The politics of naming: victims, survivors and plain dead women

Crimes of violence cannot be addressed if those who are subjected to them are silenced by socio-cultural norms, by threats of the perpetrator/s, or by stigmatising and labeling the victim/survivors as having suspect motives. Victim/survivors have rights: the legal system acknowledges them. Without the courage of women who have been victimised – and who have survived – the reality of crimes against women would continue to go unrecognised.

Violence against women is no figment of the imagination. Like abused and raped women, dead women are real.

The number of women killed by intimate partners (mostly men, but rarely named so) is the ultimate evidence of women's victimisation in a society that for too long put to one side this most pernicious of social ills. The 19^th century Women's Movement endeavoured to bring to attention what Frances Power Cobbe aptly named 'wife torture'. Throughout the centuries, women have sought to end rape and criminal assault at home through establishing refuges and shelters, and urging legal and administrative reforms.

The 1970s and 1980s saw an upsurge in public attention on women speaking up and speaking out with courage and fortitude. The media played an important role: reporting on women's speak outs, publishing interviews, reviews of books and extracts from reports. It was this that began to see real change in government awareness and moves towards educating police and courts. It is ironic that this leap forward should be challenged as consequential upon a 'publicity seeking' exercise by 'publicity seekers'.

If women do not speak up about rape and sexual assault, who will speak for them? Is the field to be left to women who have not suffered and survived these crimes – or to bystanders only? Or are women obliged to stand back so that men's voices alone are heard?