“Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them”
A personal story. (I guess I should add a content warning here. But that would mean putting one on many women’s lives)
I’ve been thinking about this
quote a lot this past week. Ever since news broke that Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei had been hospitalised with 75% burns and subsequently died of her injuries after her ex set light to her. (Let’s call it what it is, murdered her.)Like most women I know, I’ve been unable to look away and unable to look at the news coming out of France of the horrific organised multiple rape of Gisele Pelicot by her husband Dominique (who on the day he was due to give evidence was taken ill and hospitalised, poor lamb).
Like most women I know, I was unable to look away from the unfolding horror of the slaughter of Carol Hunt and her daughters Louise and Hannah, allegedly by Louise’s ex Kyle Clifford, who was arrested after trying and failing to take his own life.
Like most women, (and unlike most men - no, no, not all, let’s call it some - as
so brilliantly wrote here) I can’t stop thinking about it, because this is a threat, no, a reality, many of us know and have lived with throughout our lives.There have been many, many takes on these horrors this past week, does the world really need another one? Quite honestly, probably not. Although you could argue (I might argue) that the stories shouldn’t stop until the horror does. Which I don’t see happening any time soon. If anything, quite the reverse. But I want to add my voice because I want to tell a personal story. One of a close family friend who was murdered by her husband in a way that has nightmare-inducing echoes in the murder of Rebecca Cheptegei.