MIA: A huge online storm broke out after we published this interview.

By MIA FREEDMAN

I first noticed it after Jill Meagher died.

In the days that followed her tragic murder, everyone was united in shock and then sorrow. But there was something else there too; the chilling sense that ‘there for the grace of God go I’. Because almost every one of us could have been Jill.

Every woman knows what it feels like to be vulnerable to a possible random, violent attack because it’s something we live with every time we get into a cab with a strange man, walk alone in the street at night, walk to our cars in a deserted car park.

Our physical vulnerability is something we’re always aware of, even if it’s just a barely audible hum in the background of our consciousness.

Some will jump in at this point to insist most victims are not attacked by strangers. Most violence against women occurs within relationships or families. But that’s not what happened to Jill Meaghr and for the purpose of the conversations we all had after her death, that’s not what most women fear.

It’s the random, unexpected and opportunistic attack which ignites our anxiety and which we spent so much time mulling over after Adrian Bayley was arrested and charged with Jill’s rape and murder.

What happened after that sat uneasily with me; I became troubled by some of the rhetoric used in online discussions around this despicable crime. While many women desperately searched for something constructive to take from the tragedy and wanted to talk about safety strategies for women out alone at night, others angrily shut them down.

How dare you victim-blame, they railed indignantly. How dare you blame a woman for being attacked by a man. This is about men who rape and murder, not women who walk home alone. Why should women change their behaviour? It’s the attackers who are the problem and we need to focus on them.

Yes of course we do but I don’t see the two as being mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, there will always be monsters. But is talking about safety strategies for women tantamount to victim blaming? If I talk to my sons about how to avoid mindless violence and diffuse aggression from strangers, is that victim blaming too?

The idealism and naivity of the idea frustrated me and it was with this in mind that I brought up the topic with Caitlin Moran during an interview I did with her late last year.

Here is how our conversation went:

M: There was a very tragic case in Melbourne recently, about an Irish girl who was walking home from a bar, and who was married and lived 800 metres from a bar, and was walking home and was just randomly abducted and raped and murdered. And it’s really been one of those watershed moments for the whole country.

There have been peace marches, and reclaim the night marches, because it is that thing that we all fear, a woman walking alone, randomly taken from the streets, and it’s really divided a lot of women. Because there have been those who have said, “don’t blame the victim, we need to be free to walk the streets at any time, it’s men who need to be taught not to rape and murder.”

And of course it should never be about victim blaming but I worry about the idea of saying to women “don’t change your behaviour, this is  not your problem!”. I feel like that’s saying, ”You should be able to leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition, or leave your front door unlocked, and expect nobody to burgle you.”

C: Yes. It’s on that basis that I don’t wear high heels – other than I can’t walk in them – because when I’m lying in bed at night with my husband, I know there’s a woman coming who I could rape and murder, because I can hear her coming up the street in high heels, clack-clack -clack.  And I can hear she’s on her own, I can hear what speed she’s coming at, I could plan where to stand to grab her or an ambush. And every time I hear her I think, “Fuck, you’re just alerting every fucking nutter to where you are now. And [that it’s a concern] that’s not right.

Society should be different. But while we’re waiting for society to change, there’s just certain things you have to do. But again the thing is, so many things you could do instead are predicated on having money. She could come out of a nightclub and get into a taxi, that would be the right thing to do.

No billionaire heiresses are ever abducted and raped and murdered, because they are just being put into a taxi or have their driver waiting around a corner for them. Again, it’s not just a feminist thing, it’s a class thing. It’s a money thing. It’s a problem of capitalist society. “

I didn’t write about it at the time but a huge online shitstorm broke out after this interview was published on Mamamia. Feminist sites around the world slammed Caitlin and I for our comments, angrily accusing us of victim blaming. Like this from UK site The F-Word:

Where to start? How about with the facts. Only 9% of rapes are committed by strangers. Women are much more likely to be raped or attacked by men they know, in their own home or workplace. So it’s hugely unhelpful and unsisterly – not to mention creepy as hell – for Moran to immediately link the sound of a woman walking home in high heels with her being raped and murdered. Women already feel excessively afraid of walking home at night, and all she’s done here is potentially increased this fear among her many female fans.

In reality, it would actually make more sense for that woman walking home alone in high heels to spot Moran in bed with her husband through the crack in her bedroom curtains and think “Shit, Caitlin’s in her own home, sharing a bed with a man she’s in a relationship with. Does she know she’s putting herself at increased risk of sexual violence?”. Of course, that would be a horrible thing to think, but it’s no more horrible than Moran’s own musings. It just seems worse because Moran’s narrative is what we’re used to hearing….

Women get raped by taxi drivers. We get raped when we’re wearing super-practical flat shoes (and I’m pretty sure your DMs make a fair old racket when you’re clomping down the street, Caitlin). We may get raped if we cover up and stay at home out of sight, and we may get raped if we wear next to nothing and totter home drunkenly serenading the neighbours at 3am on a Friday night.

There is therefore no point curtailing our freedom in order to try and avoid male sexual violence. Encouraging women to do so is basically telling women to give in to male control and live in fear. That’s categorically not what feminism is about.

Finally, let’s just make it clear that rape is not a product of mental illness. Rapists are not “fucking nutters”. They are often very ordinary men, who may or may not have any history of mental illness. Reinforcing the stereotype of the crazed man jumping out of a bush is not only disablist (in that it increases the stigma suffered by people with mental illnesses), it actually puts women at risk. Because when they are raped by a friend, a partner, or a perfectly sane “nice guy”, the police, the judiciary and the members of the public on the jury are less likely to believe it was rape.

Both Moran and Freedman’s comments are straight-up victim blaming, and they hurt women everywhere.

Sisters, please.

I am a feminist. I am the daughter of a feminist and the mother of a little one. My sons and husband would probably not describe themselves as feminists but they live their lives on the unspoken foundation of gender equality.

How is teaching my daughter to be careful, to avoid situations where she might put herself at an increased risk of danger… how is that victim blaming? How is it even responsible to raise a fearless child?

Is it having a daughter that made my attitudes around this issue more practical? Or was it the way my mother brought me up?

My feminism is not theoretical. It’s not something of books or doctrines or rules or memberships. I live it. Just as my mother lived feminism in the choices she made in her own life. She chose to have a child at 19. She chose to leave her marriage at 21 and put herself through university. She chose to work part-time when her kids were small and she always chose to pursue a fulfilling life for herself that fit in and around her role as a mother.

And in doing so, she showed me what feminism looks like – by example.

When I was in primary school and began walking to the shops alone, she taught me to always look ahead and cross the road if I saw a man sitting in a car up ahead. She taught me to run like hell if a car pulled up beside me and the driver tried to engage me in conversation.

When I was older, she taught me to walk to my car with my car key protruding from my closed fist so I could use it as a weapon to gauge any potential attacker. She taught me to always look in the back seat of my parked car to make sure there was nobody there waiting for me before I got in.

None of this was victim blaming. None of this was contrary to the feminism she instilled in me. And to suggest that discussions about how women can protect ourselves from harm – in every aspect of our lives – is somehow harming women is not only absurd and insulting but incredibly dangerous.

Yes, we would all love to live in a world where there is no rape, abuse, assault or murder of any kind. Until that happy day, we need to arm ourselves our sisters, our friends and our daughters with all the information, advice and strategies than can help keep us all safe.

Are you a mother? Has having a daughter changed your idea of what feminism is?