EngineerHer

I know, you’re wondering what the shooting of Jews celebrating Hannukah has to do with a women in engineering blog.

Well, it comes back to my feminism being nothing if it is not intersectional. And that means standing up for women of faiths other than my own, as well as women of colour other than my own, women of sexuality other than my own… you get the idea.

Because it all starts the same way.

It’s the “off-colour jokes”. The little comments, the small digs. It’s the “sure he means no harm”. “They don’t know the difference”.

It ends in death.

It is clear, to me anyway, that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have been on the rise for the last few years.

Attacks are becoming ever more frequent.

While I have my problems with the UK and the great British public, they don’t tend to turn to guns to sort out their differences. Anymore. Let’s put colonialism aside for a moment. The fact that there were two people killed in Manchester recently – with a knife and car – had shock waves running through the country.

Australia have a similar approach to guns and gun control. This sort of thing doesn’t happen on a regular basis there.

I don’t have solutions. But I do have some warning signs:

• no more than someone equating one woman’s actions to all women, equating one Jew’s actions or one Muslim’s actions to everyone of that faith is a warning sign
• ditto people from certain areas of the world, i.e. all Asians, all Africans
• Comments like “well, what else do you expect when…”

I’m tired and I don’t really want to get into a debate over rights and wrongs. People are entitled to practice their faith as they choose, so long as it doesn’t impact on other people. And honestly, as an Irish person, I’m not standing behind anyone who claims lighting candles is an issue!

This attack is wrong.

The rise in both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is wrong.

No more than it’s up to us to fix the lack of women in STEM, it’s up to us to fix this as well.

Governments can only do so much.