All there is to it
Spiked gives us…the “contrarian” take on the murder of Sarah Everard. It’s written by a friend of hers, who decided not to go to the vigil on Clapham Common, because it had been “hijacked.”
It is not a tribute to her any more, it’s about something else – and I don’t like what it has become.
I can see not wanting to go to a big public thing like that when you’re a friend of the murdered woman. I can see that the gap between the feelings of people actually close to her and strangers is huge, and that it would feel uncomfortable or worse to ignore it. But.
Sarah was a victim of one of the most horrific crimes imaginable. She was extremely unlucky – that is all there is to it.
No, it really isn’t. It’s part of it, for sure – it’s a matter of luck to cross the path of a murderer, yes, but it’s certainly not all there is to it. There’s more to it. There’s the popularity of violent porn, for one thing.
Her abduction and murder is not, in my opinion, a symptom of a sexist, dangerous society.
Taken by itself perhaps it wouldn’t be, but given the statistics on violence against women, what else can it be? A symptom of a society that is completely free of sexist violence?
When something awful like this happens there is a rush to look for reasons and apportion blame. If the suspect police officer in custody is eventually tried and found guilty of her murder, then I will hold him alone responsible. I will not be blaming ‘men’ or ‘the police’ for the actions of one individual. There will always be the odd psychopath out there – male or female – and there can be no accounting for that fact.
As I said, very Spiked-friendly. Everything is just random, there’s no explaining it, there are no patterns, it’s like lightning or tornadoes, it just happens.
As for us, her friends? Let us grieve for our loved one, brutally taken in such an awful way. The public reaction to her death has been overwhelming, and for the most part very touching. But be assured, the misuse of it by those with an ‘agenda’ is not a comfort to us.
What agenda is that though? An agenda to end violence against women? Is that really such a sinister and corrupt goal?
I mean, heaven forfend that the editors of Spiked should ever (mis)use anything for the sake of pushing an agenda, eh?
Spiked??? An agenda???? Neverrrrrrrrrrrr
Even lightning and tornadoes conform largely to patterns, though. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have advice about not being covered in metal, tall, and out in a thunderstorm. Nor would a location exist known as “Tornado Alley”. That’s why residents of Tornado Alley have storm cellars and I don’t.
To say that such things have aspects that are not completely predictable, does not mean that nothing about them is predictable.