Do you remember when you viscerally realized that because you’re a woman, you are inherently less safe in the world? I do.
On Halloween Day of my sophomore year in college, a female computer programmer, Maria Gratton, was raped and murdered on campus, her body found in the basement of a building just a few blocks from where I lived. Police said she had been abducted in the late afternoon on a busy street as she was walking to her car to go home after work. Gratton, 47 at the time, held a doctorate in mathematics, and her husband was a physics professor at the university. She had three children.
It wasn’t for 10 more days before the police announced that the man who raped and killed her also killed himself shortly after murdering her and leaving her lifeless, brutalized body to be discovered by a janitor.
During those 10 days, the campus was on high alert. Rather, female students and faculty were on high alert. At the time, I lived in my sorority house, which was right across the street from the main quad. I remember all of us being called down to the foyer a day or two after the murder because officials from the university administration had come over to give us safety tips. We were told not to go anywhere after dark if we didn’t have to and not to walk anywhere alone, no matter what time of day it was. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I doubt officials made the same stops at fraternity houses.
I’d grown up in a small town, and the violence toward women generally took place by partners behind closed doors, not by strangers out in the wide open. (Indeed, most violence against women is committed by husbands or intimate partners. Shockingly, almost 1 in 3 women globally have been subject to physical or sexual violence.) I was fortunate – I was physically safe in the home and family I’d grown up in. In high school I’d read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and had insomnia for weeks because I was so terrified that someone was going to come into our rural house that we usually didn’t bother to lock and kill my entire family. But that had nothing to do with me being female – just a typical scary-book fear.
Of course, before Maria Gratton, I knew theoretically and factually that women and girls were more subject to violence. But it had never been in my own backyard. I’d never before been personally concerned that a man was going to snatch me off the street, rape and kill me.
I don’t remember many of the details at that time other than being pretty freaked out. I doubt that I changed much of my daily routine – I’m sure I still went to class and out with friends to the bars, I was still 19 years old after all. At some point that fall, I don’t remember whether it was before or after the murder, I went to see the movie Se7en with my college boyfriend. I remember that we got in a huge fight afterwards because I was furious he’d insisted on seeing that movie, and now I’d never be able to ever to un-know the “lust” killing, which to this day horrifies me. (If you haven’t seen the movie or don’t know what I’m talking about, I will not explain it here. Not because of a fear of spoiling the movie for you, but because I do not wish to be the one who imprints this on your brain if it is not already there.)
In general, I remember an electric, buzzing sense of everything being on edge in those crisp fall days. I remember feeling vulnerable in a way I’d never felt before, even after police announced that the perpetrator had killed himself. My safety, and maybe even my life, was more precarious than that of my male classmates, simply because I was a woman. I would never again not be aware of this fact.
I immediately thought of Maria Gratton and that fall in 1995 when I learned about the young college student recently murdered in Athens, Georgia, while out for a run in the middle of the day. The circumstances of their murders were very different, but it took me back to that time in college almost 30 years ago. I thought about all the college women in Athens who were learning first-hand that week the unfair truth that they are inherently less safe in this world than men are. Young women, just starting to find their places out in the world and discovering who they are, suddenly acutely aware of how violence is disproportionately inflicted upon female bodies like their own.
The second thing I thought of when I heard about Laken Riley’s tragic killing was how, in my decades as a runner, I’ve never once gone on a run where I didn’t at least fleetingly think of my physical safety. I’ve never belonged to running clubs, and I don’t like to run with friends. I prefer running alone. It’s my time to space out and just be with my thoughts. I cherish my running time. It keeps me (relatively) sane, and I get cranky and antsy when I’m injured or sick and can’t run for a stretch. But running as a woman can be deadly. I don’t usually run when it’s dark out, although those rare very early morning runs when it’s dark and quiet are particularly eerie. Even in broad daylight, I am constantly aware of my surroundings, spidey senses always engaged. But daylight didn’t protect Maria Gratton or Laken Riley.
At this point as a 47-year-old woman, I’m not even aware that I’m constantly aware – it is just how women exist and navigate in the world. It’s subconscious, below the surface and ready to bubble to conscious awareness at any prickly moment.
And it’s not just when we’re running. A few years ago, my boyfriend at the time and I were walking around Montreal, exploring this beautiful city on a brief summer getaway. The sidewalk we were on had a long stretch under a wide four-lane overpass; it was almost like being on a bridge because there weren’t any other areas to walk except the sidewalk we were on. Beer cans and other garbage littered the ground. There was no escape route if one were needed, and there were no other people around. I mentioned this in passing to my boyfriend, and he said “Oh, I didn’t even notice that, but I guess you’re right. Do you, like, think about this stuff all the time?” I don’t know if it’s even “thinking” about it really. It’s unthinking instinct at this point, to passively take mental note of escape routes (and when there are none) and how deserted or crowded a place is. To walk in dark isolated places with your key poking through your fist, ready as a weapon if needed. To cross the street if it feels like someone is trailing you, or if something just feels off.
Which is why I found this image (scroll down) from
so fascinating, validating, and infuriating.It shows where women’s and men’s gazes are directed when they’re walking. Men are clearly focused on the path ahead, while the women are looking around everywhere, off to the sides of the path. I literally have no idea what it is like to walk a path and not be aware of my surroundings. The burden falls on us to take the measures to ensure our safety from violent men. And sometimes those measures aren’t enough, because we live in a world where being a woman is a health and safety risk. I have no doubt that Maria Gratton and Laken Riley were as alert and aware as any of us are, and still…
Alert. Aware. Searching. Checking. Scanning. Vigilant. Always.
Stay safe out there, everyone.
What’s got my attention this week
Make no mistake – they are coming for birth control. They will not rest until women have zero autonomy over our bodies and our futures.
And after they take away our control over when or if we become parents, they will not provide any assistance in caring for that child.
WAL woman of the week
A woman out there in the world, being A Lot
It’s hard not to be excited about and for Caitlin Clark, smashing records and selling out tickets.
Out of the mouths of babes
“But then as you become older, you just are lucky to be alive and healthy. And then you start saying: Well, what do I want? Let me do what I want.” Isabella Rossellini.