Jamila Rizvi: 'How many women have to die before the world realises we're not to blame?'

How many of us have to die before the world realises we’re not to blame?

After 22-year-old comedian Eurydice Dixon was murdered walking home from a gig this week, police issued a warning to Melbournians. They urged us to “take responsibility for your safety”, “exercise situational awareness” and “make sure people know where you are and if you have a mobile phone, carry it”.

To many in our community that may sound like perfectly sensible advice. Indeed, it’s almost reassuring. It is comforting to the father, the brother and the husband of a woman who is loved, that this sort of precautionary action will keep her safe. It suggests that somehow, we can inoculate ourselves and those we care about against the kind of horror that ended Eurydice’s existence. That this violence which leaves women’s lives and bodies in pieces, won’t befall us or someone who we care about. 

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Women are told to stay home, to stay safe, to limit our lives and our worlds to only those places where we can be protected from the predators out there. And yet, a woman is killed every week in this country by a partner or former partner, by a man who once told her he loved her and often, she is killed inside the supposedly protective walls of her own home.

The problem is not with how women move through the world. 

The problem is with men’s violence.