The Epsom College murders have ushered in another very bad week for victim-blaming .
fter George Pattison shot and killed headteacher Emma Pattison, their daughter Lettie, seven, and himself at their home on the site of Epsom College, there was speculation from some quarters of the media (and social media) about how the high achievements Pattison in her career may have made her husband feel as if he was “living in her shadow”.
Classic victim-blaming, even if there wasn’t the direct intention to do it.
It implies Pattison could have avoided being killed, if she was only somehow less – or equally successful as – her husband. This is yet another cross for women to bear, even in death.
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I have experienced similar as a campaigning feminist. I am often referred to as a “man-hater”. But in my opinion, it is the epitome of man-hating to suggest that men are so fragile in their egos that they are pushed to violence if they are not the top dog. I don’t know any men like that. I am more objectively “successful” than my husband – should I be worried?
The “boys will be boys” rhetoric that makes out that men are so base and so predictable that they simply cannot control their behaviour, is to me what man-hating looks like. I think considerably more of men than that. I think they are capable human beings in charge of all their faculties – and when they kill and rape, it is because they are individuals making the choice to do so.
Alongside Women’s Aid, I have been working for years to try to change how we report the killing of women. This is by far not the first case that has triggered victim-blaming. Often, the ones that reach the headlines describe stories of a loving husband “pushed to breaking point”.
Tales of infidelity on the part of the woman are weaved in to the tapestry of how she came to be stabbed to death in her bedroom. Or, we hear how the pressures of work just got “too much” for the poor husband, who then shot and killed his wife and children.
We never hear these tales told about men who kill other men. We don’t look for the stresses at work that may have led up to a drive-by shooting by a gang. We don’t seem to think someone “just snapped and lost control” when they murder a stranger in the park.
Stop with the victim-blaming. The only person responsible for the terrible Epsom College murders is the one who picked up the gun.