{"id":1117,"date":"2018-06-15T09:50:22","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T09:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/?p=1117"},"modified":"2022-03-21T13:07:23","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T13:07:23","slug":"eurydice-dixon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/15\/eurydice-dixon\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurydice Dixon: Men control public space. Girls need to remember that."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The death of Eurydice Dixon in my local park this week has made me think about my female socialisation in public space and the vigilance I am apparently obligated to have.<\/p>\n

When I was 8, I was on a playground in a park and met another little girl. She said we could be friends because I wasn\u2019t a man. She said in parks men \u2018rake us girls.\u2019 I had no idea why a man would try to rake us but she seemed very serious, I didn’t question her.<\/p>\n

When I was 12, my cousin and I curled our hair, put on our most grown up clothes, grabbed our digital camera epitomic of the mid-00s and took a bus to the city. Ecstatic in our school holiday freedom, we climbed trees in the Botanical Gardens. We felt fun and pretty in our almost teenage skin, giggling and skipping about in a grown-up world which was at once foreign but excitingly inviting.<\/p>\n

Arriving home that night, we realised we forgot to inform my aunt about our escapade. As she found out we spent our day in the gardens, she was beside herself. I was confused \u2013 we had gone to a pretty, peaceful place full of flowers. What was the issue? Shouldn\u2019t she be happy we went somewhere so nice? Later, I was told by my other cousin a few years my senior, that parks are where men hang out, waiting for lovely young girls. This confused me more- I didn\u2019t see them? Were they in the bushes? How uncomfortable!<\/p>\n

Taking the lesson of the danger our public selves inflicted, whenever my cousin and I went out in the future to the local park, we would put on our ugliest outfits. We thought by wearing mix-matched kneehigh socks would keep us safe and we could relax and enjoy ourselves. My aunty commented, \u201cMen rape for control, not looks.\u201d We weren\u2019t safe, apparently, which was already conformed by the wolf whistles we received on the regular.<\/p>\n

At 14, I went on a stroll. Every day, I walked up and down our country road picking flowers, sometimes cleaning up rubbish, maybe singing to myself. A few hours after this stroll, my parents sat me down to tell me I had been stalked. Our neighbours were driving home and noticed a man a few paces behind me, crouching behind bushes whenever I paused. My neighbours had driven slowly until they saw I had made it safely home. I wasn\u2019t allowed to go on walks anymore, I had to stay home because a man wanted to occupy MY street and that disqualified my right to be there too.<\/p>\n

As I grew further into womanhood, my vigilance corresponded. I learnt I was to always be vigilant, a demand on me to be constantly fearful and anxious of my surroundings. The park, the street, the beach, the train belonged to predators and I was to make precautions to avoid their master plans. I had to amend my lived experience of the world to be prepared for attacks as I became more and more woman. This vigilance prepared me for men grabbing me and trying to kiss me in France, Switzerland and Turkey during my first solo international trip at 19. I didn’t feel shocked when I wanted to admire the Notre Dame a man tried to assault me. My vigilance numbed my anger, suppressed my rights and allowed my friend\u2019s and family\u2019s voices to echo in my mind, \u201cWomen shouldn\u2019t travel alone.\u201d Safety can’t be expected, stupid girl, just try to make the men go away.<\/p>\n

My socialisation was complete: men control public space. Girls need to remember that. Girls cant trust public space, it doesn\u2019t belong to them.<\/p>\n

At 20, as I grew into my feminist skin, my mentality switched. I was working in a dodgy suburb which required me to walk 300 metres in the dark at the end of my shift to a train line with a bad reputation. I was constantly criticised and told to leave the job. I was vigilant in demanding my space to continue to an economically viable person . The train existed <\/em>to serve my commute from work to home. When high and drunk men sat next to me and leered, I reminded myself it was them who didn\u2019t belong there \u2013 I belonged. It was my train. <\/em>I was lucky, though, police regularly patrolled the line. I could be an assertive feminist because men with uniforms dominated the space too.<\/p>\n

\n

The other night, when I took an Uber home from the airport, Eurydice Dixon was raped in murdered in my local park. A park I regularly stroll for it\u2019s beautiful trees and, because, sometimes I prefer to walk a short distance home instead of paying $4.30 for a PTV trip. I wonder if Eurydice Dixon felt the same, also a young creative person feeling like she could walk to enjoy the trees instead of feeling cramped up in an overpriced bus.<\/p>\n

I have felt deeply sad since learning the news of her death. Every time I pass Princes Park, I am reminded how I should feel divorced from public space. It reminds me of a history class I had during my undergrad about Georgian architecture, how everything was built according to the public lives of men and the private lives of women. I think about my National Heritage internship where I researched and argued for the intrinsic quality of parks in our national identity – for whom though? Last night I saw the park full of young men in short footy pants not practising vigilance but rather a merry footy game in a space we should all belong. Eurydice was only murdered two nights before in the same place. I felt a cognitive dissonance that despite my feminist ideas on occupying public space, like the train line, I am still in danger in places I should be allowed to occupy, simply because I am a woman who the world believes should have a public life curfew.<\/p>\n

The police inspector<\/a> urged people to stay vigilant. Ironically, Eurydice Dixon was vigilant, sending a text<\/a> which stated, \u201c\u201cI\u2019m almost home safe,\u201d indicating how she too knew her social responsibility to be scared as a woman commuting on foot. What difference did her vigilance make? Doesn’t it just merely prepare you for the possibilities of terribles crimes happening to you as a woman in public space?<\/p>\n

Vigilance is a sad acceptance of a pathetic world arguing for women\u2019s lack of safety instead of resistance. I do not want to be vigilant, I don\u2019t want to accept that I am a walking target when I just want to commute. The rapists and murderers don\u2019t belong in parks after dark \u2013 I do. I have a practical reason to be there, while theirs is criminal. They should be vigilant enough to stay home and deal with their male rage.<\/p>\n

\n

As this event occurred in my neighbourhood, I feel a sense of overwhelming shock, grief and anger.<\/p>\n

Shock is naivety, though \u2013 women have been socialised to know they shouldn\u2019t feel safe and that they should expect danger. Encouragement to be vigilant has made us absorb that we should expect attack, anytime, every present. As women, we are our own liability. We are silly to live with abusive men and not leave but also silly to walk at night and even sillier not to be constantly looking over our shoulders. Let men be dangerous, let\u2019s adapt \u2013 we cannot feel shock. We can feel guilt for constructing the idea we should expect dangerous men to be lurking everywhere.<\/p>\n

My grief extends to Eurydice Dixon individually. As my friend said, she was probably walking home to watch Netflix and finalise her Friday night dinner plans, just as we were. My heartbreaks for her father and brother who she didn\u2019t return to that night and whom had to put the pieces together of what eventuated. I grieve for what she would have experienced in her final moments of life.<\/p>\n

Beyond my isolated grief for Eurydice Dixon, I feel catastrophic anger on a collective level. This incident confronts the female community that our safety is limited by our gender. It isn\u2019t just the fact of it could have been me <\/em>but rather this could still happen to me. <\/em>My anger extends to the fact that despite the community grief on social media, this isn\u2019t isolated \u2013 one<\/a> woman a week dies from domestic violence in Australia. Public or private, we are in omnipresent danger. I am deeply disturbed by comments on social media asking if Eurydice Dixon was walking on grass or the path like her geographical position in public space made her life more or less worthy of a violent end.<\/p>\n

My anger extends into the structural issues perpetrated by media and law around violence to women. One article<\/a> discussed Eurydice Dixon as a discarded body while describing the feelings of the murderer with diligence and sympathy. I am aghast at the empathy concerning how the courtroom might be overwhelming for this monster. He raped and murdered a woman but let\u2019s not let him feel slight discomfort as he faces this. Also, I am furious his lawyer used his autism as a draw-card to justify his actions, a horrific discrimination to those on the spectrum suggesting they are naturally inclined to be sadistic criminals. Let\u2019s do everything to protect this man, even at the demise of the humanity of the woman he slaughtered and at the disrespect of those with intellectual differences.<\/p>\n

Where do I take this shock, grief and anger? Today, I got ready for an interview near Princes Park and I contemplated my risk as a female in public. I felt aggrieved by my socialisation to accept the outdoors as a risk. I realised my feminist rejection of this advice doesn\u2019t make me safe and I am a working target who can be murdered \u2013 I could be a dead girl who should have been vigilant against a criminal we should protect. I have looked about my friends\u2019 responses \u2013 a donation to Eurydice Dixon’s family, politically charged Facebook statuses, angry personal conversations and my own blog expressing my rage. I am thinking about how systematic this tragedy is (what an oxymoron) – I am entrenched in it without choice and demanded to comply. At the same time, I desire systematic change fuelled by my defiance and anger. I am at odds with these two ends of the spectrum, reminded that I do not have the power I justify to myself that I deserve but I can write blogs, walk in parks and be angry. Where does this leave me and all other women when we can’t possibly live without fear?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The death of Eurydice Dixon in my local park this week has made me think about my female socialisation in… <\/p>\n

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