Every morning, I open my phone to see yet another new headline of a woman being murdered, a girl being assaulted, or a man walking free from a rape trial. If I scroll, another similar story will appear, and another and another. To tell the truth, I don’t feel shocked anymore. Violence against women has become so routine that we have stopped noticing.
This desensitisation is not limited to headlines and news articles, but has also been reflected in people’s choice in the ballot box. In the aftermath of the U.S. general election, many have seen Trump’s re-election as a punch in the stomach for women. This is a man who belittled the #MeToo movement, calling it a “scary time for young men”, advising them to “deny, deny, deny”. This is a man who has reduced women like Hillary Clinton, BeyoncĂ©, Lindsay Lohan, Princess Diana, and his own daughters to their appearances and sexual desirability. This is a man who coined the term “Grab them by the p****”, and has had at least 26 accusations of sexual misconduct, including the rape of minors. This is a man who was proud to “kill Roe v. Wade”, leaving women without access to life-saving healthcare and the right to bodily autonomy. This is the man who, by no small margin, will be the next president of the United States. None of these actions rang alarm bells, none of it stood out – proof of just how normal his behaviour has become.
Make no mistake, women will die from this election result and they already are. Because of the abortion ban in Texas, Josseli Barnica died after the treatment for her miscarriage was delayed because doctors feared they couldn’t act unless there was no heartbeat. Her only crime was wishing to give her young daughter a sibling, and yet her preventable death has left this innocent child without a mother. Women voted for this man, fathers, brothers, and sons too. And yes, it feels personal because men who have acted disgustingly towards me and the women around me can see their behaviour rewarded, as a man who acts just like them is now one of the most powerful people in the world. But his behaviour is so normalised that when a new allegation or comment comes out, no one seems to care anymore, at least not enough to change their vote.
Women across the world are feeling grief-stricken by the events in the U.S.; the knowledge that women are losing their rights in a country that is deemed “first-world” is unexpected and it is overwhelming to try to predict the ramifications of this outcome. However, this is not a sudden development unique to the States. Violence against women and girls in the UK has been rising at a terrifying rate for the last decade. Two million women annually are victims of male violence, and femicide now occurs once every three days. In July this year, the NPCC declared violence against women and girls a “national emergency”, and yet it barely made headlines. It was barely a ripple in the sea of stories. There has been a 37% increase in violent crimes against women and girls between 2018 and 2023, but we have become too accustomed to seeing stories of brutal acts of violence to notice.
Of course, I come from a privileged place in writing this article, and I would be remiss if I thought this desensitisation was confined only to the Western world. In Iran, for example, around 450 women are killed annually in “honour killings”, and the roughly 14 million women living in Afghanistan are now prohibited, by law, from speaking or revealing their faces. As much as these statistics and numbers can shock us, it is difficult to grasp such a large scale, and this only fuels our desensitisation. In relativising these numbers, we remember that they are real people. So in thinking about those 14 million Afghan women, let’s compare it to something within the UK. According to world population review, the ten most populated cities in the UK add up to a bit shy of 14 million people. Could you imagine it being outlawed for people in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Glasgow, Leicester, Edinburgh, and Leeds to speak in public, to hear their family’s voice, to speak to friends, to meet strangers? For another comparison with Iranian women, according to TFL, the District line tube contains around 250 seats for its passengers. Could you imagine, next time you’re on the morning commute, that double the number of people riding alongside you could be killed for the sake of immorality?
Considering all this, it is easy to feel disheartened about the state of the world right now. Simply watching the news or opening my phone can feel like being bombarded with a wall of violent stories. It’s a terrifying time to be a woman, but my goal is not to deepen women’s existing fears. At least in my own experience, I have found it necessary to take time away from pages and pages of accounts of violence – not to ignore what’s happening, but to avoid becoming numb to their impact. Violence against women is not normal and it should never be normal. It is not some sad inevitability. So, let’s be angry, let’s be worried, let’s be alarmed, frustrated, or heartbroken– but let’s never be indifferent.