Thoughts on Jill Meagher

Jill Meagher, or what will it take for you to believe us?

Yesterday tigtog blogged on the Hoyden About Town website that the Australian police are now holding a man in custody whom they expect to charge with the rape and murder of Jill Meagher, the Irish woman who went missing sometime in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Earlier, there had been a few rebuttals and reposts around the interwebz to Clementine Ford’s conversation centering on the same incident on Twitter. Then there was this post from Ed Butler. I want to be as fair as I can to him by saying that in no way do I think he is the only guy who thinks like this, and in fairness, he does go on to redeeem himself somewhat in the following comments, and in less problematic posts which sandwich that one – go and read them and you’ll see what I mean. So this isn’t a witch hunt by any means. But the post I’ve picked hits on so many bullshit bingo points that it’s the perfect example of a very familiar response that women often get when they complain about the violence committed against them – but it’s not fair to me because I’m not a rapist and now I feel yucky. And anyway you are just totally overreacting. Waaaah!

First of all, I want to address the ‘it’s not fair’ argument.  Look, I totally get that it must royally suck to walk down the street late at night, say, knowing that at least a few women will be automatically wary of your presence. That’s not nice for anyone, is it? But, and while I am officially not a fan of the Pain Olympics™, my guess is that it sucks more to be afraid of being raped and/or murdered. Or, you know, actually raped and murdered. If you are walking down the street feeling, as Butler states, disgusted with yourself, and you are not a rapist/violent attacker, you might want to take a step back and instead of blaming women (or the media) for making you feel like a rapist, maybe start blaming the rapists who rape and the society that very often lets them get away with it.

Secondly, I want to address the other argument – the ‘you’re overreacting’ argument – because it is this that is lethally dangerous. Butler compares the risk of attack to the same kind of risk as getting in a car crash or eating bad sushi. I want to make this extremely plain to anyone who might have the merest shred of doubt about it: rape and murder do not happen by accident. You cannot be accidentally raped. In English law, you also cannot be accidentally murdered – if you were murdered accidentally, that would be manslaughter. Of course, the other side of that is that you can be deliberately poisoned, or deliberately run over, but I think we would agree that while those things happen, they are not the kind of things you would really take general everyday precautions over, unless you were a character from Game of Thrones or a Mafia boss. So the comparison itself is faulty – not eating sushi which looks a bit dodgy is a decision which is up to you. Rape and murder, and I can’t quite believe I am having to say this, are inherently not up to the victim.

See, the thing that makes me table-gnawingly, mouth-frothingly fucking FURIOUS about this kind of response is the idea that we don’t have that much to fear. I wonder if Butler has ever read any rape and murder statistics? It seems as if the answer to that is no, and in fact he goes on to clarify that he is not going to demean his argument with something as filthy as data (I quote), “I’m not digging around data to verify something so unverifiable”. Right, because he can presumably afford to be lazy and complacent about this? Rape and murder victims perhaps do not share that privilege.

I think what he is trying to get at is that the risk of stranger-rape is very low. I want to stress this, because it’s important that we get our facts straight – he is right about this. The risk of being raped by a stranger in Australia is low – you can see the statistics for yourself. But this misses the larger point that the risk of suffering sexual violence seems to me to me brain-crushingly high. The likelihood of suffering physical or sexual violence in your lifetime if you are a woman in Australia is higher than 1 in 2. That does not seem like a minimal risk to me, and it also seems to be a wholly valid reason for being nervous when you are anywhere, not just on the streets. As commenters to his piece pointed out, you can evaluate risk and go about your business at the same time – telling people not to be scared is hugely patronising and thought-policing – and if all women really thought all stranger men were rapists (rather than potential rapists), then they would never leave the house.

The thing is, telling people not to be scared also sends out another, more insidious message – you’re hysterical, you’re gullible, you’re making yourself into a victim, you’re weak, you’re overreacting.

Jill Meagher isn’t hysterical or overreacting. What Jill Meagher is is dead.

What will it take for you to believe our fears are valid? What will it take?