[Compiled and arranged by searching “woman + [verb]” (walking) in national news outlets over the past twelve months]
An Ohio woman was shot dead while cooking Thanksgiving dinner; witnesses report that at the time of the shooting, she was standing at a kitchen table, preparing macaroni and cheese. The body of a North Carolina woman was found in a shopping center parking lot at dawn. A Texas woman was grabbed from behind and attacked in a “bear hug” after finishing several laps at the Austin High School track. A California woman was found dead and stuffed in a trash bag on a sidewalk. A Pennsylvania woman was found dead in the suspect’s grandmother’s home. A Michigan woman was groped and urinated on while shopping in Kohl’s; a breast cancer survivor who had recently undergone a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, she was shopping for new bras when Troy Police say the assailant attacked her, urinating on her back and into her incisions, which were still healing. An eighteen-year-old Pennsylvania teen was shot in the head several hours after her high school graduation by a white male while merging into traffic ten miles from her home and mine. A Michigan woman walked into a hospital and reported to nurses that she’d being sexually assaulted, beaten with brass knuckles, imprisoned for three days and transported to have sex with a man for money; the woman reported that she thought the man was a friend. Police would later describe hers as some of the worst bruising they’d ever seen.
A woman in her fifties was knocked to the ground, dragged into a field and raped in populated Rosental Park; during the assault, she was kicked and punched so hard in her face that she had to undergo emergency surgery, and police responded to the crime by telling a local newspaper that women should reduce their personal freedoms by jogging in pairs rather than assume they will be protected. A 63-year-old woman was found dead in her bedroom at 11 a.m.; police report her head was bashed in and her husband, who had bite marks on his hand, told a neighbor, “I know I’m going to jail.” A 33-year-old woman was on her way to work when a man pushed her into oncoming traffic, sending her sprawling headfirst into the road as a bus was heading towards her; the driver, travelling at about 12mph, swerved at the last second, narrowly missing the victim’s head as she lay inches from the bus’ wheels. A woman out for a walk was forced into a car by a man with a Caribbean-sounding accent; he drove her to a secluded parking lot at gunpoint and then sexually assaulted her. A woman was thrown to the ground and kicked by two men in a parking lot. A twenty-two-year-old girl from my hometown was murdered by strangulation and blunt force trauma one week after transferring to Temple University; she was moved to three separate locations via Lyft first in a blue plastic storage container and then a duffel bag before police identified her attacker, a 29-year-old male who was found cleaning blood from his apartment, his cousin later testified.
Police are still searching for the suspected rapist. Police are still searching for the suspected murderer. Police are still searching for the suspected assailants. The suspect is reported to be a tan, white male in his mid-50s with no facial hair. The suspect was last seen shirtless and in work boots with shorts. The suspect is between 25 and 35 and was wearing grey knee-length trousers and a blue-green chequered shirt. The suspect drives an older model small car that is dark green or maybe blue. The suspect denies ever seeing the victim before. The suspect denies being at the bridge at the time of her murder. The suspect alleges he was at the mall at the time of the shooting. The suspect denies being in the park that morning. The suspect reports he was grocery shopping at the time of the murder. The suspect remains at large. Police ask for anyone with information about the suspect to come forward.
I hate feminists, he says to me. The love of my life. I hate that you count yourself among them. A bunch of angry women who hate men. You’re hurting an entire gender.
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Amy Butcher is an essayist with recent work in Granta Magazine, Harper’s, The New York Times, Lit Hub, and others. Her first book, Visiting Hours, earned starred reviews and praise from The New York Times Sunday Review of Books, NPR, The Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and others. She teaches writing at Ohio Wesleyan University and annually for the Sitka Fine Arts Camp and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Artwork by John Gallaher
What an extremely creative, powerful and provocative way to illustrate misogyny.
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Thank you, Amy.
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Gorgeous piece!
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Thank you for this beautiful piece.
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Ah. Right to the gut that ending line.
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Ah…right to the gut those last lines.
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Powerful approach with the list of facts. And that ending made my jaw drop. Great piece. Very effective.
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Yes. This. They wonder why we are angry.
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Damn. DAMN. Love this!
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Oh gosh. Amy. Thank you.
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I’m blown away by the rawness of this and your skill at putting this out there. I’m also extremely sad that this is still the state of things for women. And that ending – wow.
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The ending tells us everything. Thank you.
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Perfect. Oh those poor men and their hurt feelings.
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This chills my heart, raw and in your face. I have often asked, why are women hated so much? The minute a girl is born she is potential prey until the day she leaves this world. Thank you
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Wow. And what everyone else said…thank you.
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Thank you.
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OMG. This is so freakin’ good. The way you tie up all those loose ends with that last paragraph is breathtaking.
Wish this wasn’t nonfiction – but it is. And by pulling out the straight reporting you have illustrated how undeniable this epidemic of violence against women is in this country.
Brava!
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Amy, Amy, Amy…i don’t know what hurts worse…imagining your tears as you researched this…imagining you bent over in pain as you wrote this…knowing that every one of those women is my sister, my self—or the words of the love of your life at the end. i grieve with you.
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Thank you, thank you, thankyou! Having so much in one spot really brings it home.
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WOW! I read the beginning not knowing exactly where it was taking me, and the last paragraph was a surprise but also fit in perfectly with the rest of the piece. The universal made personal, just as the personal is made universal in violence against women.
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Excellent!
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A suckerpunch of a story. Love this essay.
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Great essay, in the end it could have been written about anyone or anything. I hope that is not lost on all. The world can be an incredibly cruel and unforgiving place for all of us.
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Not in the way you might think, Dustin. While I appreciate your observation on form, male intimate partners—husbands, boyfriends, fiancés, lovers—take the lives of three American women on average daily. That’s more than death by car accident, death by suicide, death by cancer. The risks are greater if you’re a woman of color, greater if you are gay, greater still if you’re transgender. The death of women at the hands of men they trusted exceed the causalities of 9/11 every three years.
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“That’s more than death by car accident, death by suicide, death by cancer.”
I’m sorry, but no, it is not. About 29 women die from suicide a day, I just looked up that statistic. Then there is also the issue that trying to gender homicide by using statistics without explanation doesn’t help your argument (unless your argument is that men tend to be the perpetrators rather than the women tend to be the victims), but that’s a whole ‘nother rabbit hole I don’t want to go down. I don’t mean to undermine your argument as domestic abuse is a special sort of violence, but incorrectly using statistics does not help your cause, it just provides an excuse for the anti-feminists to dismiss the issue. If don’t point it out to you, then someone who is less sympathetic will to all their friends.
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A shocking yet heartbreaking piece of truth.
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Whoa, I am still shaking from the chills this gave me.
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As a male, I really appreciate this and find it necessary.
Constant reminders of why change is essential.
Thank you
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brilliant
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This floored me. Thank you.
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This, tucked so matter-of-fairly into the list was like listening to a victim suppress emotion in order to assure she is heard, “An eighteen-year-old Pennsylvania teen was shot in the head several hours after her high school graduation by a white male while merging into traffic ten miles from her home and mine.” That “mine” is reverberating in my brain when I get to the ending.
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So good, so good, so good.
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Brilliant. That ending really kicks it home.
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Ouch. Nauseating and unbearably real.
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Aaahhhhh you are the best writer. Truly. Mind blowing and perfect. Thank you, thank you for writing this.
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