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HOW MANY WOMEN MUST WE LOSE?

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Sir,

Some murders have been termed ‘passion killings’ recently, and they are on a steady rise. Men do not kill out of ‘love,’ they kill out of a desire to control. ‘If I can’t have you, then nobody can,’ is a common phrase we hear from abusive men. And, often, they mean it.


It is known and has been proven too many times that women are in the most danger of injury or violence when they leave or try to leave their abusers. Are we really supposed to believe that these men are killing their ex-wives or girlfriends because they are ‘heartbroken’ or ‘distressed over the break-up?’ Maybe we should just tell the truth, and say men kill their partners because they want power over these women — because they want control, because they believe they own their wives and girlfriends. They would rather see these women dead than accept rejection or the idea that women are free to make their own choices about their lives.


Society, the media, and to a certain extent, the police, want us to believe that such crimes are a ‘crime of passion,’ but showing up with a knife at your ex-girlfriend’s house, and breaking down doors using an axe doesn’t sound like a ‘crime of passion’ to me. It sounds like an entitled, possessive man sought out his ex-girlfriend in order to punish her for the crime of being free - free from him.


There are too many excuses that come with each murdered or violated victim, and how we have become so used to violence against women that all we can do is shrug at the statistics and make noise that one time it happens, never to be heard again. Such murders should fill us with horror. They should, and they do, bring the grim reality of male violence into our living rooms.


If a distinct group of people is killed at such a rate by another distinct group of people, we would normally use words like ‘terrorism’, we would not simply shrug at the numbers. These aren’t just numbers. They have faces. We should look at the patterns of these crimes, the faces of the perpetrators and the faces of the victims. Then take action, but before that, we should call this by its name, it is male violence and it is an atrocity.

The more we talk about men’s violence against women as ‘passionate’ or as something uncontrollable - attached to love or heartache, the more we excuse things like domestic abuse and male entitlement. There are many women in this world (and men) who have had their hearts broken in the most gruesome and unfair ways. And yet, their emotions haven’t led them to kill. This kind of violence is a gendered crime and we must name it as such. Concealing the truth will only lead to more violence - don’t we know this already?

Nomsa

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