Stop telling women how not to be raped and murdered – Fleet Street Fox

No.

Stop telling girls to be careful who they marry, in case he murders them and pretends it was a burglar, as happened to Caroline Crouch.

Stop telling women to call someone on their way home, to stick to streetlights, to carry their house keys between their knuckles in case they need a weapon.

Stop saying “Sarah Everard did everything right” or that some other women “did everything wrong”.

Stop telling schoolgirls that, if they don’t want someone taking upskirt photographs, they should wear PE shorts.

Just: NO.

Stop ordering rape reviews to work out what’s going wrong with your conviction rates.

Stop asking why the police didn’t listen to her.

Stop holding inquests that find the same old failings and the same old excuses, stop listening to the defence’s mitigation, stop talking about the stress he was under at work.

Stop, above all things, saying he was jealous.

Jealousy is an emotion, not an excuse. Instead of teaching men and boys that it justifies the annihilation of an entire family to satisfy the insecurities of the sickest member of it, teach them how to deal with it.

Teach them that a female’s skirt is her business and hers alone. Teach them not to tell her she’s mad or imagining it, teach them how drink and drugs bring out the worst, teach them that if she ends it then it’s game over, and they need to move on.

Stop leaving it to women to defuse the bombs they are presented with by men too emotionally illiterate to make something better of their feelings.

Teach everyone that a rape happens every 4 minutes in the UK.

Teach them that of the 350 people who will be raped today, only 115 will trust the police enough to tell them about it.

Teach them that only 6 of today’s rapists will be charged, and just 4 convicted.

Point out that the 346 men who got away with rape today did so, not because it was a reasonable thing to do, or she was asking for it, or it did no harm, but because there too many men to catch.

And because men built the system, passed the laws, and set the budgets, for those doing the catching.

And that when police, rapists, and the Crown Prosecution Service, think there’s nothing they can do about 346 rapes out of every 350, it’s hardly surprising that 346 out of every 350 victims feel much the same.

Stop setting targets which merely skew the figures to make someone look good, and allows the system to be gamed by men who can spot the victims most likely to be betrayed by it.

Stop saying it’s a sex crime, or a crime of passion.

It’s a weak crime – committed by men who feel powerless, who subdue someone else to regain a fleeting, and futile, sense of imaginary strength.

Stop telling the woman she should be firmer with her ex, that she should move on, that she should be over that by now, that because she went limp or zoned out she was doing anything other than surviving.

We raise our boys to fight and be powerful, and our girls to be mice: to keep an eye out for predators, find protection, curl up and hope it goes away.

We’ve been curled up for a very long time, but it’s still there – the shadow of rape and femicide, the 100million missing women who should exist but don’t, the children traumatised and families destroyed.

Women have been taught how not to be raped and murdered for millennia, and no government review will find anything but the wrong reasons why it hasn’t worked.

So do something different. Tell a boy he can cry. Stop telling brothers “well if you hit him, of course he’ll hit you back”. Tell lads that a picture of their penis is not a substitute for speaking to her, and men that women aren’t a game. Tell men when they marry and on every wedding anniversary thereafter that, if she’s finally had enough, a shotgun is not the solution.

This is an education crisis as much as a criminal one. Give lessons in how not to rape and murder to all males, at every stage of their lives. If anyone complains it is an imposition, lock him up.

And while we’re in school, tell girls that pictures like that are illegal. Tell them teachers will do something. Tell them parents want to hear this stuff, Prince Charming was an arrogant prat Cinders had nothing in common with, and that their best protection lies in telling the truth.

Tell everyone that, when the offence of rape was first introduced, it was a property crime. And that now, women own their space.

Tell boys and girls, men and women, that there is an easy and cheap way to stop this. That they do not need to light candles or lay flowers or reflect on the lessons.

All any of us have to do is say: NO.

That should be enough. If it isn’t, that’s his fault, and no-one else’s.