Opinion: Sarah Everard's death is not about women's safety — it's about men's violence

Sarah Everard went missing in south London on the night of March 3. Photo / Supplied

OPINION:

A man murdered a woman who was walking home at night in London last week and the most surprising thing is how this is really not surprising at all.

Her murder was not due to anything she did - the actions of the murderer are on him. Yet the internet is getting flooded with the same pieces of advice that resurface every time something like this happens, with many reckons on the different things women should do in order to stay safe.

It was the same thing when Eurydice Dixon was murdered in Melbourne in 2018, walking home at night. "Stay safe," police told women. "Stop murdering women," they forgot to tell the perpetrators.

What if - hear me out - we stopped telling women how to stay safe and started teaching men how to stop murdering, raping and abducting women?

Sarah Everard went missing in south London on the night of March 3. Photo / Supplied

This may come as a shock, but there is virtually no advice you can give to women about their safety that they are not already following - and yet they keep getting murdered.

So maybe the problem isn't what women are doing? Maybe, just maybe, the people to blame for murders are the murderers and the people to blame for rapes are the rapists?

Stop putting the onus on women to change their behaviour to avoid getting raped, abducted or murdered. It's not women who need to be safer. It's men who need to stop being violent.

Of course we know it's not about you, personally (unless you are, indeed, a murderer or a rapist in which case yes it is indeed very much about you personally). We know that #notallmen. But a veritable s**t ton of men do - and, in the dark, we can't tell the bad ones apart.

Not all women are murdered when they go out, but all women are potential victims who have to be extra cautious. It's exhausting and it won't stop because you're telling us to wear sneakers so we can run faster.

How about "don't kill women, cop advises men"??? pic.twitter.com/Q1QgKxBdxQ

— Vera Alves (@supergenericgal) March 12, 2021

When a UK MP suggested a 6pm curfew for men, some ridiculed her - but that idea could have saved Sarah Everard's life. By all accounts, she was even wearing sensible footwear, as we get told to, and that didn't save her.

Why is 6pm curfew so ridiculous anyway? Wait, I know the answer to this one. Because it's easier to ridicule that idea than it is to ignore the hundreds of ways women have been in invisible curfews all their lives, taking dozens of small self-regulating steps to stay safe, not going places and not doing things after a certain hour, in certain places, for the risk those times and places pose to their lives.

What women do and don't do shouldn't even be the point. Women should be able to drunkenly walk down dark alleys in the shortest of skirts and still make it home safe.

It's time to end the narrative of the victim of who was "in the wrong place at the wrong time". Screw that. It was the murderer who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Women like Sarah keep doing their bit.

They clutch their keys ready to use them as weapons, they call their friends, they walk in groups, they watch their drinks being poured and hold the glasses in a way that cover the top, they check the backseat of the car when they get in into the driver's seat, they avoid poorly lit areas, they buy personal alarms, they vary their routes and watch what they wear.

Still, that is clearly not enough to stop them getting murdered. So, instead of focusing on giving women some more suggestions on how to stay safe, it's time to give men some new ideas on how not to get murderous.