By Rachael Wong
Just over a week ago, devastating news emerged from across NSW. Three women were killed in separate incidents, and men in their families have been charged over their deaths. In the Blue Mountains, a mother has been charged after reportedly stabbing her three young children. Two have since died; the third remains critically injured.
The online response to these tragedies has revealed something troubling. Instead of mourning the victims, some people are arguing over which deaths are receiving more attention and whether there was more concern for the women than the children. Many appear to be reacting to headlines rather than reading the accompanying commentary discussing all four cases. Others are treating the women’s deaths as an opportunity to settle scores with feminism.
The victims disappeared behind an argument about who receives more sympathy. Our public discourse is in dire shape when the deaths of a mother, grandmother, partner and two children become a test of whose side you are on depending on the sex of the perpetrator.
The anger did not come from nowhere. For years, men have heard sweeping claims about “toxic masculinity” and been asked to take collective responsibility for violence committed by other men. Their difficulties are too often dismissed because women are assumed to be the disadvantaged sex in every setting.
In 2024, around 2,500 Australian men took their own lives: roughly seven every day and more than three in four of all suicides. That is a national emergency we rarely describe as one. Men and boys face real problems, and women are capable of grave violence. Any account that cannot acknowledge both facts deserves scrutiny.
The reaction to the Lindsay Clancy case in the United States has deepened the distrust. Clancy killed her three children. Her trial ended in a mistrial this month after eleven jurors reportedly believed she was not criminally responsible because of mental illness. Many people have asked whether a father who killed his children would have received the same benefit of the doubt or been met with the same public compassion.
It is a fair question. We should be able to ask whether our judgements change with an offender’s sex. We should also be able to take mental illness seriously without losing sight of the children or turning their deaths into a contest between mothers and fathers.
Yet an understandable objection to unfairness can become unfairness of its own. Some people now say women should not vote or hold women generally responsible for every social change they despise. Others seem so determined to correct what they see as excessive sympathy for women that they struggle to show any to women who have been killed.
Fairness must go both ways. Women should not be held responsible for every bad argument made in the name of feminism, any more than all men should be held responsible for the actions of violent men. Treating women as a single guilty class repeats the very mistake men rightly object to when it is made about them.
At Women’s Forum Australia, we speak about violence against women because it is a serious, persistent threat to women’s lives and safety. The men charged over the women's deaths must face justice if found guilty. So must the mother charged over the children’s deaths. The circumstances of each case matter. But the sex of an accused person should not determine whether we hold them accountable, just as the sex of a victim should not determine whether they receive our compassion.
I have worked alongside many good men who care deeply about women and children. I know fathers, brothers and husbands who protect and sacrifice for the people they love. Advocacy for women should never require contempt for men. Equally, valuing men should never require silence about violence against women.
Men and women are equal in dignity, though we are not identical. We depend on one another in families, friendships, workplaces and communities. Children, above all, need adults who are more interested in their welfare than in winning an argument between the sexes. A society in which men and women increasingly regard each other as adversaries will be poorer and less safe for both.
We can challenge double standards without creating new ones. We can support men in crisis and protect women in danger. We can have genuine conversations about mental illness and the root causes of family violence. We can judge offenders by what they did rather than by their sex.
The people at the centre of these stories were human beings, not symbols in an online dispute. We owe them, and each other, better.
Rachael Wong is the CEO of Women’s Forum Australia
Women’s Forum Australia is an independent think tank that undertakes research, education and public policy advocacy on issues affecting women and girls, with a particular focus on addressing behaviours and practices that are harmful and abusive to them. We are a non-partisan, non-religious, tax-deductible charity. We do not receive any government funding and rely solely on donations to make an impact. Support our work today.
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