The rape and murder of a Melbourne woman last week was a psychological jolt to the public who had hoped and prayed for her safety. Yet my conversations with other women about the crime include the admission that we too may have risked the short walk from the pub to home in the small hours of the morning.
Very few men would see it as a risk, and in an ideal community it should not be a gamble for women either. So it is not that helpful when commentators counsel women to walk or travel late at night only with company (though a more appropriate recommendation might be that all people travel with company at night).
Some scholars argue that this kind of instruction is an indicator that we exist in a 'rape culture'. As Buchwald, Fletcher and Roth describe it, rape culture is 'a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women':
It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape ... A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.
It is only when sexual harassment or assault is perpetrated on a man, by a man, that most men sympathise with a common experience of many females: the menace of a gaze that loiters or a hazardous tone of voice; the constant awareness of the ways in which one's voice, words, walk or gestures can be interpreted; the knowledge that some males consider their impulses to be uncontrollable.
Few men understand this 'continuum of threatened violence' that innumerable women encounter with distressing regularity. Many women I know have experienced harassment or threats, if not sexual assault, molestation or rape at some point in their life. But few have taken action.
Women who do not tolerate at least the narrow end of the wedge of threatened violence are seen to be lacking a sense of humour, oversensitive or uncooperative, which in educational settings or the workplace can have material as well as emotional and psychological repercussions.
This enables perpetrators to psychologically push the envelope, breeding detachment, muting humanity and silencing conscience, rendering power over women not only acceptable but intrinsic to cultural interplay and apparently fulfilling the indicators of a 'rape culture.'
Such a culture is emboldened by bad fiction marketed as erotica for women, where a female protagonist submits physically, emotionally, sexually and financially to the control and abuse of the male 'hero'. It is boosted by 'celebrities' who see sexually suggestive or offensive remarks as compliments or insults. It is bolstered when reports of sexual assaults by sportspeople or military personnel are dismissed or ignored. It is buttressed by famous actors declaring that it is a woman's fault if she is raped if she wears a certain dress.
In fact, years ago, an older woman told me that women should not dress with a skirt above the knee because it is likely to provide a sexual temptation for men. In hindsight, I wish I'd pointed out that the figure-hugging long dress she wore would not be acceptable in some cultures for the same reason. With sexual violence and rape in mind, potentially every female image becomes provocative.
I suspect this view underpinned the internet meme circulating a couple of years ago which celebrated feminism because 'Society teaches Don't Get Raped rather than Don't Rape'. In researching it further, I was drawn to an article quoting a sexual assault counsellor who challenged victims to not wonder 'if I hadn't ...' but who instead encouraged society to notice the attacker's choice to take advantage of someone vulnerable.
The rape culture paradigm is disputed. Yet even accepting the premise of its pervasion in our society, there is hope for cultural transformation. Buchwald, Fletcher and Roth note that while a rape culture assumes sexual violence as 'inevitable', it is 'neither biologically nor divinely ordained'. They reassure readers that 'Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.'
Moira Byrne recently completed a PhD in political science at the Australian National University, and works part-time in social policy and as a researcher.