Another headline. Another woman's life irrevocably changed. Same empty sympathies
Where is the appropriate level of anger?
A short reactionary piece.
607 words, 3 minute read 
There is always ‘outrage’ when a story about violence against women hits the news. The public collectively clutch their pearls and communities shudder in disbelief, how shocking is it that women can’t walk home alone at night without being attacked. After all, we are shuttled to self-defence classes and taught to keep our keys between our knuckles because the world is a safe place for us.
When asked by the BBC, Epsom’s MP Helen Maguire called the ‘incident’ (a brutal gang rape) ‘deeply distressing’. A lukewarm response when considering the context, another woman’s life has been irrevocably changed due to the brutality of men, but at least she understands the ‘distress’ this has caused the community! I cannot be the only one asking, where is the appropriate level of anger? Where is the action?
I have become infuriated by the false sympathies used to placate women and girls. Promises to halve violence against us, unfulfilled; programmes aimed at educating the youth, stalled; women becoming statistics in the meantime. I am sure MPs are equally distressed by the women brutalised as a result of their inaction, maybe they will bow their heads while Jess Phillips reads the names of all the women killed by men this year to a near empty room. But what good is performative discomfort?
1 in 4 women over the age of sixteen have been raped or sexually assaulted.
71,227 rapes were recorded by police in 2024, with charges being brought in less that 3% of them.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated around 900,000 people aged 16 years and over experienced sexual assault in the year ending March 2025 (739,000 females and 162,000 males).
Unfathomably large numbers that are impossible to visualise, but I would argue we have become numb to the horror. It’s almost as though, for women, sexual violence has become an acceptable form of collateral damage; you can go clubbing, but you might be gang raped on the way home, or drugged, assaulted or groped while you’re there. Doesn’t this post-feminist ‘equality’ feel so liberating!
I’m sure this horrific and violent crime will be discussed with panicked expressions as Mums buy their daughters rape alarms on Amazon, and Dads nod along disengaged. That is, at least, until the ‘outrage’ fades with time, because the assault of a woman is not shocking anymore, merely brushed over and dismissed until the next headline, and the next and the next.
So this weekend, having been sent this article by my grandmother, I took an Uber home from a house party. Being twenty minutes from Labyrinth nightclub, I felt too scared to walk to the train station. But as I sat in the back of that taxi, I just wanted to scream, because she should have been nursing a hangover at that very moment, maybe even unpacking the night out with her friends; she should have been safe.
How is this still happening? Why is it still acceptable that half of the population lives in fear? Forever minding their behaviour in a seemingly futile attempt to protect themselves from men; a lifelong coin toss with our safety, that no one seems to acknowledge with the appropriate level of rage.
I don’t know how many more headlines I can stomach, but for every article I read where an authority’s ‘heart goes out’ to the victim, with no mention of sweeping changes or structural reform, I am beginning to doubt that anything will change. We cannot afford to settle for false sympathies; one woman is too many.