I see this headline as part of the problem.
How different would it be as ‘Four women killed by men in four days’ or ‘Four women killed by male partners or former partners in four days’ or ‘Four women killed in four days by men who wished to control them’ or ‘Four women killed in four days by men who felt entitled to treat them as objects’ or ‘Four women killed in four days by men who felt entitled to treat them as chattels’.
Imagine if men’s violence was always reported like this.
Statements that don’t attribute agency can be read as ‘she got herself raped/assaulted/killed’, implying that the woman or girl was in some way at fault. They’re another way of saying ‘look what she made him do’. This default reading runs very deep in our culture & every framing as ‘women dead’, ‘women assaulted’ or ‘woman raped’ supports it.
Imagine if we spoke in ways at attribute agency unambiguously to the men who did these things.
Imagine.
#violence #misogyny #assault #murder #reporting #agency #Australia #imagine
