It reminds me of the same response after the unnecessary death of Savita Halappanavar.
Sadly sexual and domestic violence kill women in Ireland on a weekly basis and their faces and stories are quickly forgotten. But for most women, the deaths remind them of their own vulnerability. So many of the women of Ireland have been through some sort of sexual and/or domestic assault: witness the Me Too Movement, where women across the Globe came forward to relate stories of sexual abuse.
We women have had these movements before. In the 1970s I was one of those women who participated in the Take Back the Night Marches, where women protested about the violence and murders of women. The marches began in 1975 after the death of Susan Speeth, a microbiologist who was stabbed to death while walking home at night. The year I was studying for my Bachelor’s degree, a sexual predator was targeting women students at night and attacking them. Women devised strategies themselves to keep safe. My sister Lauren and I attended classes together, walked at night through a poorly lit campus to our car after class. The University did little, the local women’ group set up self-defence courses. I was 7 months pregnant with my oldest son Pearse and felt particularly at risk. No woman walks or runs during the day or night without the thought of her safety. We all feel vulnerable and that fear never goes away. That fear often comes as threats from those we love within the home, meaning that for many home is not a safe place. In Europe one woman in three, aged 15 or above reported having experienced physical or sexual violence (one in six boys).
Domestic violence has been called a “shadow pandemic” before the outbreak of Covid, and cyber violence is a growing issue with ordinary women, particularly those in public life - journalists, politicians experiencing disproportionally higher rates of gender based online violence, with the impact on their abilities to express their views.
When I first moved to Belfast in 1983, I was stopped along Beechmount Avenue, on my way home to Cavendish Street, by a British Army patrol. I was brought into the enclosed garage and threatened with rape and other acts of sexual violence. I have no memory of getting to the top of the street such was the horror of the incident. That wasn’t my first experience of violence or the last, and sadly I am not alone. During the Troubles women suffered at the hands of both the security forces and those we loved. Actors of the State in uniform have used sexual violence as a tool of war and colonization for millennia.
Male dominated institutions like the Catholic Church have been actors in violence and abuse against women and girls. The depths of abuses caused by clerics across the globe and the further abuse by the continuing cover-ups by the church hierarchy in the deaths of First Nation Children in Residential schools in Canada and the horrors of The Magdalen Laundries, is indicative of the misogyny of power and state.
In recent years we have seen incidents of women being murdered by police officers in the Met. Sarah Everard was walking home when abducted and murdered by Metropolitan police officer Wayne Couzens in 2021. Sportsmen stand accused of rape and the numbers of women and children murdered or sexually abused is growing, with perpetrators suffering little in the way of stiff sentences. Victims largely don’t report due to stigma and shame and a lack of confidence in the State and judiciary to support them.
I had hoped through my years of working in a Rape Crisis Centre and women’s groups that it would help it get better for my daughter and now granddaughter, but sadly it hasn’t.
The issue itself is societal - we all have a responsibility particularly as Republicans in seeking a just society. This means we need to collectively face that there was abuse and violence perpetrated by our Comrades and we need to support the survivors who have had the courage to come forward, such as Mairia Cahill and Aine Dahlstrom. We need to acknowledge there was often negligent handling of their cases and things should have been done much differently. The continuing maligning of Cahill, in particular, from some quarters in the Movement must cease immediately.
In the wake of Savita’s unnecessary death the country mobilised to repeal the 8th Amendment of the Constitution to legislate for women’s right to bodily integrity. We must all mobilise once again in Ashling’s name to create change and we as Republicans must be there.
⏩Andrea Redmond is Feminist-Republican holding a PhD in Anthropology. She is the only female Republican Belfast women's muralist and community artist. A member of Sile na Gig she is now an artist living in Donegal and is volunteering in Community Development in the village of Doochary.
Thanks for running that piece with TPQ, Andrea.
ReplyDeleteI was at the vigil in Drogheda yesterday. I felt there was over a thousand at it.
And, yes, republicanism has failed women in this regard as well.