Fix the system, not the women Laura Bates

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Too often, we blame women. For walking home alone at night. For not demanding a seat at the table. For not overcoming the odds that are stacked against them. This distracts us from the real problem: the failings and biases of a society that was not built for women.

The more you think about it, the more absurd it is that people think you can usefully talk about something like sexual violence without discussing the criminal justice system; that a discussion about domestic abuse can be complete without recognising that the roots of power and control we are really talking about begin in childhood and are also plainly on display in the dynamics of our political system, that anyone thinks it is possible to have a conversation about rape that isn’t, also, about education and what is happening in schools.

Misogyny arises from a society in which the sexual objectification, harassment and oppression of women is commonplace and in which the superiority, privilege and entitlement of usually white, heterosexual, non-disabled men goes unchallenged.

We’ve all been thinking of our stories as individual problems – our own personal, coincidental lists. But they are not.

They are connected. And that means that the problem isn’t with us; it is with the system.