These past few weeks in the United Kingdom, men have been reminded that women are not safe to do ordinary things in their own cities and country. While there are some places we males might avoid, we don’t fear walking across a supermarket car park when it’s dark or walking in the park. We live in the haze of privilege, then we are shocked when there is a rape and murder in the news. Yes, Sarah Everard and Sabine Nessa have raised the issue again but will the outcry fade away like all “News” to be glossed over by Brexit woes or glossy nothings like dancing on tv.
It can’t.
It mustn’t.
It probably has by the time you read this!
These horrific incidents are just the tiny tips of some very large icebergs slowly smashing our societies, destroying the underlying foundations in relative silence. Yet I have to ask myself, “Why should I care?”. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean morally or ethically. I mean, why should this be an ongoing issue for my male friends or me. We aren’t “assholes”, nor would we even consider making demeaning comments about women, so, unfortunately, it isn’t an active issue unless there is a big news headline or one of our female friends shares something on social media.
It’s not good enough.
I feel we need to be more active, but how when the vast majority of people are not generally talking about it. The women around us get on with their lives, and it seems, to us, that the problem is “over there somewhere”. But it’s not, is it?
We don’t hear the amount of mansplaining that they put up with daily.
We don’t see the huge amount of extra work THEY have to do to be making simple transactions in work or in relationships.
We don’t understand all the extra precautions they have to take to do simple things that we take for granted.
Often, women aren’t even aware of all this extra effort because it is “normal” in society. It seems exhausting. The CDC report from about ten years ago bears this out. When it is raised as an issue, everyone nods their heads, then goes back to whatever passes as entertainment or own life concerns. It seems it is easier to just go back to doing whatever you are doing than to press on and speak out. Perhaps there is a fear of being called “woke”, or worse, being treated like a woman!!! This problem is not going away, and I have seen too many articles about how it is affecting us as men. We need to keep raising our voices and actively saying, “I am here; this is not good enough”. Come on — we need to be more than just allies we need to keep raising the fact that we are privileged even as it risks lessening that advantage.
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This post was previously published on Equality Includes You.
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