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Women running for our lives

Woman Running

Female runners know the value of freedom. We crave it as we pound the pavement or weave through a wooded trail. For the precious duration of a run, we can be entirely inside our bodies, moving to the rhythm of our breath, feeling the extension of the muscles in our legs and torso. Our lives as women, which are hemmed in and constrained in so many ways, feel unfettered as soon as we lace up our sneakers.

We know the value of freedom, too, because every female runner, no matter the circumstance, thinks about her safety before a run. “Running While Female” is what feminist blogger Karen Cordano called it in a 2014 Huffington Post piece. The phrase encapsulates the fact that female runners harbor an inherent mindfulness with them while on a run.

In a span of nine days, three young women in three different states were murdered while running. These were afternoon runs. They were routine, as all three women were avid runners. At least one of them was also violently sexually assaulted.

On July 30, 31-year-old Alexandra “Ally” Brueger was shot four times in the back while she took a 10-mile run close to her home in Rose Township, Michigan. Three days later, on August 2, 30-year-old Karina Vetrano was brutally raped and murdered—the struggle against the perpetrator apparent on her body, clutched weeds still in her hands, signaling her fight—while taking her “usual run” in the late afternoon through a park near Howard Beach in Queens, New York. And on August 7, 27-year-old Vanessa Marcotte was found murdered—her body covered with burns because it was set on fire by her assailant—in the woods a half mile from her mother¹s house in Princeton, Massachusetts. Police are investigating whether she was sexually assaulted.

While the three murders appear unconnected, their quick succession and brutality have sent shock waves through the female running community throughout the United States.

“It absolutely has created fear,” Kathy Ioannou, leader of the Brooklyn chapter of the running group She Runs This Town, told the New York Times in response to the news of the murders. “We don’t feel comfortable running alone. We’re frightened.”

There are no federal statistics on violence against women runners, but, nevertheless, we know the stories, and we take precautions. We always keep our eyes open, and we deliberately tailor our running routes along populated areas where we believe our safety will not be jeopardized. At the same time, we know that populated areas bring about another series of potential threats. “I’m already doing everything I’m willing and able to do to stay safe on a run,” Meghan Kita writes at Runner’s World. “But that hasn’t stopped men from honking at me, catcalling me, or following me in their cars. And if those men are disrespectful enough to honk, catcall, or follow, how am I to know that they won’t grab, rape, or kill?”

“Be careful” is what my wife says to me every time I head out for a run. As she says this, my habit is to slip my wedding ring onto her finger—I don’t like wearing jewelry while exercising, but I also do it for protection, almost as a kind of insurance. If anything were to happen to me, she, not some random assailant, would have my ring. Because “Be careful” means “Be vigilant.” In 2004, a 21-year-old woman was murdered in the New York City neighborhood park where I go running. Her murder has not been solved, and her death lingers through the park’s canopied trails along the Hudson River. “Be careful” is the ghost. Everyone in the neighborhood knows the story. When I run through the park, I keep my headphones in but the music off as a precautionary measure so that I can hear the sound of any unwanted approach.

Internalized mechanisms like these that cause women to abbreviate the ethos of running itself—the presumed freedom of both body and mind, the quiet, the intensity—solely because they are women exemplify the pervasiveness of sexism. When we talk about sexism as a type of systemic oppression, we often think of institutions: of schools, workplaces, and doctor’s offices. We may even think of the sports world, with women being paid less, and given less media airtime, than their male counterparts. Runners in particular will remember the story of Kathrine Switzer, who in 1967 became the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon, after she cunningly submitted her entry form with only her initials so as to disguise her gender. (Roberta Gibb was the first woman to run it unofficially, in 1966.) Or at least they are able to recall the infamous black-and-white images of a woman being physically assaulted by men while she tried to run a race. Even one of the marathon’s directors, Jock Semple, attacked her. Switzer told Makers that Semple grabbed her and yelled, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!” She was shaken, but determined to finish the race.

She did.

Switzer was attacked because she entered a male-only space—for 70 years the Boston Marathon prohibited women. It wasn’t until 1972 that women were officially allowed to register for the race. But her story, as well as the stories of the tragic lost lives of Brueger, Vetrano, and Marcotte, all speak to one basic fact: women’s freedom is conditional in this world. Our movement is policed by men. And our bodies, which some men believe we don’t even have the right to own, are deemed dangerous, and we are transgressive for entering spaces historically believed to be owned and controlled by men. This is true of every aspect of women’s oppression, from the “males-only” pool and the “great potty controversy” of the U.S. Senate, to the harassment, detainment, imprisonment, and killing of black women by the police.

The deaths of these three runners are a stark reminder of the reality of women’s freedom—our freedom to move, to run, to exert our bodies and test our physical strength and prowess. Running is a solitary endeavor that requires no man’s help. It is an exercise in self-embodiment, in control and bodily power. That our attempt to control our own bodies is seen as provocation—and is met with resistance and violence—signifies the limits of our freedom.

But we will not stop running.



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