Things that need to be said

The Sun newspaper has always been vile.  Today is the nadir of that vileness.  The front page shows a Page 3 style photograph of Reeva Steenkamp, the woman shot by Oliver Pistorius.  There is a bold headline script ion next to the photograph of the number of times he shot her.  It is a literary form of the snuff movie.  Within 24 hours of her death it has been framed as masturbation fodder.  There is so much to unpick about this, firstly the lack of respect for Reeva Steenkamp (I keep writing her name as the Sun gave it only as 'Pistorius's lover) as a human being who has lost her life.

The circumstances of her death are yet to be proved but it may be that her death wasn't a random accident but the result of police describe as a 'domestic incident'.  In other words another death of a woman at the hands of another violent man.  This in itself is horrific enough but the reporting of it brings with it a whole other fresh layer of horror.

There are various initiatives at the moment to try and bring violence (sexual, physical, psychological) against women and girls to the table, to try and create collective cocern at what is happening to women world-wide, to find a voice for that concern.  The attitudinal tide that allows the violence, condones the violence, encourages the violence has to be stemmed.  I would ask that we all turn our minds to the task, to challenge where we can, seak out where we can, vote where we can, write where we can, dance, sing and shout where we can.  This de-humanising of women of Reeva Steenkamp serves none of us. None of us.