Strangelove

The stranger in the dark alley, and the lover who becomes a stranger: Tales from the spectrum of misogyny

TW: Abduction, abuse, assault

The number of high profile assaults and murders of women in Melbourne in the last couple of years got me thinking - as I'm sure it did a lot of people - about the relationship between these shocking violent crimes against women, and the lower level, everyday background physical, emotional and psychological abuse meted out against them. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, women's anger has grown from a background simmer to something visceral, palpable, to an almost unstoppable wave of rage. Domestic violence and abusive relationships were a burden that used to be borne in silence, shrouded in a heavy cloak of societal expectation and self-blame. Now with the internet connecting us in ways we couldn't have envisioned 20 years ago, women the world over are sharing their stories with each other, discovering the heartbreaking regularity and similarities between them, so much so they could all be written from the same playbook like a bad trope (hands up who's recently heard the term 'gaslighting' for nothing like the first time?). Most of all we're learning it wasn't our fault, we were conditioned my patriarchal power structures into blaming ourselves for what happened to us, we deserved it or caused it somehow by the very fact of our womanly existence. No longer. In much the same way that an abuser may isolate his partner from her friends and family, the deliberate atomisation of these experiences served to keep women cowed, in silence and alone, has given way to a sharing that lets us visualise the evolution from the small acts of disrespect, all the way up the chain to outright destruction of women, of murder.

I am in a unique position in that I have two stories to tell, one in foot in each of the terrible camps above, that dovetail into each other. Obviously I survived my encounter with the crazed maniac, the stranger in the dark that all women are warned about, but it's the abuse from the intimate partner that we're SO much more at risk of suffering from and carries the far higher likelihood of harm being done to us over a lifetime.

Scene: 10pm on a cold Tuesday night, I was going to the servo around the corner from my house to get some Coke and probably cigarettes, because despite just having been discharged from hospital after 10 days in and out with potentially deadly pneumonia (I was immunosuppressed for severe MS-like disease. Still am.), I was still smoking. It's a hideous addiction that I'm glad to be rid of, but I'll cut past me some slack because as you'll see, I was definitely going through some Seriously Stressful Shit at the time. Cigarettes don't solve any of your problems but they do have the rather lovely ability to make them go away for the 5 minutes it takes to smoke one. I confess to still enjoying a substance-induced one every now and then but the monkey has firmly been contained. Don't smoke kids, it tastes shit, makes you smell bad and give you wrinkles.

I was walking down a dark and quiet street, one I've walked many, many times before and since. My little suburb is quiet and sleepy, home to young families and retirees from Malta and Vietnam. I'd no reason to fear a quick jaunt, despite a lifetime of conditioning telling me I'd be raped and murdered with only myself to blame should I set foot beyond my threshold after sunset. I'd done it hundreds of times in the 8 years I'd lived there. But there I was, trotting down the street when I first sensed, rather than saw, that I was being followed. As a woman you've learned to hone those extrasensory skills and the alarms were starting to sound. A car was travelling slowly down the street behind me. Ok, big deal, I told myself. They're probably just looking for which house they're supposed to be parking at. It happens a lot. But then-

Headlights flashed at me. A horn was honking. The car had pulled up next to me now, window down, the driver yelling and gesturing me to come over. I'm not stupid, of course. I had my headphones in, I put my head down and kept walking ahead, a little faster now. If he needed directions the servo was a minute's drive up the road, no need to be bothering me. He drove up next to me again. Yelling louder now, gesturing more aggressively - YOU. COME OVER HERE. NOW. I didn't need to hear the words precisely  to know the message being imparted. I sped up more. The servo was getting closer but I was still in a dark street and my vantage point was blocked by trees and the big sign showing the price of fuel. Nobody there would be able to see what was happening to me. It was only a few minutes away but the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Half my lungs were either pus filled or red raw from inflammation (literally - I remind you I was recovering from bilateral lobar pneumonia, the worst kind to get. It stripped 8kg of muscle from me). I was a former marathon runner, and would be again, but at that point it time even a power walk was setting them afire and causing me to gasp for air. This cat-and-mouse game continued for another couple of minutes of increasingly unnerving minutes and my usual steely resolve was starting to unravel. I'd literally stared death in the face very recently but in a hospital setting with emergency staff next to my bed. Here, I was utterly alone, helpless and exposed.

The car suddenly screeched ahead of me and for half a second I thought it was over and he was leaving. But then he slammed on the brakes. Got out of the car, slammed the door and started striding towards me purposefully, with a violent malevolence in his movements and a steely anger on his features. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. This is it. This is what they always warned me about. I was about to get pulled into this car and then god knows what would happen after that. Raped and chopped into pieces within shouting distance of home, just like Jill Meagher. It was dark but he was close and I could tell he would easily be able to overpower all 48kg of weakened me. I pulled out my phone to call my (then) partner, and, using that adrenaline reserve we all have when faced with life or death situations, broke into a sprint (my previous physical training may well have saved my life that night).  I tore past him and the car, yelling out his licence plate number. He saw that I was on the phone. I can only assume he thought I'd called 000 as he bolted back to his car and sped off, tyres squealing leaving long treadmarks on the asphalt. My partner's part in this? After listening to my panicked recounting of what had just happened, replied in an irritated tone, 'I'm in the doctor's waiting room, can't you call someone else?'. What a paragon of humanity. The police officers I spoke to after showed me more kindness to me than he had in many months, and it was that, as much as what I had just experienced, that caused me to burst into tears, huge shuddering sobs that tore at my heart and seared my lungs with every ragged intake of breath.

A few weeks later Masa Vukotic was murdered in broad daylight in Doncaster in a crime that sent a shockwave throughout the country. The perpetrator was not caught but rather handed himself into police shortly after but not before going on a crime spree in his local area that involved sexually assaulting another woman, again in broad daylight. When his identity was published in the paper as Sean Price, it included a picture. And when I saw it, my stomach dropped and my blood ran cold. It was him. The man who was seconds away from forcing me into his car. I came that close to almost undoubtedly being horrifically assaulted and quite possibly killed myself. He lived in the street behind mine and was out on bail for sexual assault at the time of these incidents, in fact had multiple counts to his name. He was characterised as evil and insane - perhaps he was, and perhaps it was also easier for society to slot someone into the 'mental illness did this' box, in an uncomfortable echo of the gun control debate in the US. It was easier and more convenient for people to do that than to examine the patriarchal structures of a society that, let's be honest here, fucking hates women. It can be both, yes. He was evil, mentally ill and he fucking hated women. He had to, to have done those things. But monsters aren't born, they're created. Nobody comes out of the womb as a psychopath and nothing occurs in a vacuum. Everything, *everything* about the way our world is structured firmly tells people that women are lesser, and when bad things happen to them it's their fault, because of something they did, that caused a man (and it's almost without exception a man) to use and defile them so. We are not worthy. Men are. That is the truth reinforced at every level. I could list a thousand examples from the small to the huge but the sad truth is - those who know, don't need to be told, and those who need to be told - don't want to know. So what hope for rehabilitation is there when men who commit these crimes are released right back into a society that created the recipe for them to occur in the first place. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

But now let's flash back to a couple of weeks before 'the incident', and talk a little about my ex. I don't know if he hated all women but he certainly fucking hated me at this point. We'd been together 8 years, and the last 18 or so months had been a deterioration from drifting and listing, to outright hostility and abuse. The gaslighting was now constant to the point where I didn't contest it anymore. I just accepted that my memory must be faulty and I did and said those things I had no recollection of. I lived in fear of 'The Look', that murderous glare dished out for all sorts of infractions, like accidentally interrupting him, asking a silly question, having an opinion he didn't agree with. Conversations weren't really a thing anymore, it was frosty silence punctuated by me attempting to open a dialogue that quickly devolved into yelling, recriminations and the ultimate weakness and loser of arguments, crying (me). I always lost. I had suggested couples counselling to help sort out the obvious problems in communication because at this stage, I still let myself shoulder most of the blame. Had to, because he was having none of it. His response to this was 'We're not doing counselling, it  would be a pointless waste of time. The problem isn't communication, the problem is you're crazy. That's it'.  What I wanted didn't matter. My feelings didn't matter. I didn't matter. As far as he was concerned, I was just another crazy bitch clinging to a man who was sick of putting up with my shit.

The pneumonia - I had to call an ambulance to take me to hospital because I had been experiencing respiratory distress since the previous evening and it had now become severe (breathing more than 30 times a minute, lips tinged blue, unable to speak full sentences). This meant waking him up to let him know I was going, as he'd been out all night at a gig and a club, taking drugs and partying with my best friend (who he had been cheating with and was shortly to leave me for). They were napping in bed together. My bed. His reaction? 'Do you really have to do this right now?', as if I was feverish, pale, sweating and gasping for breath, being close to death, as part of some dramatic ploy for attention. And yes you read that correctly, he left me at home alone in that condition, didn't bother to check in with how I was doing, came home at 6am and seemed annoyed that I was still awake. It's difficult to sleep when you're trying to catch your breath all night. He didn't come with me to the hospital because he 'needed more sleep', although they came to the ED a few hours later, she seemed much more distraught than him. In retrospect I believe this was partially guilt although she still cared a great deal about me despite her actions. He didn't care at all. I had to get a bus home alone from the hospital when I was discharged the first time because he wasn't answering his phone. He broke up with me a few days after the almost-abduction, yet remained living with me, in the home we'd created for 8 years, for 10 more excruciating days, continuing to lie until the end and sexually assaulting me, in an encounter that began consensually - pathetically on my end, desperate for any kind of validation and human comfort - but quickly turned hate-filled and hurtful, my attempt to withdraw consent literally smothered. I have written a piece on this encounter to process my feelings but I don't know if anyone else will ever read it.

I could go on - could fill an entire book with the clusterfuck that was this relationship. Maybe one day I will. The point is this. These tales represent different points on the same spectrum - the one that says women don't matter. That the wants and needs of men are more important. Not all disrespect behaviour leads to violence against women, but all violence against women has its roots in disrespect. #Notallmen are rapists and murderers. Of course not. We know that, but fragile egos still feel the need to defensively yell it at us the moment we even think about being critical of men's behaviour in this sphere. But I guarantee almost ALL men, however well-intentioned, have made a woman uncomfortable at some point, whether from careless comments, invasion of personal space, assumption of gender roles, being unaware of how hypervigilant we need to be constantly, and so forth. If your first reaction to this as a man is indignance and outrage because you feel personally attacked, please take a step back to examine where that is coming from - because if you ARE one of the good ones (and of course they exist), there's no need to be upset. 

But even the good ones can do more. You personally treat all women with respect? Great. Are you calling out offensive and problematic 'jokes' from your mates and family members? Do you pull them up when they're hitting on women who clearly aren't interested? Do you stop them when they're using demeaning language and stereotyping women? Do you shut down talk of women being to blame, at fault, when a man does something to hurt them because we are never, ever, EVER 'asking for it'? Or is not rocking the boat, not upsetting the men in your life, more important than trying to help create a safer world for women? A well-made house with a beautiful veneer can still hide some dark and rotting secrets, and no house with poor foundations can said to be one that is well built or worth protecting. It must be torn down and built up again. Disrespect for women starts from the smallest jokes using sexist stereotypes and runs the full length of the spectrum to rape and murder. You can't have one without the other. They are inextricably linked. There are none so blind to this as those who refuse to see.

And so it goes with men and misogyny in society at large. From the very first brick that is laid, as soon as little boys enter the world, they are exposed to a society where the ritual degradation of women is the norm. It is excused. It is encouraged. Well may the media and general public wring their hands anew and cry 'How could this happen?!' every time another high profile tragedy hits the media (to say nothing of the fact that right now more than 5 women a month are killed by current or former partners). But for those of us with a critical eye, who've watched this cycle repeat over and over again with the collective amnesia renewed as soon as the last wreath is placed at the memorial site and the last candle extinguished at the vigil - our question is, 'How could it not?'

Postscript: This piece was originally begun in response to Eurydice Dixon's tragic fatal assault in 2018 and was updated piecemeal in response to each high profile case until now, after Courtney Herron's murder. It was a triggering experience in the true sense of the word. I am currently battling crippling agoraphobia, unable to even leave the house unless heavily medicated with diazepam, due to not feeling safe and suffering severe panic attacks if I'm not within sprinting distance of home. This is partially in response to what I experienced that night. The well deserved rinsing of Joe Hildebrand's histrionics finally spurred me to share my story.