By Massimo Usai
Sarah Everard’s disappearance touched the rope of emotion deeply in England, and particularly in London.
Disappearing in the middle of the city, in a tranquil and safe neighbourhood (Clapham), at the hands of a policeman, has affected many people and brought women’s safety to the fore.
On social media in the last 48 hours, it has been a river full of emotions, anger and screams of despair.
Most women ask only one thing: to be respected and not have this sense of fear and terror that it is not right and proper. Living in terror and fear just because born “women”.
The facts are well known.
Sarah was walking home crossing Chapham around nine o’clock last Wednesday- and at one point, she disappeared into nowhere.
A few days later, a policeman and a woman were arrested who allegedly helped the man get rid of the body.
Yesterday, police found a body, about 150km from London, in the middle of the countryside.
They got there not by accident, but because clearly, the man confessed.
Immediately after the woman disappeared, the police appealed to Clapham’s women to pay the utmost attention, not to go out alone, etc…
In practice, the same cliché is repeated.
Women are being asked to change their attitude. A way perhaps unaware of shifting the responsibility for these incidents from the real culprit: the Men.
I once heard a discussion where a person said that “we needed to better protect our daughters“, warn them and educate them of these risks.
At one point, one asked the person who asked for this education and attention for their daughter if he also had any children, and he said yes, that he also had a boy.
“Well, then, instead of talking to your daughter about the dangers of being a woman, why not spend more time talking to your son? Because you will help your daughter by educating your sons and not put fear on your daughter just because she is a girl and try to convince her to change behaviour.
The boys need to change behaviour, not the girls.”
I think, after the flood of proposals and alarms read and launched on social media these days, perhaps we should start from this “statement” above.
To have a separate and rigid social and sexual education courses for boys in even primary schools.
Because only by educating them we can honestly hope that such cases are merely the result of accidents and not of a decidedly wrong mentality, which seems impossible to eradicate at the moment.
As a man, I have enough of this kind of news, and from the scares we create to every woman just because we are a man.
I feel shame, and I don’t want anymore to have these feelings. It’s time to act seriously.
The shame, my friend, doesn’t help. What you’ve written will, I hope, in some small way. You’re right: It’s time for men and boys to change. Talking about this is part of that change. Thank you for doing that.
To me, this things like “we need educate and aware girls” of the dangerous is completely wrong. Instead take the boys at school few hours more a week to special education how to respect them and how to understand they need to stop to think they are different.
I know it’s a long process and in some community it’s either longer, but society need to start at some point to face the reality.
Sarah got the main pages of the news but we have hundred of Sarah everyday in the world that doesn’t make the news.