As has been the tradition for the past few years since I moved back to Melbourne I head over to my parents place for a weekend lunch every week. It has been inevitable in the recent past that these visits spark a source of deep debate and rigorous conversation between my deeply religious (utterly old school) father and my feminist take no shit self. This weekend I sat explaining my venture of composing 16 blog pieces in 16 days to raise awareness towards eliminating violence against women. My father initially sat opposite me and listened for a little while and then interrupted me mid way through a sentence I was uttering attempting to explain the unequalness of our world with a typical ‘you shouldn’t call yourself that word… it’s not nice’. The ‘bad word’ I had used to describe myself was of course ‘feminist’.
It made me wonder how a term which represents the pursuit of equality between the sexes has become such a dirty word. I then endeavoured to explain the reason why feminism as a movement needs to exist by calling out the entrenched misogyny around entitlement that feeds into rape culture. We started speaking about the horrific case of Jill Meagher who was targeted as she walked home from a night out a few years ago. This young woman was stalked, hunted down, raped and murdered a mere 200 metres from her home. I remember when the reports of this case came out I was in my mid 20s and living in Sydney. To be honest at the time I was earning an entry level salary and therefore couldn’t afford to take taxis home every weekend and as such used to walk the 5-6kms home from the city by myself. Prior to the Jill Meagher case I didn’t really think twice about this venture. However after this incident I found myself jumping at shadows and literally running down the street due to sheer terror (of what turned out to be nothing) on more than one occasion.
I recall in the days after the case played out in the media many were questioning the attire of this young woman on the night she died and pointing out that she was ‘quite obviously’ stumbling home. Where were her male counterparts, I heard people asking. Where were her protectors?! As if a woman has no right to be outside and on her own ‘at that time of night’ in the first place. As I referred to this incident within my household over the weekend my father reaffirmed one of the core tenets which is associated with victim blaming after sexual violence has occurred. He proclaimed quite confidently that ‘she was inviting trouble’. Can you believe it… inviting trouble… by attempting to walk the 300 metres home to her front door peacefully after a night out with friends.
This basis, this rhetoric and this utter stupidity forms the epitome of an entrenched system of patriarchy which fuels rape culture. The emphasis being that a woman should take responsibility for not ‘asking for it’ by being out at night, and intoxicated nonetheless! It purports that a woman should dress and conduct herself ‘appropriately’ so as not to encourage sexual assault. That no accountability lies with men to stop raping women and committing such heinous acts. No, it is on a woman, even after she is raped and murdered to have been more ‘careful’ and thus not invited her own demise.
To say I call bullshit on this is an abysmal understatement if there ever was one. The saddest thing of all within this conversation was that I could not make my father understand that this was not an isolated incident committed by a ‘psycho’ as he was trying to illustrate. This crime sits within the basis of a gender biased sexual entitlement in which women are viewed as objects. If their ‘purity’ and ‘reputation’ are called into question, ie they are out at night and have the gall to be imparting agency to get themselves home or anywhere for that matter, then they are fair game to be violated, abused and even killed.
Until we acknowledge that this is all part of a systematic and ingrained part of misogynistic culture we will never be able to tackle sexual violence at the root of its motivation and cause. So tell me again how this world is equal and just and experienced in the same way by all in spite of their gender, ethnicity, race, ability and sexual orientation.
End. – Day 8.
*For further information on rape culture please refer to:
http://www.wavaw.ca/what-is-rape-culture/
https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/03/examples-of-rape-culture/
I blog for Change. 