Play Safe

Following the abduction, rape and murder of Melbourne woman, Jill Meagher, last week, there has been a lot of blithering by feminists on a woman's right to feel safe on the streets after dark.

Of course women have a right to feel safe - we are bloody entitled to it - but events in Australia this week have shown that this theory clashes with reality, because rapists and murderers don't care about women's rights. And feminists are doing women a great disservice by not acknowledging that.

Exhibit A: SlutWalk in Canada, an annual event where progressives push a women's rights agenda when the focus for feminists should be on how to stay alive during a violent mugging / sexual assault / attempted abduction.  Yes, women should be able to do anything we want to do, and we should be able to wear anything we want to wear, but the reality is we can't.  It’s all very well campaigning how things ought to be in a perfect world, but women need real life skills that may save their life one day.

It seems to me a reasonable thing to do to ensure you have a safe night out is to look at things from the perspective of an opportunistic rapist/murderer, and then do the exact opposite of what they would consider the most suitable working conditions for doing what they do. Yes, that is totally unfair and often downright inconvenient for women, but, again, rapists don’t really care that we might find it unfair.

Rapists want you to walk home by yourself, and they want you to walk near back alleys, and they want you to have nothing to protect yourself with, and they want you to be drunk enough to make bad judgement calls about all these things. The Salvation Army have people on the city streets of Australia most nights, trying to protect vulnerable women from predators who target this exact behaviour.

A lot of women feel disempowered by having to take safety precautions on the streets after dark, but creating an environment where opportunistic rapists and murderers are unable to flourish means the predators are the ones who are disempowered.  None of this is fair to women, but who the hell wants to take the risk?

I think the police do a brilliant job overall securing and protecting the community, and they did a remarkable job solving the Meagher case despite the tragic outcome.  The police may say the streets are safe, but none of us feel safe.

I never, ever feel safe on the streets at night by myself, and I don't think I know many women who do. There is always a niggling fear in the forefront of your mind.  And no, it's not fair that many women feel that way, but that's life, and it keeps you cautious.

I think women should report every single occurrence where they feel unsafe on the streets; every event that they would previously not report because they feel that no-one is going to care, or that it's somehow so commonplace that it's not worth giving a statement.