No I’m not.

I actually mention it quite often. Most of the time there is a women somewhere who will jump in and change the topic to sexual harassment, along with ‘1 in 3’ or ‘96%’ or some other vague and unverifiable statistic.

I thought you were horrified by this murder? Why aren’t you even more horrified that it’s happened at almost 5 times the rate you thought it was? If 207 women being killed in the last year is so horrible (which of course it is) then why aren’t you even more horrified that those 207 were only 20% of the total murders in the UK last year?*

I know most are killed by men. If your father/brother/boyfriend/son was murdered by a man, would you be less sad? Would it be less horrible? What are your thoughts on this? Surely you don’t think that she doesn’t matter?

No, ‘men need to do better’ is not a solution. It’s poorly thought out, lazy and calling on men to be your protectors. I thought women were strong, intelligent and empathetic? How about we work together to fix it rather than throwing the same lines at people over and over again?

”Men aren’t sexually harassed”

Well, yes we are. But that’s not the point is it? Sarah wasn’t ‘harassed’ she was murdered. Stop hijacking this poor women’s tragedy and blaming ‘men’ (does that include her poor father?) for not doing more to ‘protect women’ from something completely unrelated.

Men and women work best when they work together, our strengths and weaknesses compliment each other, but only WHEN we work together. If men keep mentioning that it happens to them, then maybe it’s actually an issue, not a ‘conspiracy’.

I’m not ‘de-railing’ the conversation, I’m saying that I am a potential victim too, and I want to do something to fix the problem. YOU are the one ‘minimising’.

*Statistics drawn from this BBC article.