Sabina Nessa

The murder of Sabina Nessa is another thread in an all too familiar pattern of women being murdered by men while going about their daily lives. Women and girls are not safe and this has been the case for a very long time. Over time society has adopted norms that make it tolerable for men to murder women and feel able to get away with justifying their actions. Whether it is the French notion of ‘crime of passion’, the murder defence of “violent sex”, or the implication that rape victims somehow did something to provoke their assailants; society finds a way to make violence against women reasonable under certain circumstances. The truth is that males need to learn to respect the rights, choices and bodies of women.

Violent urges are primeval but over time the desire for social acceptance has restrained people from wantonly resorting to it. Unfortunately we are at a point where men seem to feel that giving in to violent urges is liberating and empowering. There are too many instances of people resorting to violence to resolve personal differences. It has become common to find people on social media threatening violence against strangers whom they might be having a difference of opinion with. Social media personalities have taken to promoting and organising boxing matches as a way of amping up rivalries. The US experiences of minorities subjected to violent police interventions have been disturbing and disruptive. And recently the increasing exposure of violent assaults by U.K. law enforcement officers has spotlighted a very worrying trend. 

As a society we need to address and change the culture of violence against women that has become entrenched in our lives. We should be able to rely on law enforcement and government institutions to recognise the dangerous trends and actively work to combat them. Talking about it isn’t enough. Not enough is being done and women are paying the price for this negligence. Keeping women safe is not about finding protectors, it’s about stopping perpetrators.