Why women have a right to be angry with men

IN the early 1980s, the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood wrote about why men fear women — they fear that women may laugh at them — and why women fear men — they fear that men may kill them. And Germaine Greer famously wrote how few women have little idea of the extent many men hate them. Nah, you might think. Surely not.

And then you read, in 2014, of a pregnant young woman being murdered most medievally — by stoning — in a city centre outside a court house. Murdered by her own family. Their reason for murdering her, said her dear old unrepentant dad, was that she married someone they didn’t want her to marry.

Oh well, that’s Over There for you. That would never happen Over Here. Except it does, of course. Constantly. Some 196 women have been murdered by their partners in Ireland since 1996 — that’s around 11 women a year. Every year for the past 18 years.