Grace and gracelessness ('Not all men')

Grace Millane 22 murdered in Auckland last week.
National vigils held this week for her and all the women victims of male violence
in this country (and every other).

When I was researching and writing about male violence against women and the public-political response to it in the first decade of this century, there was no 'not all men' protest when there was a public outcry against this violence.

Apart from the global uptake of internet commentary since then, this was because a) there was scarcely any public outcry against this violence then, though it was no less rampant, and b) the male lament of blaming the feminist man-haters for making up stories to bring men, all men down was implicit in this lack of public outcry and in the much louder narratives written into law and public policies of female provocation, denial of the extent of the problem, especially with domestic violence, which was my focus, and the outrageous claim that women are just as violent as men when the facts tell of women experiencing injury and death at the hands of men at a rate for which there is simply no female-to-male comparison.

My own mother bought into all this women-blaming and denial of the problem, as did the vast majority of people, men and women, commenting and making decisions around male violence against women. Feminists have been fighting such an uphill battle for so long to get the public and parliaments of their countries to care about murdered, raped and maimed women, especially those in a domestic setting but really all of them. They are all connected.

This is changing as we speak as the vigils attended by thousands for murdered women like Grace and for all the women slain at the hands of men are a powerful sign of significant change. And it seems to me, as someone watching the public response to gendered violence for a long time that this change has been fuelled by the global female indignation over Trump's election and the Women's March in early 2017 and the Me Too movement that was also in part a response to this that has shown women who had not previously identified with feminist causes, and perhaps some men - but far from all men - that what we have here is a serious problem of male power and violence out of control and women being the main victims of this rampant power abuse and toxic masculinity but everyone being the victims in the long run.

And although thousands of men, many more men in fact than are joining the outcry against the violence, are contributing publicly to what one journalist here has well described as 'the astonishing selfishness of "not all men"'  protests, the fact that men are having to yell so loudly about how unfair we are being to them in protesting about male violence against raped and murdered women and are being rightly and widely shamed for this, is a sign that the balance of the public narrative and concern has shifted significantly and hopefully lastingly in favour of taking male violence against women seriously and in realising that the male sense of superiority and entitlement and unchecked power to disrespect and dominate women at every level of society is all part of the problem.

RIP Grace, your violent, tragic death has already sewn the seeds of a movement towards a world in which women like you and their daughters and granddaughters may indeed be able to rest (ramble and riot) in peace.