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Lost Voices of Women – A feminist perspective on ending men’s violence against women and girls

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My speech at the FiLiA conference – 14 October 2023

I wonder how many of you noticed the sign that said ‘Transphobia kills us …. and hurts women’ held by one of the welcoming committee that greeted us as we arrived at the conference yesterday?

The thing is, as far as week know, there have never been a single murder of a trans identified person in Scotland. But women, between 2009 and 2021, at least 151 women were killed by men in Scotland. That’s an average of about one woman killed by a man every month. Our panel today is looking at lost voices of women and I’d like us to remember these women, their lost voices.

In this constituency alone – Glasgow Central – between 2009 and 2021,  seven women have been killed by men. Let’s remember the lost voices of

  • Fatou Saine
  • Khanokporn Satjawat
  • Josephine Steel
  • Karen Buckley
  • Amalet Francis (not pictured)
  • Xin Xin Liu, and
  • Nasreen Buksh (not pictured).

Two of these seven women were killed by men who were strangers, five by partners or ex-partners.

We will not allow men’s rights activists to make these women invisible.  

Anyway, back to the talk I’d prepared ….

One of the things I’m most frequently asking is how we can – or even whether we can – end men’s violence against women.

We talk about domestic violence and abuse, child sexual abuse, rape, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, prostitution, FGM, sexual harassment and so on as forms of men’s violence against women and girls. Often the reality of women’s lives is that it is not either/or, that what is done to them crosses boundaries between these abuses and violations to which women and girls are subjected to by men.

On top of this, there are countless other crimes, micro-aggressions and behaviours which don’t meet crime thresholds but do negatively affect, restrict and reduce the lives of women and girls.

Then there is femicide, the killing of women by men.

I started counting, commemorating and recording the killings of women by men in the UK in 2012. In 2013, my Femicide Census co-founder and executive director, Clarrie O’Callaghan had our first conversation about working together on the project that would become the Femicide Census, which we launched in 2015.  The Femicide Census is now the UK’s most comprehensive source of information about women killed by men in the UK since 2009 and the men who – and circumstances in which -they killed them.  We have over 2,000 women identified on our database. Since we started, the average of one woman in the UK killed by a man on average every 3 days has remained depressingly consistent.

How do we stop this?

Top of the list, I put that we need to see the connections between all forms of men’s violence against women and girls and that this is necessary for meaningful social change.

Seeing these connections is an absolutely critical step in ending men’s violence against women. But it is an early step in a very long road and there are constantly push backs, sometimes dressed up as progression.  In 2010, the then coalition government launched its strategy, the ‘Call to End Violence against Women and Girls’, that strategy has been revised twice, but just over a decade later and after many years in the                                                                           making – the creation of the Domestic Abuse Act. In this the concept of the connections between the different forms of men’s violence against and abuse of women and girls, is overshadowed by a landmark piece of legislation that crosses the sexes – a significant minority of us believe this was an opportunity missed, and what we would have chosen instead was a Men’s Violence Against Women Act.  And it’s important that we remember that the Domestic Abuse Act does not protect all women equally. Women with insecure immigration status are not protected after MPs voted against proposed amendments to the draft bill for protections to be extended to include migrant women.

Astoundingly, neither the national strategy to end men’s violence against women, nor the Domestic Abuse Act mention Femicide. Of course, the Domestic Abuse Act doesn’t, it’s too busy making clear it applies to men. There are short mentions of domestic homicide reviews. Domestic homicide reviews are reviews carried out by agencies when someone (of either sex) aged over 16 dies as a result of domestic violence, abuse or neglect.

Roughly 58% of UK women killed by men are killed by current or former partners, with another 14% killed by other family members, it’s probably worth mentioning at this point that just over 8% of UK women killed by men in the UK are women killed by their sons.) This means that almost 30% of the killings of women by men in the UK are not subject to such a review. Women’s killed by a neighbour, a work colleague, a flatmate or by a stranger.

So, despite a national strategy to end violence against women (because of course they do not name men in the title) when it comes to domestic homicide, our statutory policy response has ignored whether killing s of women by a partner, ex-partner or family member share more in common with other killings of women by men that they do with killings of men by partners or family members. Despite some very critical differences, men killed by a current or former partner are more likely to be killed by a same sex partner and men are far more likely than women (for obvious reasons) to strangle or use the brute force of their body to kill a woman, than a woman when she kills a man.

So, whilst it’s good that concepts that were once only understood by feminists – like the connections across all forms of men’s violence against women – have become mainstream, the problem is that when that happens, the feminist foundations of the concept are usually washed out by the time they become policy. And this renders them much less effective.

Another thing we cannot shy away from and that I hinted at earlier is naming the agent: men. Man, singular and men plural as perpetrators, men as a sex class of beneficiaries and patriarchy as a social order which is shaped and reproduces itself in men’s interests.

And it should be inconceivable that one of the significant barriers that we have had to address, an issue that has taken up inordinate amounts of feminist time and energy is being able to say what a woman is and what a man is. Yet that that is the story of the last decade.  

If we cannot measure sex in data we cannot measure sex differences, we cannot measure sex inequality and we cannot measure who does what to whom across the forms of sexual and domestic violence and abuse. Without the ability to do this, policy interventions will inevitably be arrows shot in the dark.

It took a grassroots crowd funded judicial review led by Fair Play for Women for the ONS to agree to define the sex question in the 2021 England and Wales Census, on the basis of sex not gender identity. It took women’s direct action. It took women’s money, it took women standing together and saying no. It should be to legislators’ shame that this was necessary.

The government spends millions on responding to men’s violence against women and girls, amounts that the feminists who began building the network of women’s refuges and rape crisis services just over 50 years ago would not have dared to dream of. But we aren’t seeing evidence that violence against women is reducing? Why not?

The main reason is that most interventions focus on the individuals who are violent, institutions that respond to that violence and a bit of mealy-mouthed nod to prevention, something they call ‘healthy relationships’ every now and again. These interventions have largely been taken out of their feminist framework.

Whilst perpetrators must of course be held responsible for their actions and behaviours, men’s violence against women is not simply reducible to individual acts perpetrated by individual men, it is key to men’s domination of women, and it is supported and normalised by patriarchal institutions, attitudes and social norms and values.

There is a high degree of negative correlation between sex equality and rates of men’s violence against women, that is, as equality increases, violence against women decreases.

Cultural concepts of masculinity and femininity need to be got shut of – certainly not embedded in the way they are in transgender identity ideology. The objectification of women and the sexualisation of that objectification needs to end. It’s long overdue for our government to have a policy position on ending prostitution. Sex equality is not possible when one sex is for sale, when women are a commodity, and the other sex is the vendor and buyer, with consumer rights of course.

We need not only to hold men to account, we need not only to ensure that policing, the law, the budget, education systems are not sexist and misogynistic, we must also address the factors in an individual which create violence, we must eradicate sex inequality, and we absolutely must uproot the social and cultural context that supports men’s violence against women.  This takes us back to my earlier point, making the connections across different forms of men’s violence against women.

If we want to end men’s violence against women, we need responses that acknowledge that whilst either sex can be victim or perpetrator in most crimes, in patriarchal society violent crimes reflect sex inequality and patriarchal cultural values. Different forms of violence share root causes, and creating silos around those different forms of violence which disregard sex, moves us away from seeing and addressing those root causes.

We need policy makers to stop watering down feminist insights in an effort to appease the ‘what about the mens’, the defensive men, the men who think women’s sex-based rights and protections are not a foreground issue in politics, the men who think the concept of patriarchy is a feminist conspiracy theory, the men who think that men can be women or are afraid to say what they know: that women do not and cannot  have a penis.

Simply put, if we want to end men’s violence against women and girls we need policy and strategy that is sex based and recognises patriarchal sex inequality, power structures and culture.

2023

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In 2023, At least 100 UK women and girls aged 13 and over have been killed in circumstances in which a man or men are primary suspect.

  1. 6 January 2023: Beatrice Corry, 84, was found dead with head injuries in Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. Her son, Matthew Corry, 45, was charged with murder. His plea of manslaughter was accepted by the court and he was detained indefinitely.
  2. 10 January 2023: Eliza Bibby, 47, was stabbed to death at her home in Wisbech by acquaintance, Jamie Boughen, 47. Boughen was convicted of murder and must serve a minimum of 22 years.
  3. 11 January 2023: An unnamed woman in her 50s was found dead at a property in St Leonards in Sussex. A 17-year-old boy has been charged with murder.
  4. 18 January 2023: Jacqueline Kerr, 54, suffered injuries consistent with a car crash or fall from height when she was attacked by ex-partner Christopher Cook, 43, at her home in Aberdeen. Cook, who was on bail at the time of the femicide, was convicted of murder. He must serve at least 20 years.
  5. 27 January 2023: Holly Newton, 15, was found fatally wounded in a suspected stabbing in Hexham, Northumberland. A 16-year-old boy suffered non-fatal injuries. Another 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder, attempted murder and possession of a weapon.
  6. 30 January 2023: Anne Woodbridge, 92, was found dead at a residential address in Western-super-Mare. Her husband, John Woodbridge, 91, has been charged with murder. 
  7. 5 February 2023: Emma Pattison, 45, and her daughter Lettie, were found dead at their home in Epsom, Surrey. Police believe Emma was shot dead by her husband, George Pattison, 39, before he killed their daughter and then himself.  
  8. 8 February 2023: Valentina Cozma, 40, was murdered by her ex-husband Georgian Constantin, 42, at her home in Stoke-on-Trent. He had arranged to meet Valentina under the pretence of repaying money. Constantin doused her in petrol and set her alight. He must serve at least 28 years.
  9. 11 February 2023: Erica Parsons, who was in her 60s was found dead at a property in West Devon. Stephen Parsons, 69, has been charged with murder.   
  10. 18 February 2023: Darrell Buchanan, 37, was found dead in a property in Hamilton, Glasgow. Her husband, Walter Buchanan, 64, has been charged with murder.
  11. 18 February 2023: Lorna England, 74, was stabbed to death in a park in Exeter, Devon. Cameron Davis, 30, has been charged with murder. Police do not believe Cameron Davis was known to Lorna.
  12. 20 February 2023: Sarah Brierley, 22 February 2023: Sarah Brierley, 49, was found dead in a property in Sheffield. It is believed she was killed on or around 14 February 23 when she was struck at least five times with a blunt object, such as a hammer. Her housemate, David Scott, 39 was found guilty of murder and sentenced to at least 29 years.
  13. 21 February 2023: Edna Berry, 80, was found with a serious head injury her home in Clacton, Essex. She later died in hospital. Her husband, John Berry, now 85, pleaded guilty to murder.
  14. 1 March 2023: Sandra Giraldo, 46, was found dead at an address in Rotherhithe, south-east London. She had been strangled. Her husband, Weimar Mosquera, 53, has been charged with murder.
  15. 4 March 2023: Charlotte Wilcock, 31, was murdered by a stranger as she sat on her doorstep of her Blackburn home. She suffered about 100 injuries, including 50 stab wounds. Anthony Stinson, 31, who had 11 previous convictions including rape and battery, was convicted of her murder. 
  16. 4 March 2023: Jane Collinson, 59, suffered 59 slash wounds and a stab wound when she was attacked by with a bread knife by her neighbour at her supported accommodation in Bernard Castle, Durham. Stephen Ansbro, 60, had previously told people he would ‘kill her’ and ‘do time for her’. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to a minimum of 18 years. He was also convicted of sexual abuse charges against girls in the 1990s.
  17. 5 March 2023: Helen Harrison, 59, was found dead at a house in East Yorkshire. Rick Parker, 39, has been charged with ABH and murder.
  18. 14 March 2023: Kinga Roskinska, 37, was stabbed to death in Handsworth, Birmingham. Pawel Ondycz, 50, has been charged with murder.
  19. 21 March 2023: Alesia Nazarova, 37, was found dead at her home in Portadown, NI. Kornelijus Bracas, 25, has been charged with Alesia’s murder and the attempted murder of her 12-year-old daughter. It is understood that there is a familial relationship between the victims and the accused. 
  20. 27 March 2023: Holly Bramley, 26, was found dead in a river 12 miles away from her home in Lincolnshire. Her husband, Nicholas Metson, 27, has been charged with murder. 
  21. 27 March 2023: Susan Turner, 41, was found dead in a property in Ayr, Scotland. Jason Bell, 49, Dee Black, 40, Ryan Hill, 25 and Michelle Ramage,41, have been charged with murder and attempting to defeat the ends of justice.
  22. 27 March 2023: Beryl ‘Bez’ Purdy, 86, was found with serious injuries at her home in Broomfield, Somerset when officers were called out to a reported burglary. Beryl died at the scene. David Parish, 36, was arrested in connection with her death and was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. He has since been charged with murder. 
  23. 28 March 2023: Bernadette Rosario, 61, was found with serious facial injuries at an address near St Austell, Cornwall. She died at the scene. Michael Rowe, 36, has been charged with murder.
  24. 28 March 2023: Sara Bateman, 50, was strangled to death at her home in Wolverhampton. Her partner, Matthew Hyde, 41, pleaded guilty to murder.
  25. 28 March 2023: Nhi Muoi Wai, also known as Kim, 64, died in hospital after she collapsed during a robbery of her home in Morley, West Yorkshire. She suffered a stroke. Cousins Samuel Hanrahan, 20, and Jerry Hanrahan, 18, were convicted of manslaughter.  
  26. 6 April 2023: An unnamed woman of 27 was found dead in a flat in Elephant and Castle. Police launched a murder investigation into her death. A man fell to his death five hours later. Police say the pair are known to each other and they are not looking for anyone else in connection.
  27. 9 April 2023: Carol Baxter, 64, was found dead alongside her husband Stephen, 61, at their home in Essex. Their deaths were initially treated a ‘not suspicious’ but toxicology results found the couple had ingested fentanyl. Luke D’Wit, 33, has been charged with double murder. 
  28. 25 April 2023: Marelle Sturrock, 35, was found dead at her home in Glasgow. Two days later her partner, David Yates, 36, who was wanted by police in connection with murder, was found dead. Police Scotland, who has self-referred to Pirc, are not looking for anyone else in connection with Marelle’s death. 
  29. 26 April 2023: Elise Mason, 37, died after she was found unresponsive at an address in Chelmsford, Essex.  Mark Donovan, 38, has been charged with murder.
  30. 30 April 2023: Suma Begum, 24, was reported missing from an address in Tower Hamlets, London. Aminan Rahman, 45, has been charged with murder. 
  31. 1 May 2023: Johanita Kossiwa Dogbey, 31, was stabbed to death on Stockwell Park Walk in Brixton. Mohamed Nur, 33, has been charged with murder, possession of an offensive weapon and causing GBH to three people. 
  32. 2 May 2023: Maya Devi, 77, was beaten to death with a rounders bat by her husband at their home in Hornchurch, Essex. Tarsame Singh, 79, pleaded guilty to murder and has been sentenced to a minimum of 15 years.
  33. 3 May 2023: Suzanne Henry, 54, was found with serious facial injuries at her home in Madeley, Staffordshire on 1 May 23. She died in hospital two days later. Her son, Finn Henry, 20, was charged with murder and convicted of manslaughter following psychiatric reports.
  34. 6 May 2023: Hayley Burke, 36, died in hospital of gunshot wounds sustained at her home in Kent. Her ex-partner Jacob Cloke, 29, was on life-support in hospital after an armed stand-off with police, he later died. Police are not looking for anyone else. 
  35. 7 May 2023: Georgina Dowey, 46, was found dead at a property in Neath, South Wales. Matthew Pickering, 48, has pleaded manslaughter. He is charged with murder.
  36. 12 May 2023: Kelly Pitt, 44, was suffered internal bleeding and 41 rib fractures when she was beaten and stabbed by her son at her home in Newport. Lewis Bush, 25, pleaded guilty to murder. He must serve a minimum of 16 years.
  37. 12 May 2023: Stephanie Hodgkinson, 34, was found stabbed to death at her home in Bournemouth. Her ex-partner, Fioletti, 31, has been found guilty of murder. He will be sentenced later in the month.
  38. 13 May 2023: Holly Sanchez, 32, was found with serious head injuries at a property in Crawley. Ryan Evans, 30, has been charged with murder. 
  39. 14-15 May 2023: Katie Higton, 27, and her partner Steven Harnett, 25, suffered multiple injuries at a property in Huddersfield. Ex-partner Marcus Osbourne, 34, pleaded guilty to double murder and to the false imprisonment and rape of another woman on the same night.
  40. 18 May 2023: Danielle Davidson, 33, was found injured in the street in Leith. She died in hospital a short time later. A 16-year-old boy has been charged in relation to her death.
  41. 19-30 May 2023: Emily Sanderson, 48, was last seen alive. She was reported missing on 25 May. Her body was found at a property in Sheffield on 30 May. She died of head injuries. Mark Nicholls, 43, has been found guilty of her murder.
  42. 20 May 2023: Christine Sargent, 73, was strangled to death at the home she shared with her husband in Loughton, Milton Keynes. Her husband, Michael Sargent, 77, was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He was detained indefinitely.  
  43. 26 May 2023: Sandra Harriott, 56, died in hospital after she was found with stab injuries in Huddersfield. Her brother, Roger Harriott, 55, was convicted of her murder and possessing an offensive weapon.
  44. 26 May 2023: Fiona Robinson, 37, was found with multiple injuries at an address in Chorley, Lancashire. James Gowan, 26, has been charged with murder.
  45. 31 May 2023: Debra Cantrell, 58, was found dead at an address in Plymouth. Callum Thomas, 32, has been charged with murder.
  46. 2 June 2023: Michelle Hodgkinson, 51, was walking in the Droylsden of Greater Manchester when she was stabbed to death. A 28-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder and has since been detained under the Mental Health Act.
  47. 3 June 2023: Chloe Mitchell, 21, was last seen alive in Ballymena, County Antrim. Human remains were found on 11th June 2023. Brandon Rainey, 26, has been charged with murder.
  48. 3 June 2023: Elizabeth Richings, 83, was found dead at a property in Bournemouth. Grenville Richings, 83, has been charged with murder.
  49. 9 June 2023: Chloe Bashford, 30, and her husband Josh, 33, were found dead at their home in Newhaven, East Sussex. Derek Martin, also known as Derek Glenn, 64, has been charged with two counts of murder.
  50. 9 June 2023: Felecia Cadore, 29, was stabbed at an address in Croydon, Surrey. She died on 14 June in hospital. Hussain Haron, 22, has been charged with her murder.
  51. 13 June 2023: Tejaswini Kontham, 27, was stabbed to death at a house in Wembley. Keven Antonio Lourenco De Morais, 23, has been charged with murder and attempted murder of another woman.
  52. 13 June 2023: Grace O’Malley-Kumar, 19, was stabbed to death on a street in Nottingham during a series of attacks in the city centre. Grace was trying to protect her friend when she was killed. Barnaby Webber, 19, and Ian Coates, 65, were also killed. Three other people were injured when they were hit by van. Valdo Calocane, 31, has been charged with multiple murder and attempted murder.  
  53. 16 June 2023:  Monika Wlodarczyk, 35, and her children Maja, 11 and Dawid, 3, were found dead at their home in Hounslow. Monika died of stab wounds. Their husband/father Michal Wlodarczyk, 39, was also found dead with stab wounds. Police are treating the death of Monika and her two children as murder and they are not looking for anyone else in connection with their deaths.  
  54. 20 June 2023: Fiona Holm, 48, was last seen alive. Carl Cooper, 65, has been charged with her murder and the murder of Naomi Hunte, 41, who was found stabbed to death at home on 14 February 2022. Cooper was known to both women.
  55. 21 June 2023: Nelly Akomah, 76, was found dead at a residential property in Croydon. Hugo Da Silva Pires, 28, has been charged with murder, burglary and fraud.
  56. 22 June 2023: Natasha Morais, 40, was found dead at an address in Whetstone, Leicestershire. Shannon Grant, 27, is charged with murder.
  57. 26 June 2023: Sarah Henshaw, 31, was found dead in a lay-by off the M1 near Chesterfield. She had not been seen since 20 June. Darren Hall, 36, has been charged with murder.
  58. 27 June 2023: Lynette Nash, 64, was found with serious injuries at her home in Portishead. She died at the scene. Her son, Gavin Nash, 39, has been charged with murder. 
  59. 27 June 2023: Elizabeth Watson, 58, was found dead at her home in Aberdeenshire. Jonathon Divers, 30, has been charged with murder.
  60. 14 July 2023: Rose Jobson, 69, is believed to have been shot dead by her husband at their home in Lincolnshire. It is believed Robert Jobson, 84, took his own life after the killing.
  61. 17 July 2023: Colette Law, 26, was found dead in a tent in churchyard in Lincolnshire. Paul Neilson, 30, has been charged with murder.
  62. 20 July 2023: Sharon Gordon, 58, was murdered by Peter Norgrove, 43, following a disagreement about works he has carried out on her home in Dudley. She suffered serious head injuries, possibly inflicted by eight hammer blows. Norgrove pleaded guilty to murder.
  63. 24 July 2023: Ann Blackwood, 71, was found fatally injured in a cemetery in Stubbington, Hampshire. Her ex-husband, Martin Suter, 66, has been charged with murder.   
  64. 29 July 2023: Hazel Huggins, 53, was found dead at a home in Plymouth, Devon. Bradley Huggins, 24, has been charged with murder.
  65. 29 July 2023: Amy Rose Wilson, 27, died in a car crash in Falkirk. Andrew Gregoire, 27 and Anthony Davidson, 30, have been charged with murder.
  66. 30 July 2023: Claire Orrey, 58, was found dead at a home in Telford. Her husband also sustained serious injuries. Robert Orrey, 31, is charged with murder and attempted murder.
  67. 1 August 2023: Liwam Bereket, 26, was found stabbed in woodland in Birmingham. Filmon Andmichaen, 30, has been charged with murder.
  68. 3 August 2023: Christine Emmerson, who was in her 70s, was found dead at an address in Lincolnshire. Shaun Emmerson, 50, has been charged with murder.
  69. 5 August 2023: Kelli Bothwell, 53, was found injured at a home in South Yorkshire. She died from a stab wound. Her husband, Paul Cousans, 52, pleaded guilty to murder. He will be sentenced in January 2024.
  70. 23 August 2023: Claire Knights, 54, was last seen alive in Canterbury. She was found dead two days later. Harrison Lawrence-van Poss, 20, has been charged with murder. He is also charged with voyeurism following a separate investigation on 22 August.
  71. 29 August 2023: Chintzia McIntyre, 48, was found dead outside her home in Warrington. A 17-year-old boy has been charged with murder.
  72. 1 September 2023: Gabriela Kosilko, 26, was last seen alive. Her body was found in woodland on 6 September. Sebastian Zarnoch, 30, was held on suspicion of murder and kidnap. He died in police custody. Police are not looking for anyone else.
  73. 18 September 2023: Susanne Galvin, 55, was found unconscious at a home in Bury on 16 September. She died in hospital two days later. Stephen Ball, 31, has been charged with murder.
  74. 21 September 2023: Alison Dodds, 51, was found dead at a property in Lancashire. She died of multiple injuries. Alex Hindley, 35, has been charged with murder.
  75. 23 September 2023: Carrie Slater, 37, died in hospital of a gunshot wound. She was found with life-threatening injuries at a property near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire on 21 September 2023. Richard Basson, 44, has been charged with murder.
  76. 24 September 2023: Helen Clarke, 77, suffered a head injury and significant burns sustained in a car fire in Swansea on 22 September 23. Her husband, David Clarke, 80, pleaded guilty to murder.
  77. 25 September 2023: Ruth Hufton, 46, was found dead at her home in Beeston. Anthony Green, 50, has been charged with murder.
  78. 27 September 2023: Elianne Andam, 15, was stabbed to death at a bus stop in Croydon. A 17-year-old boy has been charged with murder.
  79. 30 September 2023: Charlene Mills, 43, died following an incident at a property in Gorton, Manchester. Peter Pitt, 52, has been charged with murder.
  80. 9 October 2023: Deborah Boulter, 53, was found dead at a home in Nottingham. Police launched a murder investigation into her death. Officers also found the body of David Boulter, 60, at the address. Police are not looking for anyone else.
  81. 17 October 2023: Celia Barlow and her husband David, who lived in Berkshire, were killed whilst on holiday in Uganda. Their tour guide was also killed. Abdul Rashid Kyoto has been charged with multiple murder and terrorism related offences.
  82. 23 October 2023: Mandy Barnett, 60, was stabbed at a house in Leeds and passed away that evening. A boy of 17-years has been charged with murder.
  83. 25 October 2023: Denise Steeves, 59, was found with ‘a significant injury’ at Diamond Meadow Lodge Park in Brean, Somerset. Her husband, Simon Steeves, 70, has been charged with murder.
  84. 29 October 2023: Mehak Sharma, 19, was stabbed to death at a home in Croydon. Sahil Sharma, 23, has been charged with murder.
  85. 30 October 2023: Caroline Gore, 44, was found dead at an address in Wigan. David Liptrot, 56, has been charged with murder.
  86. 30 October 2023: Sian Hammond, 46, was found dead at a house in Cambridgeshire. Her husband, Robert Hammond, 47, has been charged with murder.
  87. 2 November 2023: Christie Eugene, 64, was found with injuries at a home in Brixton. She later died in hospital. Her son, Jason Phinn, 35, has been charged with murder.
  88. 7 November 2023: Sharon Butler, 64, was found with serious injuries in a garden of a property in Essex. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Kevin Shepherd, 54, of the same address, has been charged with murder.
  89. 10 November 2023: Perseverance Ncube, 35, known as Percy to her family and friends, was stabbed to death in front of her two children at an address in Salford. Obert Mayo, 45, has been charged with murder and possession of an offensive weapon.
  90. 14 November 2023: Victoria Greenwood was found dead in a car park in North Hertfordshire. She was last seen alive on 10 November 23. Robert Brown, 38, has been charged with murder.
  91. 15 November 2023: Dawn Robertson, 62, was found unresponsive at a home in St Helens, Merseyside. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Her husband, Stuart Robertson, 68, has been charged with murder.
  92. 19 November 2023: Salam Alshara, 27, was found seriously injured and died a short time later. The father of her four children, Wahib Albaradan, 35, is charged with murder.
  93. 20 November 2023: Alison Bowen, 41, was found with significant injuries when police were called to reports of an assault in Kingswood, Bristol. She was pronounced dead as short time later. Darryl Bowen, 43, is charged with murder.
  94. 16 November 2023: Kiesha Donaghy, 32, was found dead at her home in Elgin, Moray. Owen Grant, 41, has been charged with murder.
  95. 27 November 2023: An unnamed woman was found dead at a property in Stafford. Dale Crooks, 33, has been charged with murder.
  96. 28 November 2023: Taiwo Abodunde, 41, was pronounced dead at a house in Newmarket. Her husband, Olubunmi Abodunde, 47, has been charged with murder. Suffolk Constabulary has referred the incident to the IOPC following previous contact at the address.
  97. 5 December 2023: Lianne Gordon, 42, was shot dead outside a home in Lower Clapton. A man of 20 and a boy of 16 were also wounded in the shooting. A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and two counts of attempted murder. 
  98. 15 December 2023: Kamaljeet Mahey, who was in her 40s, was found stabbed at a home in Wolverhampton. Rajveer Mahey, 39, has been charged with murder.
  99. 15 December 2023: Glenna Siviter, 50, was found dead at an address in Middlesborough. Andrew Steven Hall, 46, has been charged with her murder and the attempted murder of a man was seriously assaulted on the same day.
  100. 24 December 2023: Kacey Clarke, 22, was stabbed to death at a home in Bermondsey, south London. A 16-year-old boy, who was known to Kacey, has been charged with murder.

Nevertheless, I persisted

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Why I still wanted to be in the Labour Party

I left Labour in a fit of pique in 2018 when the then General secretary, Jennie Formby, announced that all-women-shortlists would no longer be women only.

I applied to join again in December 2019 after the election defeat. I wanted to be part of building the party ready to win the next election because I am a socialist as well as a feminist. The thought of another five-years of Tory rule was bad enough. I wanted to help make sure that it wasn’t ten.

My application was rejected on the grounds that information had been brought to the party’s attention that I had engaged in conduct online “that may reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility based on gender identity”. I wrote about the saga here.  I appealed. The appeal process concluded in July 2020, my appeal was unsuccessful.

I reapplied in June 2021, just after the Forstater ruling. It was now recognised in law that beliefs such as mine, that is, recognition of the reality of the difference between sex and gender, knowing that people cannot change sex, that women are disadvantaged if we can’t even name and measure sex discrimination (and so many more examples) were “worthy of respect in a democratic society” and our right to that belief was a protected characteristic. However, my application was rejected again. The reason given to me was that it had not been two years since my initial rejection.

So, two years after my application had been initially rejected (on 24 March 2022), I applied again. I was rejected again. This time I was given the reason that it was not two years since my appeal was rejected. So, I applied again on 21 July 2022, two years to the day of the conclusion of the appeal process. I got no response. Just in case my application had fallen down the back of a metaphorical filing cabinet, I applied again at the end of March 2023.

I’m very pleased to share that I am now a member of the Labour Party.

Why have I bothered to persist with a party that didn’t want me? Because – despite the imperfections of the Labour Party, and yes, I know there are many – I firmly believe that Labour offers the best policies for the majority of women in the UK.

I know the term ‘socialist feminist’ has again become a term of derision to some, but it’s a badge I’m proud to wear. I’m a feminist. I’m a socialist. They’re not incompatible, in fact I think that neither can be what it claims to be without the other. I prioritise women and within that I prioritise women who have been subjected to men’s violence. But I recognise that sex is not the only axis of oppression and privilege. I recognise that class, race, other inequalities and iniquitous social policies mean some women have fewer life chances and opportunities than others. I believe that the Labour Party deals with these inequalities better than the Tories and are the only Party which could possible beat the Tories in England and Wales in a general election.

Many women – and some men – some whose names some of us know and some whose names most of us do not, are working behind the scenes to make legislative and policy change. And of course, there are many whose work is visible and recognised. Some of these women and men are making sure that the Labour Party does not let women’s sex-based rights and protections slip like dry sand through fingers. Thank you to all those people for the fight you are fighting and the differences that you are making. Thank you for trying even where you fail or feel like you’re failing.

Some on the left have turned their backs on women’s rights. It has ever been thus. But feminists do not have to turn our backs on inequalities beyond sex inequality. Women don’t lead single issue lives and I’m not a single-issue feminist. Gender identity ideology is a threat to women’s rights and the mechanisms for responding to the many manifestations of sex inequality. It is an important fight but it is not our only fight. I’m not going to let sexist men, misogynistic men and women who won’t fight for women define the left or drive the rest of us out of grassroots or mainstream politics. I’m not going to sit back and let them write-off those of us who fight for women’s rights as right-wingers and traditionalists. I’m not going to collude with those on the right whose gender criticism aligns with regressive politics and a roll back of women’s freedoms or LGB equality. Whilst it’d be churlish of me to not acknowledge that some who are not of the left are making important contributions to the fight against gender identity ideology and resistance to ideological capture and I myself am of the left. I think and hope that I always will be. I’m not going to stop Defending Women’s Spaces. And I want the next UK government to be a Labour government.

Picking our targets

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Neither Jess Phillips nor Brianna Ghey will be mine.

Today, for the eighth year running, in the Parliamentary International Women’s Day debate, MP Jess Phillips read out the names of women in the UK who have been killed since the previous years IWD debate and where a man or men are principal suspects. This year the list contained the names of 107 women, the youngest, Holly Newton was just 15 years old, the oldest, Anne Woodbridge was 92.

I have been collating and commemorating UK women killed by men for 11 years, since the murder of 20-year-old Kirsty Treloar on the 2nd January 2012.

I am grateful to Jess Phillips for amplifying my work and for doing something that I could not do without her: ensuring that those women’s names are afforded the respect of being recorded in perpetuity in the official parliamentary record. This year and last year, Jess invited members of families of women who have been killed by men, some of them whose names have been read out in previous years, to sit in the House of Commons public gallery to listen. Jess and I are frequently told how much this gesture means to those who knew and loved the women who are commemorated.

This year, following the suggestion of my Femicide Census co-founder and fellow Director, Clarrie O’Callaghan, two weeks ago the Femicide Census wrote to every MP who had one or more constituents whose names were going to be read out.  84 letters were sent and followed up by email. We asked MPs to honour their constituents and act to prevent further femicides. We told them that femicide is a local and national problem occurring within the broader context of men’s violence against women which inhibits women’s ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equality with men. Seven MPs acknowledged our letter: Rosie Duffield, Rushanara Ali, Lillian Greenwood, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, John McDonnell and Andrew Lewer. Others were visible in the parliamentary broadcast. However, like preceding years, the benches were noticeably empty. Whilst each man who chooses to end a woman’s life must be held to account and to justice, the names stand as a roll call of state failure, the government could be doing so much more to end men’s violence against women and girls. The almost empty chamber does not reflect well on political will to address men’s violence against women.

Counting Dead Women and sister project the Femicide Census record men’s fatal violence against women in the UK. Through this work we know that on average, a woman is killed by a man every 2.6 days, and by a current or former partner approximately every four days. We know that after current or former partners, the next largest group of males killing female relatives is sons who kill their mothers. It was the work of the Femicide Census that told us that Wayne Couzens was one of 16 former or serving police officers who had killed women between 2009 and his murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021. At least 237 women are suspected to have been killed by men in the UK since Sarah’s death.

There has been a significant response online to Phillips’ decision to acknowledge the death of Brianna Ghey in February this year after reading the names of women and girls. Ghey was a 16-year-old male who had a transgender in identity. A boy and a girl, both 15, have been charged with Ghey’s murder. An inquest opened yesterday and has been adjourned pending criminal proceedings. Ghey’s alleged murder was marked by thousands of people attending candlelit vigils across the UK. None of the names of the women and girls read out today attracted comparable responses. Yet like those who loved Ghey, each of those women and girls will have left devastated and still grieving family and friends. It is Ghey’s name trending on social media. I wish the killing of every woman and every girl, in the UK and across the world, attracted the comparable energy and condemnation. They rarely do.

As far as I’m aware, it’s just over four years between Brianna Ghey’s death and the previous most recent known murder of a transgender person in the UK, that of Amy Griffiths in January 2019. In that same period in the UK, at least 453 females aged over 14 years have been killed by males. Don’t let’s add to the deflection of attention from women and girls. My focus, like always, is those women and girls. That doesn’t negate the tragedy of the any male life taken. Whether or not we agree with Jess’s decision, let’s not make her or Brianna Ghey the scapegoats. We should be demanding action from the elected representatives and others with power and influence, who do nothing or little to end men’s violence against and abuse of women and girls. They’re the ones we should be castigating.

If you’re reading this maybe you could identify the women who’ve been killed by men in your constituency. There are currently 1,414 women’s names listed in my blog, 1,425 women named in the Femicide Census 10-year report. Ask your MP what they are doing to honour these women, what they are doing to end femicide, what they are doing to end men’s violence against women, girls and children. You could ask your MP what they are doing to protect specialist women-led independent services for women who have been subjected to men’s violence in your area. We can all be part of a legacy to women who have been killed by men.

My speech at the Labour Women’s Declaration Fringe Meeting at the Labour Party Conference 2022

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What do women need from the Labour Manifesto?

The last Labour manifesto fell well short of pledging to develop an ambitious strategy to end sexual and domestic violence and abuse, and prostitution.  However, it did say that a Labour government would,

“Ensure that the single-sex-based ‘exemptions’ contained in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision.”

It also promised sustainable funding for refuges and rape crisis services. So, in that respect, whilst it wasn’t perfect it wasn’t’ bad.  It’s such a shame that two years later, the party leader couldn’t even say that only women have cervixes, which might suggest that he’d have a problem upholding a pledge to protect single-sex services.

I not here tonight to tell you what I think a strategy to end men’s violence against women and girls would look like. Suffice to say, that’s going to be my second book and I haven’t quite written it yet. Tonight, I’m here to tell you about my first book, due to be published in two months, on 25th November, called Defending Women’s Spaces.

Defending Women’s Spaces reflects my 32 years’ experience of working in specialist services for women who have been subjected to men’s violence and the research and campaigning that I’ve read and done alongside it. And my experience, like many of the women who I have worked with, and independent research: tells me that female survivors’ needs are best met in women-only spaces.

On the matter of males who transition? Do they belong in our women-only services? I say no. The minute you say that you provide access to services through gender identity, not sex, your services become mixed sex services. Males who have transitioned – if we accept that transition can be meaningful – are not a risk to women because they are trans but because they are male. The most rigorous data that we have currently on trans males and their rates of committing violent crime, tells us that at best their crimes followed the pattern of male offending, and that was only if they received psychological support as well as surgery and hormones. Without psychological support, trans males’ rates of violent offending were significantly higher than those of other males.

Defending Women’s Spaces focuses on spaces for women survivors of men’s violence though I also briefly look at other areas. I look at sex differences in perpetration of and victimisation in violence. I dismantle and disprove the myth that it is trans people who are at greatest risk of murder.  I pull apart the lie that risk assessment can make it safe for males to be included in women’s spaces. I look at how telling women victim-survivors – that someone that we all know is male is actually a woman- is nothing more than a variation of the psychological abuse done to them by the man or men who had been abusing them. I look at trauma and explain why women-only space is necessary for recovery. I also explore why so many so-called specialist service providers seem to have abandoned their principles and stopped putting women first.

Including males with trans identities in services for women can mean excluding some of the most vulnerable women who need support. We know this will mean some women will self-exclude, because they tell us.

Not all women will be subjected to men’s violence and abuse, though globally one in three of us are at some point during our life. Not all women who suffer men’s violence will develop a trauma response. We can recognise that some women need or benefit from women -only spaces more than others. It’s true that not all women who have been abused by men want women-only spaces, but surely these women should not deny that right to those who do.

Labour needs to show its commitment to ending the sex hierarchy. Labour needs grow a backbone. The Labour Party needs to commit to ending men’s violence against women; and unless or until we ever reach that utopia, we need single sex spaces for women who have been subjected to men’s violence.

Sex differences in intimate partner homicide (England and Wales) April 2009 to March 2020

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One day, people might stop asking me ‘What about the men?’ but that day isn’t here yet. This is the third time I’ve written a blog comparing sex differences in intimate partner homicide but it’s five years since the last time and so it’s time for an update.

This information is about people aged over 16 in England and Wales who have been identified as having been killed by current or former partners by The Office of National Statistics (ONS) for the 11 years ending March 2020. I’ve used ONS data because – although the Femicide Census data for women killed by men is much richer, we do not collect data on male victims or on women killed by women – it’s important to use consistent ways of collecting information for everyone. The ONS data doesn’t break down the data for victims of intimate partner homicide by the sex of the perpetrator so I requested this from them.  

In the 11 years from April 2009 to March 2020, 1,027 people were killed by a current or former partner, defined by the ONS as when the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator falls into one of the following categories: spouse, common-law spouse, cohabiting partner, boyfriend or girlfriend, ex-spouse, ex-cohabiting partner or ex-boyfriend or girlfriend or adulterous relationship.  890 (86.7%) of the victims were female, 137 (13.3%) were male. So, for every 2 men killed, there were thirteen women.

But there are differences in who is doing the killing too. Of 137 male victims, 109 were killed by women. Of 890 female victims, 884 (99%) were killed by men. There were 912 men who killed a current or former partner and 115 women. So, one in five men (20.4%) killed by a current or former partner were killed by a man; for women, approximately one in 147 women killed by a current or former partner were killed by a woman.  Men who are killed by a current or former partner are 29 times more likely to be killed by someone of the same sex than women are.

There is a further important difference too, but this can’t be found in the ONS data. When the Femicide Census published our 10-year report on women killed by men in the UK between 2009 and 2018, we found evidence in 59% of cases that the man who killed them had been violent and/or abusive to them in the past. We think this is highly likely to be an undercount since it is not unusual for women to tell no-one that they are being abused, and also in many cases, this might not have been reported in publicly available information even if someone did know about it. The Centre for Women’s Justice looked at women who have killed current or former male partners. They found a very different picture, that in 77% of cases, it was the man who had been killed who had been abusing the woman who killed him.

So, in answer to that question: yes, sometimes women kill male current/former partners but there are four critical sex differences:

  • 87% of people killed by current or former partners are women
  • 89% of people who killed a current or former partner are men
  • Men who are killed by a partner or ex are more likely to be killed by someone of the same sex (29 times more likely)

Women are likely to have been abused by the man who killed them in the years (or sometimes months) before their deaths, men who are killed by female partners are very likely to have been abusing the women who killed them in the years of months before their deaths

Truth, lies and Storytelling

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I overheard a discussion on Radio Four’s Today programme this morning (8 June 2021) that contained such a blatant piece of misinformation imparted by Benjamin Cohen, CEO of Pink News, that I felt compelled to transcribe it.

Justin Webb: Just on the point about abolishing legal provisions for single sex spaces, do you not accept that it is perfectly acceptable for women to campaign for those single sex spaces and to say that those who have changes sex should not be in them?

Benjamin Cohen…..[Evades question and talks about something else for a few moments]   and goes on to say, over again, it’s a debate about trans issues without a single trans voice being heard

Justin Webb: Hang on number one, you don’t know anything about me; number two, I asked you a question, would you answer it?

Benjamin Cohen: Sure but, I just, I’ve made a statement, is this a debate about trans issues with no trans voice?

Justin Webb: Yeah, you’ve made your statement, now could you answer the question?

Benjamin Cohen: You made the statement which is that the provisions around who gets access to single sex spaces has changed, that hasn’t changed, the Equality Act was passed in 2010, there’s been no changes to that

Justin Webb: Yeah, hang on, what I’m suggesting is that Stonewall would like to change it, and a lot of women are worried about

Benjamin Cohen: Sorry, you just claimed that but that’s not actually true. So, Stonewall supports self-ID  (Justin Webb : Exactly) which is about, simply about paperwork, so you’ve been able to self-ID for practical purposes for the Equality Act, since 2010,

Justin Webb:  But not for instance to go to a safe space for women, like a women’s refuge, those a protected  aren’t they

Benjamin Cohen: (speaking over Justin Webb): yeah, and they continue to be protected.

Justin Webb: And does Stonewall …

Benjamin Cohen: Can you answer me a question, Justin, has Stonewall said that those spaces should be open to trans people, I don’t believe they have

Justin Webb: Well, exactly

Benjamin Cohen: this is the problem,

Justin Webb:  But hang on, I think we agree on this

Benjamin Cohen: It’s such misinformation

Justin Webb:  Hang on,  I think we agree on this in that case because, is it the case, or is it not the case that Stonewall, is campaigning for those safe spaces not to be women only?

Benjamin Cohen: They aren’t campaigning for that, that’s just misinformation being spread by a homophobic and transphobic media, I’m afraid.

The thing is, Benjamin, you’re the one that’s not telling the truth here. The extract below shows that Stonewall are campaigning or did campaign for the removal of the protection of women’s single sex spaces. This is from Stonewall’s  submission to Women & Equalities Select Committee Inquiry on Transgender Equality submitted on 27 August 2015. Stonewall’s recommendations included:

““A review of the Equality Act 2010 to include ‘gender identity’ rather than ‘gender reassignment’ as a protected characteristic and to remove exemptions, such as access to single-sex spaces”

Screenshot

(Source Woman’s Place UK, Evidence of calls to remove single sex exemptions from Equality Act: https://womansplaceuk.org/references-to-removal-of-single-sex-exemptions/)

Saying that Stonewall hasn’t campaigned for the removal of women’s single-sex spaces looks a lot like misinformation being spread by a media that doesn’t acknowledge the need for women’s single sex spaces to me. Your move, Benjamin.

Can we talk about the claim that since lockdown, five women a week have been killed by men in the UK, because I don’t think it’s true

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I’ve been Counting Dead Women, women killed by men in the UK since January 2012 and as one of the founders of the Femicide Census have access to records of women killed by men in the UK going back to 2009. From this, I can say that we know that on average since 2009, a woman has been killed by a man in the UK every three days. Because that’s an average, sometimes it is more frequently than that, and sometimes it’s less. It means that we know that the oft quoted statistic, that two women a week are killed in England and Wales by their partner or ex, is inaccurate. My work on this issue means I’m often well placed to have a sense when something unusual is happening, and as importantly, I have access to information to check out my hunches, The Femicide Census.

This – noticing something unusual was going on – happened last March, just after the first national lockdown.  In the first week of lockdown, 10 women (and two children) were killed by men. That’s not one woman every 3 days, it’s one woman every 16.8 hours. It wasn’t two women a week, it was ten in a week. The oldest was 80, the youngest was 24 years old. For seven women, the suspect was her husband, partner or lover, for one he was her son, for another he was her father and one woman was killed by a stranger.  The next week, three women were killed by men, and the same the following week. 3 weeks into lockdown, 15 women had been killed by men. So, it’s true, for the first three weeks of lockdown, on average, five women a week had been killed by men, through this was largely driven by the 10 women killed in the first week. This was the snapshot for a specific period in time, 23 March – 12 April 2020.  This was three times higher than the average for the same three weeks since 2009 (five), though the actual numbers had varied between nine women in 2009 and two women in 2013, 2018 and 2019. It’s not the only time when for a short period of time there has been an atypically high number of women killed. Another example is January 2012, when in the first three days of the year, eight women were killed by men and don’t know if I’d have even started Counting Dead Women if that hadn’t coincided with the murder of Kirsty Treloar.

I shared this information at the time, there was a lot of interest. If I’m honest, I will say it pissed me off, why was one woman every three days barely worthy of mention? I wasn’t impressed by attempts to frame the killings of women in 2020 as ‘due to COVID-19’ and wrote this piece, Coronavirus Doesn’t Cause Men’s Violence Against Women about the suspected levels of men’s fatal violence against women  and what might or might not be causing an apparent increase.

But the things I’m hearing now are at best: ‘it was five women a week during lockdown’, and at the most inaccurate: ‘it’s been five women a week killed by current or former partners since lockdown.’

Because of the work by The Femicide Census, we know that there have been patterns in the numbers of women killed by men over time. Between 2009 and 2018, on average, more women tended to be killed in April than in any other month, followed by December. I was able to use information from the Femicide Census database to compare how many women had been killed in the same time period (week beginning, 23 March, week beginning 30 March, week beginning 6 April and so on) for every week since 2009.  I did that for every week of the initial national lockdown, or until 31 May.

By 31 May 2020, I was aware of 26 women who were suspected of having been killed by men in the 10 weeks since 23 March. The average for those same 10 weeks between 2009 and 2019 was 24.7 women, the highest was 30 women in 2010, the lowest was 17 women in 2013. In other words, the rates of women being killed by men had returned to pretty much an average level of unacceptable for the time of year and that continues for the rest of 2020.

I should mention that the numbers I used from 2019 and 2020 were based on media searches alone, we hadn’t analysed the Freedom of Information requests for the Femicide Census for 2019 at that point and we wouldn’t be sending those for 2020 out until 2021.  I am expecting that the real numbers for 2019 and 2020 will be a bit higher.  I am also worried about what might happen as we move on from the pandemic, if we move on from the pandemic, because another of the findings of the Femicide Census, is that 43% of women killed by their partners do so at some point during or after the process of separation. Will more women leave abusive partners as lockdown eases again? Will we see this reflected in lethal violence from jealous, possessive and controlling men?  

It’s also important to mention that at both Counting Dead Women and the Femicide Census include all women killed by men. There are some important differences in the characteristics between women killed by current and former partners, for example the presence of coercive control, or, what would good support services look like? But there are some commonalities too. What’s the impact of the status of women? What’s the impact of the sexual objectification of women? What’s the impact of male entitlement? I believe that we can learn something about the role of such issues if we look at the killing of women by men, rather than restricting ourselves to current and former partners only, even though the latter make up the greatest proportion of femicides in the UK (on average 62%).

Data matters, but it’s important that we use it correctly. It’s important that we don’t extrapolate what was happening at a moment in time to what happens all the time. We should not need to exaggerate the numbers of women being killed by men to make people with influence address men’s violence against women. If we think 15 women in three weeks is unacceptable and worthy of outrage, surely, we’re not saying that the average number for three weeks, seven women, (one woman every 3 days) is fine and nothing to rise up against?

Am I naive – obviously I am – in the belief I had that facts were checked before use in the national media? Can those with editorial roles stop the use of ‘two women a week’ and respect the work of those of us who have tried to get accurate data?  How does a claim that five women a week have been killed by current or former partners since lockdown, get through whatever editorial process is supposed to happen?

Most importantly though and as always, we must remember that dead women are never merely numbers, data or statistics. They were real living women once, most of them leaving family and friends who loved them shocked and in mourning, so many people left with a gap that they’ll feel the pain of for the rest of their lives.  We should try to do the right thing by these women and try to make changes that will protect the women and girls of the future. What are we going to do to end men’s violence against women and girls?

Counting Dead Trans People

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No, Angela Crawley, in the UK, it’s not the same and it’s not a greater risk

In the Women and Equalities Select Committee on reform of the Gender Recognition Act on 21 April 2021, Angela Crawley, Scottish National Party MP for Lanark and Hamilton East and the SNP Shadow Attorney General asked

” Would you agree, and I think we can all agree on the prevalence of male violence, and the instance of how often this occurs and often it is a male perpetrator against a female individual, would you agree that individuals who perhaps, perhaps a trans female has transitioned*, they are also at equally and perhaps greater risk of the same violence and the same issues that you’ve expressed around patriarchy. Would it be possible for a women’s refuge to have a policy that is both inclusive provides that safety that provides those single sex spaces built also is able to provide a service that recognises that individuals who are transgender may also be the victims of the very same violence and they might also need protection from those very similar services that we’re discussing.”

(*It’s anyone’s guess who she means here? A trans female who has transitioned surely means female to ‘transman’, but I think she is so determined not to use words referring to maleness for ‘transwomen’ that she means a male who has so-called transitioned to ‘transwoman.’)

Firstly, let’s get this out of the way, you cannot be both single sex and trans inclusive, unless you mean women and ‘transmen’ together or men with ‘transwomen’. If you have transwomen in a women’s refuge it is not single sex. It cannot be.

Angela Crawley seemed to be trying to say that trans people are perhaps more at risk from the same men’s violence as women are.  This isn’t true with regards to fatal violence. Men’s fatal violence against males who identify as transgender does not follow the same pattern as men’s fatal violence against women.

As far as I know, nine males who fall under the trans umbrella have been killed in the UK since 2009. I don’t know which of them would have described themselves as cross-dressers, transsexuals, transwomen, trans women, or even say that they are women but using Stonewall’s concept of the trans umbrella, there are nine and I don’t want to open myself to accusations of undercounting. There have been over 1,800 women killed by men in the UK in the same time.  These 9 people are

  1. Andrea Waddel, 29, killed by a punter (sex buyer), Neil McMillan, in Brighton in October 2009
  2. Destiny Lauren, 29, killed by a punter (sex buyer) Leon Fyle, in London in November 2009
  3. David/Sonia Burgess, 63, killed by Senthooran (Nina) Kanagasingham, a trans friend/associate (male who identified as trans at the time), in London in October 2010
  4. Lionel/Suzie Morl, 49, referred to in the press as a transvestite, who was killed by a couple with drug problems and who appear to have been exploiting him:  David Hardman, 51, and Tracey Hurrell,  32, in Manchester in July or August 2011. Note the age difference between this couple, which is often (not always) an indicator of an abusive relationship
  5. Chrissie Azzopardi, 22, who was killed by a neighbour, Romy Maynard, possibly over drug debts, in London in April 2012
  6. Vanessa Santillan, 33, who was killed by husband Joaquin Hernandez in London in March 2015
  7. William Lound, 30, a gay man who occasionally wore clothes that have been described as women’s clothes, was killed by Lee Arnold. Arnold killed Lound after the two had had sex, in Salford in August 2016. The murder of William Lound has been described both as a homophobic murder and an anti-trans one
  8. Naomi Hersi, 36, who was killed by punter (sex buyer) Jesse McDonald after a drugs and sex hook-up in London in March 2018
  9. Amy Griffiths, 51, was killed by Martin Saberi, in Worcestershire on 11 January 2019. The two have been described as friends.

None of those above were killed in Scotland, where Angela Crawley is an MP. None. Since 2009, at least 129 women have been killed by men in Scotland. 17 women have been killed by men in Scotland since the last known murder of a trans person in the UK. Why can’t you see or why do you turn your back on the violence done to women by men, Angela?

We know from the Femicide Census that 62% of women who were killed by men between 2009 and 2018 were killed by a current or former partner.  In the year ending March 2020, the Office for National Statistics says that 46% of adult females and 7% of males were killed in domestic homicides. The ONS also said that 29% of female homicide victims recorded no suspect had been charged for the offence at the time of analysis. This will decrease as investigations proceed and the percentage of cases where a woman’s current or former partner is identified as being responsible for her death is likely to increase.  The proportion of males killed by current or former partners is consistent with previous years. 8% of male homicide victims were killed by a partner in the year ending March 2019, 1% in the year ending March 2018 and 3% in the year ending March 2017. Note also that males are much more likely to be killed by a same sex partner, fatal violence is very rare in lesbian relationships.

Given the number of trans people killed in the UK, annual trends in the composition of their relationships with their killer isn’t possible. There have been nine over eleven years and none since Amy Griffiths in 2019. Only one was killed by their partner.  Most women’s refuges work exclusively with women who are fleeing partners, ex-partners and in some cases, family members. That doesn’t mean other people don’t need places of safety or support but it does mean that their experiences are different and their needs are too. Women in refuges benefit from being able to place what was done to them in the context of the abuse that other women have been subjected to by men they loved. Sometimes it is through seeing that another woman was not to blame for what was done to her that they are able to begin to stop blaming themselves. Sharing with and listening to other women is a huge part of healing and moving on. Women don’t enter refuges for fun. For most there is no other choice and many are in fear of their life. The number of men who kill or attempt to kill their female partners shows that women’s fears are well grounded. I’ve written in other places about the importance of single-sex spaces for women who have been subjected to men’s violence, for example here, about the necessity of trauma informed services for women being single sex and here, more generally in a speech I delivered in Scottish Parliament in January 2020.

Looking beyond fatal violence and at childhood sexual abuse, prevalence is not equal or greater for males who identify as transgender than it is for females. We know that both girls and boys can be subjected to child sexual abuse and that grooming of younger gay males by older men is an established form of abuse normalised by some men. Prevalence studies for England and Wales suggests that approximately 15% of girls/young women and 5% boys/young men are subjected to some form of sexual abuse before they are 16 years old and that the majority of perpetrators – prevalence studies always indicate over 90% – are male.[1] For women and girls, single sex space to address what has been done to them is vital. For males, who are far more likely to have been abused by someone of the same sex, the preferred or most beneficial sex of their therapist, counsellor, support worker or fellow therapeutic group members can be less clear. Sometimes but not always depending on the sex of their abuser, they may or may not have a preference for or therapeutic issues with the sex of who supports them.[2] The needs of these men should be addressed but this necessary provision should not affect the needs of the majority of female victim-survivors and provision of single sex services to meet their needs; neither should the support and therapeutic needs of males survivors of childhood sexual violence and abuse who come to identify as transgender.

It should not be seen as, and it is not, an indication of disrespect to Andrea Waddel, Destiny Lauren, Sonia Burgess, Suzie Morl, Chrissie Azzopardi, Vanessa Santilan, William Lound, Naomi Hersi and Amy Griffiths to say that with regards to intimate partner homicide, the pattern of their relationships with the person who killed them is far closer to that of male-on-male fatal violence than that of men’s lethal violence against women. Of course what was done to them is abhorrent. But, the evidence suggests that the same services as those under short supply for women would not have saved the lives of most of these trans people.

By identifying the context of the sex industry, which inherently abusive; or substance use, I am not excusing what was done to these people any more than I would consider involvement in prostitution or drug use as an excuse for killing women, or any more than I would hold any woman responsible for abuse perpetrated against her. Prostitution turns people into products and abusive, predatory men who fully recognise the power imbalance in the transaction, into consumers. Prostitution puts people, mainly women, in situations where they are easy prey to murderous men. It is the twisted logic of sex trade advocates that creates a space for victim blaming and denies that prostitution is abuse.

Where fatal violence is concerned, the evidence is that the violence perpetrated against trans people, is not the same violence as that which is perpetrated against women. It’s not the same, it might be proportionate, there aren’t reliable statistics on the number of trans identifying people in the UK so we can’t calculate. Of course not all violence and abuse is fatal, but we can still learn a lot about violence from that which is. It is possible that rates of fatal violence against trans people by men are higher than those of males against women if we take population sizes into account, but this would make that violence more in line with men’s violence against other men, after all men kill more men every year than they kill women. This does not justify removing the single sex exemptions permissible under the Equality Act in the provision of services for women who have been subjected to men’s violence and more than any other form of men’s violence against other men.

Like most people, I do not want to see trans people suffering violence, harassment and discrimination. Universal human rights are an important principle. If we want to stop violence, including fatal violence against trans people, we would be better placed addressing the drivers of violence and abuse of people who do not conform to the gender stereotypes associated with their sex. As a feminist, I would say that we would be better placed dismantling sex-role or gendered stereotypes. Being abused and/or killed as or because you are a gender non-conforming man is not the same as being abused and/or killed as or because you are a women. We help no one if we don’t acknowledge who is doing what to whom and why, or by falsely claiming that that violence against trans people is the same as men’s violence against women.

Coronavirus Doesn’t Cause Men’s Violence Against Women

by

I’ve been tracking men’s fatal violence against women and commemorating the UK women killed by men for 9 ½ years through my work on Counting Dead Women and for The Femicide Census, the team I work with have submitted Freedom of Information Requests to the police about men’s fatal violence against women in the UK going back to 2009.  From the work of the Femicide Census, we know that over the last decade, on average a woman has been killed by a man in the UK every 3 days. So, using the average over the last 10 years, we might expect to see 7 women killed by men in 21 days, but 14 women and two children have been killed by men in the first three weeks of coronavirus lockdown in the UK.

We have to be cautious about talking about increases in men killing women. Reality is more complex than 11-year averages, there are always times when the numbers are higher or times when they are lower, there might be a week or longer where no man kills a woman. But we can say that the number of women killed by men in the three weeks between 23 March and 12 April is the highest it has been for at least 11 years and is double that of a hypothetical average 21 days over the last 10 years. We don’t know yet whether this inflated rate will continue, it is possible that we will see a lower rate over the next few weeks.

The table below shows the actual numbers of women killed by men in the three weeks between 23 March and 12 April since 2009, and the relationship between the perpetrator and the woman he killed. [i]

Women killed by men 2009-2019 and alleged killings of women by men in 2020

If the two children killed by Robert Needham were included, we’d see 3 females killed by their fathers in 2020 and a total of 16 women and girls dead at the hands of a man.[ii]

We can see that over the same three-week period, annually the numbers of women killed by men ranged from 2 women (in 2013, 2018 and 2019) and was as high as 11 women in 2009, averaging at 5 women in this three week period between 2009 and 2019; but that in 2020, at least 14 women and two children have been killed. The reality may even be higher,for example, a man has been questioned regarding the killing of Natasha Melendez in N. Ireland on 1st April but as far as I know, no-one’s been charged yet, so I haven’t included her in the figures.

Looking back over pre-lockdown 2020, 32 days passed as 14 women’s lives were taken. [iii] So it isn’t that 2020 in general has seen higher levels of men’s fatal violence against women.

Lazy reporting mixed with a lack of understanding of the dynamics of abuse have led to stories about increases in the domestic abuse, with headlines about men’s fatal violence reported as being due to a man being pushed to kill because of financial concerns. Another report said that a man claimed he bludgeoned ‘his wife’ to death because she asked him to move out because he had the virus. I don’t believe coronavirus creates violent men.  What we’re seeing is a window into the levels of abuse that women live with all the time. Coronavirus may exacerbate triggers, though I might prefer to call them excuses, lockdown may restrict some women’s access to support or escape and it may even curtail measures some men take to keep their own violence under control. But coronavirus doesn’t make a killer out of a man who has never been controlling, abusive and/or violent to the woman he is in a relationship with. And we must surely extend our concerns to the women and children who will live through the coronavirus lockdown with an abuser and survive. I am counting dead women, but I would never say that it is only the dead women who count.

We need to ask why it seems that only or mainly men are pushed to kill because of frustrations or fears triggered by coronavirus or related restrictions. When we do, we come to the same answers that we’d arrive at by asking why men kill women at rates way above those at which women kill men: sex inequality as expressed through male control and dominance both in society as a whole and in individual relationships, men’s entitlement and their expectations to be served and serviced by women, masculine sex-stereotypes and gender norms, the objectification of women, and so on.

It’s also important to remember that men’s violence against women is not restricted to women that they are in a relationship with. Most people have no idea about the levels of child sex abuse that happens within families, we don’t know whether lockdown may be giving men increased or decreased opportunities to rape and sexually abuse the children in their household, but if it is the former, these children and society as a whole will be paying the price and seeing the impacts for decades.

Perhaps, despite the far greater numbers of people being killed by the virus including the failure to provide adequate protection to those exposed through efforts to treat the sick and dying, and the failure of the state to listen and act on the advice of experts, we will somehow see the extent of men’s violence against women and children more clearly. Perhaps also, we will say that this, men’s violence against women, girls and children, is not inevitable, it is not acceptable and the authorities, or someone – or we – can and should do more. Perhaps we will get angry that the state does not pay heed to the voices of experts and take the actions that feminists have been calling for, for decades.

If we’re alarmed at an apparent increase in men’s fatal violence against women, why aren’t we equally alarmed at the numbers of women being killed by men all the time? We surely cannot say that the average number of women killed by men is acceptable.  If 14 women and two children dead in 21 days at the hands of a man who chose not to curb his violence and aggression is too much, would seven dead women be fine?  No, no it wouldn’t. Let’s recognise the ways that women’s lives are limited, diminished and controlled by men’s dominance. Let’s demand better for women and children. Let’s aim to end men’s sex-based violence against women. Let’s hold the state to account. Let us recognise that together, taking responsibility, we could do more and we could make a difference.

[i]The data for 2009 – 2018 is from the Femicide Census, 2019 is from Counting Dead Women.  We collect data differently on the two projects, I do Counting Dead Women from internet searches (and people contacting my twitter account for the project) but the Femicide Census data is collected via annual FOI requests to all the UK police services. We haven’t completed the FOIs for 2019 yet so it’s possible that there are more women in the equivalent period in 2019 that I didn’t find with my internet searches.

[ii]

 NameAgeDate of death (2020)
1Nageeba Alariqy4723-Mar 
2Elsie Smith7125-Mar 
3Kelly Stewart4126-Mar 
4Ruth Williams6727-Mar 
5Victoria Woodhall3129-Mar 
6Kelly Fitzgibbons4029-Mar 
7Ava Needham429-Mar 
8Lexi Needham229-Mar 
9Caroline Walker5029-Mar 
10Katie Walker2429-Mar 
11Zobaidah Salangy2829-Mar 
12Betty Dobbin8230-Mar 
13Sonia Calvi5601-Apr 
14Maryan Ismail5706-Apr 
15Daneilla Espirito Santo2308-Apr 
16Ruth Brown5211-Apr 

[iii] Counting Dead Women 2020 (15 Feb -19 March)