Don’t don’t don’t don’t, why why why.

Eight women have been found murdered in an area pretty close to where I live. Police are investigating whether it could be a serial killer. The investigation is ongoing, in a country where forensic backlogs, corruption and inefficiency are normal. This is South Africa, the rape capital of the world. The headline I saw on television was a warning to women: don’t run alone. Don’t walk alone. Avoid isolated places. Be vigilant, try not to get murdered. The fucked-up thing is that we aren’t even shocked by the advice. We’re hyper-vigilant anyway. What feels lazy and hypocritical to me are the endless armchair debates about women. What we are. What we should be called. How we’re supposed to feel about things. Which political theory is the correct one for us. Which words should offend us. Which ones should empower us. Apparently everyone has an opinion about what womanhood should mean. So when I’m receiving actual instructions about how to avoid getting killed, forgive me if I don’t give a fuck about luxurious first-world commentary on how I’m supposed to experience being a woman.

Living in a state of constant vigilance is exhausting. High walls. Lights. Gates. Alarms. Cameras. Dogs. What car is behind me? Why did it turn when I turned? At night I listen to the sounds my dogs make. I check the cameras when something doesn’t sound right. All of this from inside my own home.I’m not wandering around looking for trouble. I’m not imagining danger either. Years ago, I was kidnapped with my children in the car. The weird thing is that you don’t live every moment in fear. You work. You laugh. You make coffee. You paint. You cook dinner. You live an ordinary life. However a part of your brain remains awake. Don’t walk there. Don’t run alone. Don’t go out at night. Don’t drink too much. Don’t accept the lift. Don’t trust him. Don’t wear that. Don’t take that road. Don’t be alone. Why were you there? Why were you alone? Why were you drinking? What were you wearing? Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

Meanwhile, somebody sitting safely behind a screen wants to lecture me about what a woman is. Quite often it’s a man asking the condescending and insulting question: What is a woman? Well, I’m one. I’m less interested in performing womanhood correctly according to somebody else’s ideological standards than I am in women getting home alive. Do you really think you get to tell me how I should understand being a woman when you haven’t got the faintest inkling of what this makes me and so many of my sisters in this country feel?
So fuck off with the faux-profound arguments about what a woman should be, how she should feel and how she should behave. Especially when they’re delivered by men congratulating themselves on how cleverly they’ve defined us.I’m not interested in misogyny dressed up as intellectual debate. I’m not interested in armchair outrage. I’m definitely not interested in the swollen, self-congratulatory certainty of people who think women are an interesting philosophical problem for them to solve.
Eight women are dead.The police are telling us not to go out alone.You can have your debate.

I have dogs to listen to.