Our Brothers' Keepers

The news today comes and goes, and I find it interesting how quickly what would otherwise appear to be important stories drop off the radar and disappear into the ether. Like the case of Sarah Everard, a young woman who was abducted and murdered, with a London police officer being charged with the crime. It was a big deal at the start, and it's still a going concern in the United Kingdom, but here it's mostly been forgotten. Which makes sense, I suppose. I doubt that news outlets in the UK really keep up all that closely on individual killings in the United States. (Not that they'd have time for anything else if they did.) In any event, it suddenly occurred to me that I remembered the case, and decided to see where things currently stood with it.

One story that came back had a straightforward enough headline: "Sarah Everard case shows men need to take collective responsibility." Curious as to where it would go, I decided to read it. The author, Jasper King, notes that "If Sarah was doing everything right, it is time for men to take collective responsibility and make sure our streets feel safe for women." Not that I understand what Sarah Everard could possibly have been doing that was so wrong as to bring her fate upon her. In any event, the high-profile (or simply mediagenic) murders of women sometimes brings about this soul-searching on the part of commentators. I just have one question.

Given that men (and I count myself in this) are apparently completely unable to look out for one another, why does anyone think that we'll be able to look out for women?

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting, in the United States in 2019, 10,908 men and 2,991 women were murder victims (along with a further 28 people of unknown sex). To be sure, not all of them were killed by men, but the clear majority of them (in cases were the sex of both victim and offender are known) were. If men have a collective responsibility to make sure the streets feel safe, we're failing miserably.

I suspect that it's due, in large part, to the fact that many men tend not to see the problem, perhaps in part because while violence may be the end of many men, sexual violence against men is much less of an issue that it is for women. When I was of an age that homicide was the leading cause of death for people like me, I was acutely aware of that fact. (And I sympathize with women who feel unsafe on the streets, the feeling that one might be killed at any moment when out and about is remarkably stressful.) But now that I've survived long enough that things like cancer and heart disease are the main things looking to kill me (strangely, this feels an accomplishment), I'm less inclined to be concerned about being shot or stabbed when out of my home. And so hearing about murders doesn't spark the same concern that it used to. I have other things to deal with now.

But by the same token, I understand that violence is always going to be present. It's not the looming threat that it was as a 20-something living in Chicago, but it hasn't gone away either. I don't have a criminal record, or a history of gang involvement (which are the real risk factors for death by homicide, in most cases), but I understand that I live in a culture in which violence is often seen as a ready solution to problems. I understand why describing people like Robert Long or Samuel Cassidy as having a bad day results in other people being up in arms, but there's something to be said for the idea that when shooting people to death is seen as a legitimate answer to "temptation" or a problem with ones coworkers something has clearly gone off the rails.