So tell me. How far can I walk on my own at night? How many metres, exactly, can I walk unaccompanied without having to fear for my life?

How many drinks am I, an adult woman, allowed to have after work on Friday night before being dismissed as a “party girl” or “asking for it”? How high can my heels be, and how short a skirt can I wear, before being implicated in any crime against me? And, just so that I’m clear, how many metres can I walk to get myself home?

And if something happened to me, how harshly would I be judged? If I vanished on that walk to my front door, what would you have to say about me? Would I be tut-tutted at for not accepting the offer of an escort home? Would idiots take to Facebook to admonish me for supposedly leading some guy on?

Would do-gooders and commentators and Twitterati-types take my parents to task for not raising me to act sensibly? Would they lambast my friends and lovers for not taking adequate care of me? Would everyone in my life suffer because I exceeded my allocated metres of solo walking?

Would every media outlet in the country view my disappearance as an opportunity to point out that, as it happens, women have more to fear in our world than men?

Would you, quietly, at the back of your mind, think that if I’d just stayed home with my partner, like a good wife and woman, none of this would have happened to me?

Are you just looking for one big, smug fucking excuse to say that you told me so?

And just so that we’re absolutely fucking clear, how many metres am I allowed to walk on my own at night?

http://itotallyhaveablog.wordpress.com (via neophytical)

Not to mention that I read an article by a woman who used to live 2k off Sydney Road, and she said that taxi drivers would refuse to pick her up from the pubs there to go home because it was much too short a drive. Jill Meagher had 450 metres to walk to get home. Less than a quarter of a distance already too short for a cab driver to bother with.

One of the reasons it’s so shocking and outrageous (as if the rape and murder of a woman is every anything but) is that Melbourne’s got such a culture of the ‘walking night out’, in a way most other cities don’t as much. You don’t just go to one venue and spend the evening there — you hop from place to place, suburb to suburb, pub to club to pizza place to whatever, the whole time. That’s how we live. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US has been her, coming home after an ordinary evening out. It wasn’t even 2am. The street was well-lit and busy with people and traffic.

There’s never, ever an excuse to victim-blame. Ever. Ever. And even by the fucked-up impossible standards of self-righteous dickheads who might claim that such excuses exist, there was NOTHING about her behavior that wasn’t standard operating procedure for anyone, ANYONE else.

(via sharpestrose)

And some people honestly wonder why I don’t go out on weekends.
Because I fear something like this happening to me.

(via stormybabe)

I resent the fact that despite living 5 minutes away from my campus clubs I have to arrange the end of my night around who can walk me home. 

(via etiolatify)