In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the body of a young woman was found on a Melbourne soccer field between Royal Parade and Princes Park Drive at Carlton North.
On Thursday afternoon, the victim was identified as 22-year-old comedian Eurydice Dixon. The night she died, Dixon had performed a comedy set at the Highlander Bar in Melbourne, leaving the venue just after 10.30pm.
Police allege that between the hours of 11pm and when she was found, Dixon was attacked and killed by a man she did not know.
In response to the media coverage of the murder, comedian Meshel Laurie has posed a powerful question on Twitter.
“When I was a 22-year-old comedian, I constantly walked home alone from gigs in the middle of the night because I couldn’t afford tram fare, let alone taxis,” she wrote.
“Should we allow murderous rapists and poverty to ensure we’re locked inside for our entire lives?”
In a follow up tweet, Laurie added the unpaid gigs gave her the skills for the career she has now, but “the poverty and the inherent danger that brings into women’s lives were an unavoidable part of it”.
There’s been an overwhelming response to Laurie’s tweet, and some people have shared their own stories of walking home alone late at night:
The Australian comedy community has also rallied together, offering to pay for Ubers for young comedians to get home safely after gigs.
The hashtags #illuberyou and #eurydicedixon are trending on Twitter:
Top Comments
I am a father of a young daughter and I worry for her safety. I am sick and tired of how our society and the legal system is protecting criminals, murderers, druggies, child molesters and rapists. All they do is talk about the human rights of the perpetrator. How about the victims? Why can't they introduce the death penalty like in Singapore? You don't need to execute many. Just two or three executions and all this will stop. Why? because the death penalty is a huge deterrent.
Or perhaps instead of the women being locked inside, there should be a curfew on men? No man permitted outside after dark unless accompanied by a woman. (Of course I’m not serious. Maybe a little bit.)
Great idea. Would support.
I assume we are reading the same Facebook feeds.
I saw someone bring that option up.
Bit hard to be a late night comedian if you want half the potential audience on curfew.
An alternative is that people (all genders) with drug convictions, addictions, documented mental /social problems prone to violent episodes/threats, people with a genetic conditon/makeup that craves violence, criminals with assault and sex offense type histories (yes even rehabilitated) have curfews -- male or female.
A lot of people exist within our society who are enormously dysfunctional and potentially dangerous. Instead of giving complete freedom or totally institutionalising them, perhaps impose some limits to avoid offending where the dark is such an inviting time to do such things.
No, haven’t been reading much FB. I guess a lot of women are just sick of being told to take precautions and protect ourselves. We need to stop blaming women for being attacked, and look at who’s doing the attacking.