Melbourne does not have an African gang problem – it has a violence against women problem – and it’s deplorable

Another vibrant, talented young woman died recently at the hands of young men.  Laa Chol was at a party with friends, like many young people over the weekend.  Her life ended as she attempted to diffuse a situation where uninvited, or unwanted, guests had overstayed their welcome.  But this is a situation that happens all the time – all of us can remember our teenage years and being at parties where ‘gate-crashers’ had to be asked to leave.  Some of us may have witnessed fights and police involvement but very few of us will have been at a female-only party where the gate-crashers were young men and it resulted in the stabbing death of a woman.

From what I can glean from media reports, the group of people who were supposed to be at the party were women and the gate-crashers were men.  So I was confused as to why the media’s reporting of this focused more of the race of persons involved over another, at least to me, salient fact: why a group of teenage boys and young men would bring weapons to a party where there were only teenage girls and young women? 

Why do these men feel entitled to respond with violence when women stand up to them?

Were the accused South Sudanese?  Yes. Is it possible that these young people have lived the vast majority of their lives in Australia? Yes. Is it possible that their current life situation could influence their current behaviour? As Nyadol Nyuon posits in a thoughtful opinion piece (click here) regarding the recent spate of violence and anti-social behaviour by young African men, “the boys’ race was not their only commonality.  There was also housing, unemployment, struggles with school…”  These are Australian problems, not African-Australian problems.

The fact that a woman (in her second-year of legal studies and a talented soccer player), was killed, and the fact that male violence against women has not been discussed in this context, as it has been where the race of offender and victim are both white, obscures feminists’ collective pursuit in highlighting and addressing the reasons why men commit violent acts against women in this country on a daily basis. 

Instead, the reports stated that African youth gangs are running havoc in our fine city. Headlines proclaimed that we have an African youth gang crisis.  Media and politicians are creating a moral panic where any two African teenagers associating together in the same place at the same point in time is a “gang”. Insinuations have been made that due to Laa’s African heritage, she may herself be a “gang-member” and that in some way makes her complicit to the context in which the offending against her took place.  Further, us good non-gang folk should be, or are living, in perpetual fear of these “gangs”.

Image source: abc.net.au

Accusing specific community groups deflects from the broader evidence that the problem is male entitlement and the dominance they assert on women across all races, classes, and socio-economic sectors of our community. Further, to make this a racial issue draws attention away from what is Australia’s real problem – one average more than one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner. (Click here)

The problem is Australian male behaviour – the cultural background of the killers of Eurydice Dixon, Qi Yu, Jill Meagher, Laa Chol, Sarah Cafferkey and so on is not their defining common feature, although if it were it would be that they were overwhelmingly white.  The common factor is their maleness and Australia’s cultural acceptance and attitude towards violence against women, about who makes an appropriate victim, about who is deserving of media coverage and who is not, about who gets to be defined by their humanity and who gets to be defined by a stereotype. This has to change. 

Australian teenage boys and men are killing women and children because many, many men still believe that women ought to submit to men. Australian men seem to believe this because religious text suggests this, or because women are physically weaker, or because women are "emotional, illogical, hysterical" and need strong guidance to navigate the world, or because *insert some flimsy reason here* ad nauseam. Many, many men think the work of feminists has been completed – women can vote, get jobs, own property.  In fact, they think the pendulum has swung in favour of women – so scared are they now to flirt with us for fear of being called rapists (calling you out Henry Cavill). 

OK, in reality men don’t verbalise or rationalise their behaviour in these terms – if men knew they were misogynistic shits I’d hope a few more of them would start forming orderly queues for extensive behavioural therapy.  Toxic masculinity is so ingrained and pervasive and dominant in men’s identities that to question it may feel like the complete destruction of self. 

Society at large is only now starting to call out their bad behaviour. But not all men have their behaviour called out. Further, given #notallmen are rapists or wife-beaters, and they benefit so much from the status quo, there is little motivation to start the work required to reflect on theirs and all men’s role in the subjugation of women. 

The way the media control the normative discourse helps men to continue to do nothing – Australian men cannot recognise in themselves the man capable of raping and strangling a complete stranger.  Australian women are taught how not to be victims, how not to put yourself into a situation where the aberrant, dishevelled, wild and sexually deviant predator lurks.

So, when two teenage boys are charged with the stabbing death of a woman simply trying to diffuse a situation, the reason for their actions become attributed to race, not gender. We choose to blame “gangs”, not our social norms.  We do this because it’s easier.  It’s easier to blame the ‘other’, to create an enemy that is smaller than 50 per cent of the population or to admit that more often than not, women’s experience in the world is ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t.’

So this is a call out to media and politicians – stop politicising the deaths of certain women to avoid doing the work you need to, which is to make it safer for all women, of all ages, backgrounds, abilities, races, and socio-economic status. 

By: Rachael Thurston