“It’s dark now and you don’t know who’s lurking,” I warn her.

My sister tells me she’s not afraid; she’s lived in the area for twenty years.

She carries her phone. “I wouldn’t take any chances around your area though.”

“There’s the park, the creek, lots of open space - it’s different,” she cautions me in turn.

I question our constant vigilance, our awareness of self, and our surroundings, when what we crave is to be able to switch off, enjoy the moment, the walk.

Why must women be alert, careful of parked cars, and men on the prowl?

Yes, fearful, cautious of MEN: our husbands, lovers, sons, fathers. We live with them, care for them, even love them sometimes.

The senseless rape and murder of Jill Meagher in September brought many of us undone. The loss of Jill as a wife, daughter, friend, sister, colleague must be just too much to bear for those close to her.

Many women have felt reasonably safe walking alone at night even along notorious streets such as Sydney Road, Brunswick. As a liberated, western woman, Jill Meagher was able to go out and enjoy herself without her husband. She was a young woman with an interesting career at the local ABC radio station, a modern marriage- not encumbered with children unless and if she chose to be.

After hearing that Jill had been raped and murdered on her last, short walk home, many women began to question their own safety and wonder if they would ever be free from male violence 

As it is women are still being bashed, raped and murdered in their own homes and on the streets. Victorian police statistics show a steady annual increase in reported rapes in recent years, including an 11.8 per cent increase in 2010-2011.

The shocked, saddened and sympathetic community responded to the rape and murder of Jill Meagher by holding a peace march where an estimated 30,000 people walked along Sydney Road, Brunswick. 

Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences and Psychology at Victoria University, Julie Stephens opined that while the march was ‘a remarkable event in many ways, notable for its scale, diversity and unprompted display of public grief, it was also a thoroughly depoliticised occasion, rendering ineffective any claim to genuinely challenge violence against women. It was a peace march with little reference, except in the most abstract sense, to the nature of the war it was opposing.’

Stephens accuses the media of neglecting the analysis that male violence towards women is about power and domination and structural gender inequalities. News reporting referred to the murder as a “random” and “extremely rare event”.

Media analysis was devoid of anything remotely resembling  an analysis of male violence and rape and the fact that the fear and practice of rape has long been used as a way of keeping women in line.

Rape is man's basic weapon of force against woman, the principal agent of his will and her fear. From prehistoric times to the present, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear. -Susan Brownmiller in Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.

Yes, men joined in the outrage over the rape and murder of Jill Meagher and even organized many of the marches. But without a public conversation that discusses issues of male rape of women, then no amount of peace marching will curb the numbers of women raped and murdered by men.