Yesterday I read about Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who died in hospital after her ex-boyfriend allegedly doused her in petrol and set her on fire. The authorities in north-west Kenya, where Cheptegei lived and trained, said she was targeted after returning home from church with her two daughters. She should be celebrating her athletic success in safety. Instead, authorities claim that her ex-partner Dickson Ndiema bought a can of gasoline, poured it on her and set her alight in front of one of her children. According to BBC News, a report filed by a local administrator alleged that Cheptegei and Ndiema had been wrangling over a piece of land.

Earlier in the week, I felt sick as details from Gisèle Pélicot’s case began to emerge. In a courtroom in the southern French city of Avignon, Pélicot, 72, has been detailing the horror she endured for decades at the hands of her ex-husband Dominique Pélicot. Gisèle Pélicot told the court how she was raped by 72 men after her then-husband drugged her. He filmed the suspected rapes by dozens of men while his wife was unconscious, storing thousands of images that police investigators later found. As well as Dominique Pélicot, 50 other men aged 22 to 70 are standing trial on charges of rape. 

In July, women around the UK were shaken by the murders of Hannah Hunt, 28, her sister Louise, 25, and their mother Carol, 61. The three women were found at their home in Bushey, Hertfordshire. The suspect is Kyle Clifford, who has been arrested for allegedly killing them with a crossbow.

At the start of August, a 17-year-old boy was charged with murdering three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed event in Southport. Their names were Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9. 

These are just the femicides that have made mainstream news and reached our phones. By August, the Guardian reported that the toll of women allegedly killed by men in the UK in 2024 had already reached 50. There will be names you’ve likely never heard: Courtney Mitchell, Chitsidzo Chinyanga, Olivia Wood, Rebecca Simkin, Laura Robson, Maria Nugara, Tarnjeet Riaz, Kulsuma Akter… and dozens more. Even some of these names are unfamiliar to me, a journalist who focuses on gender equality and violence against women and girls (VAWG). 

And these are also only recent examples. The murders of Sarah Everard and Sabrina Nessa in 2021 led to widespread anger and protest from women at the end of their tether. How can we feel safe when the people employed to protect us are killing us; when we can’t even walk home, or through a park, without potentially being murdered?

Misogynistic violence is relentless, and it’s terrorising women across the world. We hear these stories over and over, each one feeling uniquely hard and horrifying, breaking us a little as we see ourselves and the women in our lives in their faces. We feel like the lucky ones and incredibly unlucky at the same time; forced to worry about our safety at home and outside.

The closeness of many of the assailants to these women killed makes us uneasy in our own intimate relationships. The randomness of many of the assailants makes us uneasy as we go to work, the shops, on a run, to a concert. Everywhere in the world feels unsafe to women, and – let me tap the sign when I say this – that’s because nowhere in the world is entirely safe for women. 

In 2022, around 48,800 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members. This means that, on average, more than 133 women or girls were killed every day by someone in their own family. Of women killed by men in the UK in 2021, 78 (53%) were killed by a current or former intimate partner. The average between 2009 and the end of 2021 is 60%. While the overwhelming majority of male homicides occur outside the home, for women and girls the most dangerous place is the home.

There is a societal expectation that we will not name misogynistic violence as what it is. Most people would never call it terrorism, despite that often being exactly what it is. Only recently has the UK government committed to treating extreme misogyny as a form of extremism. We are expected to get on with our lives as normal, pretending that all these brutal murders aren’t femicide and don’t affect us. We are not allowed to express that emotion publicly, and when we do we are told that we are overreacting or that we hate men. 

After the Southport riots I posted online that “male violence against girls and women is the problem. It’s an endemic. And how do these men respond to that? With more violence. With racism and bigotry. They do not care about the girls who were murdered.” Off the back of this tweet, I received multiple threats to my safety and literally hundreds of messages spewing with misogynistic hate and vitriol. A big part of my career is talking about VAWG, and in doing so I am subjected to said gendered violence. 

Let me tap the sign again: women are not safe, and we should not have to pretend we are. This is not a victim complex or a softness, this is reality. And the reality is that VAWG is going nowhere fast. If anything, it’s worsening. Between 2022 and 2023, reported cases of domestic and sexual violence, stalking, harassment, exploitation and child abuse in England and Wales were 37% higher than in 2018-2019.

We must – at the very least – be afforded the right to feel about the murders of these women. Whether that’s at home, in the workplace or out and about with friends, spaces for us to express this hurt and fear are necessary. It cannot be business as usual. Nothing about this should be usual. 

Images: Getty