The public reaction to last week’s murder of Eurydice Dixon, and the accompanying call for women to ‘take responsibility for their safety’, has been strong and swift.

Eurydice’s death is yet another tragic, pointless and catastrophic loss caused by yet another violent man. The outpouring of anger, fear and collective grief from women has been steady and predictable. So too has the steady and predictable stream of advice for women to ‘keep safe’, be vigilant and ‘take responsibility’ for their safety.

It is not the first time that police, and politicians, have offered this kind of advice. In 2015, after the killing of Melbourne teenager Masa Vukotic, Homicide squad chief Detective Inspector Mick Hughes said on national radio that ‘particularly females […] shouldn’t be alone in parks’.

In response to the number of reported sexual assaults spiking this year on the Gold Coast, police have advised women to ‘make decisions that make it more difficult to be preyed upon’ such as ‘perhaps be in groups’.

Currently the Queensland Police’s website has a whole page dedicated to personal safety advice for women, including recommendations such as ‘pay attention to your surroundings’ and ‘avoid being distracted by your mobile phone, keys and packages as you enter your car’, lock your car after you enter it, and tell a ‘responsible person’ when you plan to be home and how you plan to get there.

I don’t doubt that some of this advice is well intentioned.

Every time I chat to my mother, as I’m walking home and the sun hangs low in the sky or the moon has already risen, she insists on staying on the line until I arrive safely. Never mind the fact that she lives 2025 kilometres away, or that my home is far more likely, statistically speaking, to be more dangerous than the street.

And I don’t doubt that right now some of the advice that is being plastered across television screens and the internet is coming from a place of desperation – to do or say something in the face of an act of shattering public violence, that has left many shaken and afraid, and has sparked thousands to gather at park vigils around the country

This advice is not new or unique. It forms part of a broader ‘keep safe’ lie that is inculcated in women from birth and for generations has been passed like a lifeline from mothers and aunts to sisters and daughters. The problem is that the lifeline doesn’t work. All it does is rein women in and tie them down.

‘Text me when you’re on your way home.’

‘Text me when you get home.’

‘Call me when you’re walking home.’

‘Walk home with a friend.’

‘Who are you going out with? Will they walk home with you?’

‘Catch a cab.’

‘Don’t catch a cab alone.’

‘Have fun. Don’t stay out too late.’

‘Don’t drink too much.’

‘Watch your drink.’

‘Are you really going to wear that?’

And we internalise, regurgitate and perform these safety routines all the time, every day.

 

There is extensive research into the ‘safety practices’ of women. A 2015 study by The Australia Institute found that 87% of women had experienced some form of harassment in a public place, and that 40% reported feeling unsafe at times in public. I suspect it would be higher if women weren’t trained to conceal feelings of discomfort or fear to avoid being labelled hysterical, paranoid or distrusting (which is one of the many contradictions women are expected to internalise, given that the ‘keep safe’ lie depends upon women living in fear.)

The study also showed the lengths women go to in order to comply with the ‘keep safe’ lie: three in every five women reported that they had avoided walking alone at night and over a third held their keys in their hand like a weapon when they did walk alone.

It’s not just women, of course, who map their routes home or live with the fear of violence. A 2008 study of LGBT Victorians found that ‘nearly 85% of respondents had been subjected to some form of homophobic violence or harassment.’  Another 2010 study found that over 60% of young people surveyed had been subjected to verbal abuse because of their sexuality and almost 20% had experienced physical assault.

LGBTQ people reported very similar ‘keep safe’ strategies in an Australian Institute of Criminology survey into safety following public events like Mardi Gras: almost three-quarters of those surveyed reported changing their appearance to try and look more ‘heterosexual’. Over half made sure they travelled to and from Mardi Gras in a group.

Muslim women are another group frequently targeted in public – because of their gender, and also because of visible indicators of faith. Of the 243 incidents reported in the 2017 Islamophobia in Australia report where gender was known, over two-thirds of the victims were women.

Similarly to the internalised safety routines identified by the Australia Institute, the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria found that ‘safety was prioritised above independence and wellbeing’. The report concluded that ‘Muslim women’s right to freedom of movement and independent living have been compromised. Muslim women no longer feel safe to travel alone.’

It is heart-shattering that we have created a society where if you are not white and heterosexual and male, you are taught to be afraid of the dark and to hide away for your own preservation.

Given the extensive evidence that women are already rigorously adhering to the ‘keep safe’ lie, it is unsurprising that there has been such an outcry in response to the Victorian Police’s calls for people to ‘take responsibility’ for their safety and to adopt ‘situational awareness’ when they’re out.

‘We are!’ women are yelling.

But more than just cries of ‘we are,’ a flurry of stories have been shared across the internet saying we are and it’s hurting us. We are and it doesn’t work. We are and we resent it.

The ‘keep safe’ lie only works by infecting women with fear – and that infection takes hold by convincing its host that if she shrinks small enough or hides away at night or speaks softly or smiles brightly then she will be safe.

There is no evidence that this is true, and it is not difficult to see how it may in fact have the opposite effect.

 

When we make people invisible, we leave a vacuum for others to fill.

If we force women off the streets, off the screens and off the stages and hide them away for their own safety, then we create even more space for straight, white men to occupy and to calcify their power. We need more visibility and public space for all women and communities pushed to the margins – not less.

To push back against the efforts to marginalise and silence is not easy, and it has real – and often detrimental – consequences for the people doing the pushing. As Hanif Kureishi wrote in The Guardian last week, ‘these men and their lackeys have been the beneficiaries of positive discrimination, to say the least, for centuries. The world has always been theirs, and they now believe they own it.’

To convince men that they are not the rightful owners of public space and the world as a whole would be to expose the entire capitalist hegemony in which we exist as a lie.

And so, instead of dismantling the idea that we can and should wield power over each other, that we can own people and their labor, that we have the right to subjugate one another, we instead tell all those who are denied a place in the upper echelons to be afraid of the dark.

Instead of demanding that men examine why they assume they have the right to speak first, or how they take up more than their fair share or what it means that they expect someone else to provide them with food and comfortable shelter, we tell women to ‘keep safe’.

The ‘keep safe’ lie also manipulates us into handing power over to institutions that both presently and historically are responsible for much of the violence perpetrated against members of our community. See how, after Meagher’s murder, Victoria pledged $3 million for more CCTV cameras, and pledges of increased surveillance even worked themselves into election campaigns with the promise that they would keep women safer.

The ‘keep safe’ lie disguises the perversity of giving more power to governments and their agents who already have unprecedented capacity to detain and question us, to surveil our actions on the internet and on the street, and who actively target, separate and detain the already marginalised.

While the data suggests men face a greater risk of physical assault by strangers than women, it is women who are ordered to modify their behaviour, to stay at home, to do and be less in public places. This is important because we do not see the police issuing public statements for young, white men to ‘keep safe’ when violent men punch strangers outside pubs. We don’t tell them to stay home or to dress differently or to text each other to confirm whether they have returned safe from a night out.

This is why the ‘keep safe’ lie is more than just condescending and ineffective. It actively harms women in precisely the way that it pretends to help: rather than keeping us safe, it keeps us silent. A world full of silent women is a world where men hold power over us – a dangerous world.

 

Eurydice Dixon didn’t die because she was out at night, or because she walked home alone, or because she was funny and brave on stage. She died because a violent man made a decision to end her life.

‘Keep safe’ only polices the behaviour of women. Keeps us quiet and indoors. Mutes our voices and limits our participation. The lie means there are fewer of us holding forth in public places and taking spots on public stages. It gives more room for men in our absence.

We should instead tell women to go forth and occupy – to be louder and more visible and more bold.

Reflecting on the ‘keep safe’ lie on The Project, Lisa Wilkinson said ‘the problem with giving this advice is that it keeps that one woman safe at the expense of all women’s right to move freely.’

Hiding us away doesn’t keep us safe, it just pushes us all further down.

 

Sophie Trevitt

Sophie Trevitt is the Executive Officer of Change the Record which is a member of the Raise the Age Coalition, and was a youth lawyer in the Northern Territory. @SophieTrevitt

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  1. “Eurydice Dixon didn’t die because she was out at night, or because she walked home alone, or because she was funny and brave on stage. She died because a violent man made a decision to end her life.”

    … or because she wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings, etc…

    You have stated it exactly. Thank you.

  2. Sophie, you’ve hit every nail on the head with this article. Thank you.

    Without wanting to diminish, in any way, the terrible thing that has happened to Eurydice, it is extremely uncommon for a stranger to assault a woman like this, in a public space, in our society. This horrible event makes the news, and shocks us, because it is the exception to the rule–and the rule is that most of us are very safe most of the time. It is, as you note, much more common for this kind of thing to happen to women in the home–and it is young men who are at the greatest risk of public assault by a stranger. You are right to ask why women, therefore, are made to fear being in public spaces.

    The ‘paternalism’ that perpetuates this culture of fear must surely originate in women’s historical status as chattels: how better a way to control your domestic labourer, child rearer and sexual property than to make it terrified of leaving the home? We see this, today, in its most extreme form in societies where women cannot do anything without a male escort or male permission: are these women ‘safer’ than ours because of such constraints and fear? Of course not, in fact, they are at much greater risk–hidden, as they are, from public view and deprived entirely, as they are, from having any public voice.

    You are absolutely right to note that, by focusing on ‘public safety,’ the government has an excellent means to roll out the infrastructure of a surveillance culture: shouldn’t this money be spent, instead, on combating domestic violence?

    “We should instead tell women to go forth and occupy – to be louder and more visible and more bold.” Damn straight. Being afraid fixes nothing. But getting angry might: our anger shouldn’t be directed at specters in the dark, but at the specters that are implanted into our minds as girls, and kept there as adult women, making us fear moving through this world as men do.

    1. Thanks so much for such interesting reflections. Agree that much of this is imbued in long history of containing women for their servitude to men. Obviously it’s not only women who have been historically (and presently) treated as property; and we see versions of the keep safe narrative play out amongst different groups of people who don’t hold power at the top (these groups are often concurrently vilified and victimised in terms of their criminality however).

      I find the government’s involvement in the keep safe narrative fascinating, and had not given it enough thought in this particular frame (i.e. with regards to gender and public safety) until I was researching this essay. You might find this piece of research interesting that was produced after and about the killing of Jill Meagher: http://apo.org.au/system/files/42522/apo-nid42522-56766.pdf Agree that it’s a misdirection of resources, but I think it’s more sinister than that!

  3. Guess, being male, I’m more part of the problem than part of the solution. That said, I’m siding with the text here and suggesting further, re “Eurydice Dixon didn’t die because she was out at night, or because she walked home alone, or because she was funny and brave on stage. She died because a violent man made a decision to end her life”, that it would make more sense (without getting into gender breakdowns and politics) in the event of a woman/women being attacked by a man/men at night, if men in general were banned from going out at night, rather than women being advised to stay at home (what an outcry would ensue in such a situation), because the fact and situation of women being attacked by men at night (and in general), has been naturalised to the extent of being almost a commonplace in newspaper and TV reports, as well as in film and television fictional representations, so much so that when it comes to considerations of power (unequal relations between different sexual, social and cultural groupings), the social and cultural tendency has been (until more recently, say, the #metoo movement’s intrusions into a Hollywood power imbalance which had favoured a lopsided male social and sexual dominance), whether out on the social fabric at night, or in film and tv representations, or wherever, that it seem almost natural that onlookers/viewers identify with a male stalker attacking, preferably, young attractive women (rather than the other way round), all of which points to the surety that social and sexual and textual inequalities are, due to social and cultural power imbalances and differences, sorely in need of change still. (Phew! Sorry for the mouthful!! (if you read this far)).

    1. Hey Jake, I don’t think being male means you have to be part of the problem. It just means you’re part of a group that benefits from the problem, so you might have to do some deliberate stuff to challenge that :).

      Totally agree with you that depictions of women and men have entrenched understandings of the way in which we are each allowed to participate in the world. Geena Davis has done some really interesting research on this that you may be keen on. I saw her speak at the All About Women’s conference in Sydney last year and she spoke about how there has been relatively no change in gender representation on our screens since 1946. She talked about the worst genres for gender parity – films for children under 11 years old. Imagine what that’s doing to children’s developing brains in terms of ingraining these kind of attitudes as normal!

      You can check out her research here: https://seejane.org/

      Thanks for taking the time to read and comment,
      Sophie

  4. I am a white heterosexual middle aged man, I have to admit I didn’t understand the reaction. I read the police statement as ad admission they can’t keep women safe, it is the next step in the chain I missed. The statement was all that was going to happen. Thank you for educating me, there will be a lot of men like me. I realise I have never been the victim of abuse, racism or violence. But I hear the news and move on with my life. I encourage you to be loud, to keep educating men like me, to demand change. Most men love women. They are sisters, daughters, mothers, wives and girlfriends. These men will support you.

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