STOP BLAMING VICTIMS

News of females being killed abound this month. A lady killed by her supposed boyfriend. Another killed by a stranger she met at an AirBnB. Another killed at her home, in her own kitchen. Another killed and body chopped, another body dumped. It is like an apocalypse, but only for the females. And yet, we still find a way to blame the victims. A woman is beaten, raped, killed and still blamed for it. The justifications? She took money from a stranger. She dressed skimpily. She wanted a luxury lifestyle and quick riches. She provoked the man. She did not leave sooner. She cheated on her partner. Sadly, this pattern is not new, even though we would like to believe it is.

In a report by Africa Uncensored, over 500 women have been killed between January 2016 and December 2023. This just goes to show that the recent surge in news regarding women killings is not new or isolated as there have been recurring patterns all through the years, representative of a deeper systemic problem. Interestingly, in 75 percent of all the cases reported, the women were killed by an individual they knew- an intimate partner, a friend or a relative. As if that was not enough, 80 percent of these cases occurred at the confines of home (this referring to a shared space between the victim and the perpetrator). Essentially, the murders occurred in the one place the women would have expected to feel safe.

A phenomenon that continues to baffle me is that with every new case of femicide that is reported, the proponents of blaming the ladies continue to find new reasons why the women brought this upon themselves. Stop taking yourselves to AirBnBs, they say. Stop answering back to a man when he is angry, another shares. Stop ‘eating’ a man’s money, another notes. At this point, if ever a woman survives such an ordeal, who should she run to if the rest of us think it was justified? The continued notion that the death of a female always has something to do with what the female did or did not do is not only nauseating but frightening to say the least.

At what point will we open our eyes to our societal realities that continue to foster such cases? Deeply entrenched stereotypes on gender roles, unequal power dynamics between the woman and man in whatever relationship (be it husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, employer and employee…) and socially accepted norms that are not only harmful but outright wrong. For instance, my own community likes to argue that a man whose woman answers back to him has not properly exerted his authority as the man of the house. How is that authority exerted, you ask? Beating up the woman the next time she tries answering back as a lesson for her to be domicile and submissive to the man’s authority. And so as a little girl growing up in a rural village in Kakamega, every time the neighbor’s wife started screaming as a result of the husband’s beatings, the assumption was that she was being disciplined to make her into a good wife. Nothing about the husband’s drunken state, or the question he asked that necessitated the answer from the wife (the answer he did not like or the no answer that caused him to beat her). Two decades have gone by, and I know better. Why don’t we all know better?

A lady not smiling back or blushing at you when you catcall her in the street is not a reason to kill. Ending her relationship with you, whether for another person or otherwise, is not a reason to kill. Cheating on you, albeit being immoral, is not a reason to kill. Refusing your advances, when you have made it clear she is the one for you, is not a reason to kill.

Ending her relationship with you, whether for another person or otherwise, is not a reason to kill

C’mon, do I really need to spell it out? There is no civilian reason that could justify killing another, woman or otherwise. If we took a moment to stop blaming the victims long enough, maybe we could finally get to the underlying societal determinants of femicide and finally put an end to it.

FEMICIDE IS A HUMAN RIGHT VIOLATION!

Author,

Auma Getrude.