In the hours and days after Ashling Murphy’s unfathomable murder this week, on a stretch of canal path named for another woman who disappeared in unfathomable circumstances, women responded with one voice. In print, on the airwaves, online, the message was unambiguous.
Tragically, I suppose, we have had time to formulate our thoughts. We were here before after the disappearance of Deirdre Jacob. After Jastine Valdez. After Marioara Rostas. After Ana Kriegel. After Nadine Lott.
After every one of the 244 women who have been violently murdered in Ireland since 1996, according to records kept by Women's Aid. We've laid the flowers, lit the candles and asked the questions to which there are no answers.
But if there was any comfort to be gleaned from the maddening, depressing, heart rending, infuriating sense of deja-vu, it was in the strength and coherence of the responses that came from women. It was very clear what we do not want to happen next.
We don't want to hear you say anything at all that starts with the words 'not all men'
We don’t need any more tips about how to keep ourselves safe. We don’t want even well-meaning advice on using apps or location trackers (to do what – make it easier to find our bodies if we are abducted and murdered?)
We don’t want to be called “love” by strange men as a compliment and told to lighten up if we object. We do want the glamorisation of high-profile men who have been accused of violence against women to stop. We don’t want to have to keep telling our stories to convince the sceptics that violence against women is real and it is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men.
We have no more stories to tell. Women have done our part, we’ve been brave, we’ve turned our skin inside out to prove what the statistics have been showing for years – harassment and violence against women is a real and enduring phenomenon. Women have taken the movement to end what has been called the “shadow pandemic of violence” as far as we can.
Men’s turn
Now it’s men’s turn to be brave. That means more than merely listening, which was the default suggestion from many men on social media this week. That, I’m afraid, is a cop out. Men need to start talking. They need to be prepared to have uncomfortable conversations with one another, and with women, about where we go from here.
If they’re not doing this already, they need to adopt an attitude of zero tolerance to the entire spectrum of violence against women. That spectrum starts with crude, off-colour comments and escalates from there: casual misogyny; online abuse; sexualising of women in non-sexual contexts; harassment; coercive control and psychological violence and eventually, sexual assault, rape, murder.
We need a national strategy that starts with the youngest children in our education system and extends to reform of the justice system and legislation, but that will take time.
Women are raped or murdered, we say, when what we should say is that men are raping and murdering women
As a society, we need to consider how much we may be tolerating and excusing harassment and violence against women in the interests of not making anyone feel uncomfortable.
As Katie Hannon pointed out on Liveline this week, language matters. Phrases like "dropping the hand" or "handsy" are used (unconsciously perhaps; I've used them myself) to minimise what is actually a sexual assault. We need to stop allowing our words to give these men a free pass.
We need to stop reaching for the handbook of excuses we give predatory men: “He’s harmless really.” “He was off his face and didn’t know what he’s doing.” “Sure, he’s from another era.” “He’s had a thing for you for ages.” “It’s not worth it; I’d just let it go.” It’s time to stop just letting it go.
Passive voice
We also need to be more considered about the words we use for acts of violence at the other end of the spectrum. Ashling Murphy did not, to take an example I heard a lot this week, "lose her life". It was taken by another human being. Life did not, as one woman interviewed on the television news put it, just "go from her", as though it ended in a puff of supernatural horror. Someone murdered her.
In the media, we often deploy the passive voice when we’re talking about violence against women.
Pope Francis dedicated a powerful New Year's homily to the subject, unfortunately without ever once mentioning the men who are – not exclusively, but overwhelmingly – responsible. "How much violence is directed against women! Enough! To hurt a woman is to insult God," was as close as he got.
What all of this does is put a distance between the good men who don’t see themselves as part of the problem, and those who carry out senseless acts of violence. It is comforting to regard violent men as an anomaly, a glitch, a monster, or that time-worn cliché, the good man who snapped. But the truth is that they are part of a culture and a society that normalises low-level forms of harassment and violence against women and then is shocked when it escalates.
A 2014 EU survey found that half of all women have been sexually harassed and one in three has experienced physical and/or sexual violence. As one person put it this week, it’s strange how almost every woman I know has a story of harassment or abuse, yet no man I know or any of his friends has ever been responsible.
I’ve said this before so forgive the repetition, but there is no other way to express it. We won’t change the culture until good men see themselves as part of the problem.