…
From sexist jokes and coercive control to sexual assault and brutal jealousy-fuelled assaults - there’s not much off limits on the Love Bites programme which national charity Napcan has delivered to thousands of students.
The “respectful relationship education” title sounds a little bland. But it is being delivered against a backdrop of violence against women in this country that has been labelled a “national crisis”. At its core: trying to shift attitudes and behaviour that has contributed to that culture.
The high-profile stabbing murders of six people at Sydney’s Bondi Junction shopping centre last month - in which police said it seemed “obvious” that attacker Joel Cauchi targeted women - brought the issue into sharper focus.
In the month since then, at least three Australian women have been murdered, allegedly by partners or exes.
So far this year, 28 women have been violently killed in Australia, according to campaign group Destroy the Joint which runs the Counting Dead Women project. At the same point last year it was 15.
The incredibly tiny proportion of the population who are murderers, I’d assume (less than 1 out of every 10,000 people in the US per year if my math is right).
Both sets of victims are equally dead, of course, just with a much higher percentage of those dead victims being men, and a much smaller percentage of those dead victims being the ones stories like this always seem to focus on.
Won’t somebody please think of the mens!
This but unironically. Please, please stop demonizing men and actually think about them for once.