I’m going to start this by saying, I don’t actually know where to start. This piece is the most coherent thought I can manage after hearing about yet another monstrous attack on girls.
This week, a horrific headline sent shockwaves through the news: Three girls under the age of 10 have died of stab wounds after a 17 year old targeted a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport. Reminiscent of what happened at Ariana Grande’s Manchester concert in 2017, where 22 people – including children – were murdered in a bombing, this is not the first attack targeted on female-dominated spaces.
Just two days before the Southport attack, another man in Southport stabbed an 18 year old trans woman and has been charged with attempted murder.
Earlier in July, three women were murdered with a crossbow by one of the women’s ex-partners in North London.
In May, a woman was stabbed and killed at a bus stop in Edgeware.
Earlier this year, a trans woman was stabbed at a roller-skating party in London.
As violence against girls and women reaches epidemic levels in the UK, why does it feel like we’re screaming into a void when we ask: when will enough be enough?
In a report released last week by the Metropolitan Police, the extent of violence against women and girls becomes even more palpable: over one million attacks were recorded in just 12 months (which adds up to 20% of all recorded crime). One of twelve women will be a victim of crime and one of every six murders is a result of domestic abuse. The MET police called it a ‘national emergency’ and stated that “violence against women and girls is endemic, systemic and a threat to society on the same scale as terrorism,” yet why do we continue to treat them as isolated cases? Each one of them a “tragic, couldn’t-have-been-expected, couldn’t-have-been-prevented” punch into your chest as you read the morning news or scroll your social media feed.
Reporting on the MET Police’s statement, our very own Alex Puckett writes: “However, the police have also called upon the support and direction of the government to now intervene and address the current problems within the criminal justice system to enable a whole-system approach to VAWG.”
And they’re right. This cannot be addressed on a case-by-case basis, we cannot keep saying in hindsight “This shouldn’t happen!” only to go on as normal until it does inevitably happen again. We need wider policies and societal changes to address male violence against women and girls.
Just this week, the peaceful vigil for the girls murdered in Southport was disrupted by even more male violence as a group of far-right men descended upon the scene and started rioting fueled by racism and bigotry. The 17 year old perpetrator of the attack is Welsh – but that didn’t matter to the rioters – just as they made it clear that they didn’t actually care about the girls that died. They attacked a mosque, because the perpetrator’s parents are from Rwanda – completely ignoring the fact that Rwanda is a Christian country. (The Southport community later came together to repair the wreckage.)
Instead of respect for the victims, the virgil became an excuse to peddle more hatred. What should have been a moment for the community to grief instead became another moment of fear. The group of rioters protested against violence…with more violence. It has become a tale as old as time.
So what can we do? I wish I would have an easy answer, but the problem is so much bigger than that. We need change on a societal level. We need better policies and protections, we need stricter prosecution.
But we also need more grass-roots change. It rarely starts with murder. It’s rape culture, it’s ‘I’m going to lock my daughter up until she’s 25’ jokes, it’s ‘I wouldn’t want any of my teammates to date my sister’ sentiments. It’s these little things that snowball into male violence against women and girls. It’s the sentiment that women need protection (which begs the question: who do we need protection from? Other men, evidently.)
The real frustration here is that those that experience the issue rarely have the power to directly address it with those that are most likely to perpetrate the violence in the first place. We need men to hold their friends accountable for inappropriate jokes and behaviours.
All we ask for is to live without fear of being murdered every moment of our lives. To be able to take the bus. To go to a roller-skating party, to a concert, to a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. It shouldn’t be too much to ask.
What happened in Southport this week is unacceptable, and so is what happened in the aftermath. Male violence is arguably the biggest threat to life in the UK. It’s time we treat it as such.
