The Way We Talk About Women’s Safety While Running Needs to Change

September 8, 2022

On September 6, the body of 34-year-old Eliza Fletcher—a mom, kindergarten teacher, and avid runner—was found in an abandoned duplex in Memphis, Tennessee.

The way we talk about incidents like this reveals a culture that blames women for men’s behavior and the violence men perpetrate against women. We have historically treated a lot of things that men do to women as a “women’s problem,” which women are to address by arming themselves, dressing a certain way, running at certain times, or some other action that is an implicit assumption that the violence could have been prevented by the victim.

Why must it always be a woman who is at fault, even when she is the victim? Outside