose to leave an abusive marriage and had fallen in love with someone else.
Scarlett Keeling wasn’t safe. The 15-year-old had been on holiday with her family to India when she was found bruised, half-naked, unconscious, facedown on the beach. She had been drugged and raped.
Aruna Shanbaug wasn’t safe. She was a 25-year-old nurse who was strangled with a dog chain and raped at the hospital where she worked. She spent the rest of her life, more than 40 years, in a coma.
Her name is Safiya and she wasn’t safe.
Natalee Holloway wasn’t safe. She was celebrating graduating from high school when she went missing. She has been declared legally dead but remains were never found.
Amber Rene Hagerman wasn’t safe. The 9-year-old had been bicycling with her brother when she went missing. Her naked body was found four days later, less than five miles from where she was kidnapped.
Qandeel Baloch wasn’t safe.
The 47 Rochdale underage girls weren’t safe.
The 156 women and girls who Larry Nassar abused instead of providing them with medical treatment like he was trusted to, were not safe. The first accounts of abuse go back as far as 1994. #Mustlisten to the podcast, Believed. Plain brilliant.
Katy Sprague wasn’t safe.
Reeva Steenkamp wasn’t safe.
Nicole Brown wasn’t safe.
Anni Dewani wasn’t safe.
Hetal Parekh wasn’t safe.
Chanel Miller wasn’t safe.
Kiranjit Ahluwalia wasn’t safe.
Neha Rastogi wasn’t safe.
Laxmi Agarwal and the many many acid attack victims weren’t safe.
Samantha Geimer wasn’t safe.
Breonna Taylor wasn’t safe.
Sharon Tate wasn’t safe.
Hae Min Lee wasn’t safe.
Trisha Meili wasn’t safe.
Elizabeth Smart wasn’t safe.
Bhanwari Devi wasn’t safe.
Aarushi Talwar wasn’t safe.
Jessica Lal wasn’t safe.
And now, Asian women in Atlanta aren’t safe.
None of the women who spoke out during MeToo was safe, not counting all the women who didn’t speak out.
All the victims of Jack the Ripper, the Yorkshire Ripper, Ted Bundy and Samuel Little weren’t safe.
All the poorer women and women of colour whose stories didn’t make headlines weren’t safe.
Women at home aren’t safe. Especially during this pandemic, in lockdown, women around the world aren’t safe. When Texas was in the news a few weeks ago for electricity and water outages and freezing weather, women weren’t safe.
A woman on public transport isn’t safe.
A woman travelling solo isn’t safe. A woman out with friends isn’t safe.
A woman out during the day isn’t safe. A woman out at night isn’t safe.
A woman going for a run isn’t safe. A woman at the bloody supermarket isn’t safe.
Older women aren’t safe. Younger women aren’t safe. Children aren’t safe.
I have walked a friend home after dinner in a relatively safe city because she has lived most of her life in one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Her fear of being harmed is so deeply ingrained, wherever she is, she just doesn’t feel safe.
I have a group of girlfriends in the city I grew up in who always text the group after meeting for dinner and drinks to check everyone gets home safe because returning in Ubers around midnight, we don’t feel safe.
So then WHEN are women safe? WHERE are women safe? Are they EVER safe? WILL they ever feel safe?
When Sarah went missing, the local police asked women to stay indoors after dark. This prompted outrage from women who said there needed to be harsher punishments for men who raped and attacked and murdered them instead of telling women not to go outside. And they’re absolutely right.
Starting later this year and on an experimental basis, misogyny will now be a hate crime under the UK’s Domestic Abuse Bill, which is a fascinating piece of evolving legislation. It was the first in the world to make controlling and coercive behaviour a criminal offence and will make the threat of sharing intimate images online punishable too. It plays a key role in shaping the global conversation around domestic abuse.
It might hint at our privilege if we find it hard to believe that many families and communities still use women to uphold purity, virtue and honour in society. Watch this Instagram video.
An organisation trying to change the narrative around the birth of girls in the South Asian community and smash the patriarchy - Pink Ladoo Project which I learnt of via the fabulous Indy Sira of Voices of Colour. Follow PLP on Instagram.
A UK-wide campaign demanding an end to public sexual harassment - Our Streets Now. Follow them on Instagram.
10 simple things you can do to make the world more equal - read this by Lauren Currie. And then sign up for Lauren’s newsletter. It’s so good.
If you want to know how isolating domestic abuse is and what a large part gaslighting plays, read When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy. On my reading list is The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing by Sonia Faleiro.
Watch 678 to understand how sexual harassment affects women in different ways, how cultural norms add a whole other dimension to the context and what a struggle it is every day.
And read Jack Monroe’s terrifying thread. The threats to women’s safety have many faces.
What can men do (or not do)? This, this, this and think about this.
I’ll post more resources on Twitter because I’m running out of space here. Follow me.
Women are not their stories of assault and trauma.
Women are raging and have raged in the past about this with good reason.
Women have the right to feel safe.