Carrie Bickmore’s Reaction to her Viral Letter

In a heartfelt open letter, Carrie Bickmore wrote down her thoughts on the country’s epidemic surrounding Violence Against Women. Rather than reading her words, she asked her co-host Tommy Little to present them on their national drive show, as having a male’s voice made Carrie believe that “it might mean more people will listen”.

Overnight, the now viral video reached over 3 Million people on Instagram, with the transcript reading as:

It’s taken me days to work out what to say about the crisis that our country is in at the moment. Not because I don’t have things to say about the abhorrent number of women dying every week in our country by the hands of a man but because I no longer know what to say because it feels like we are yelling into the abyss. 

We are exhausted. 

Not only do we have to spend our life planning what time of the day to run, what road to walk down, what clothes not to wear, what carriage of the train to get on, which hand to carry our keys in… not only do we have to sleep in fear of a possible man outside, or the man inside, or the taxi driver, the Uber driver, a former partner, a current partner, a man we’ve never met, we now have to be the ones to fix the issue too. 

No, not all men are monsters, but we live in fear of the ones that are, we change our behaviour to account for the bad men, not the good ones, because the risk is too high for us not to.

To the good men out there, do something more, just NOT killing us is not enough, do something.

If 32 people were killed by a terrorist we would take immediate action. If 32 men in Lycra were killed riding their bikes on a Sunday morning… laws would be drawn up overnight to stop it happening again. 

Do something to help us women. You literally wouldn’t be here without us. Stop talking about it. Do something. What we are asking for is not too much. We are simply asking to have the same basic right as you. The right to live. To be safe.  

To the men who want control, the men who can’t handle rejection, the men who think the law doesn’t apply to them, to the men who thing they can intimidate, manipulate, coerce. To the men who can’t regulate their emotions, can’t act with respect, your time is up. 

To the PM… do something.  We shouldn’t have to march to draw attention to this issue. You know what the issue is. Please do something more and now.

Governments stop building another freeway for a moment … build a safer future for our daughters.

This is not political.

This is not a matter of opinion. 

The facts speak for themselves.

Every 4 days a woman in Australia is violently killed at the hands of a man. 

Last year the government set a target to reduce the number of women killed by their partners by 25 percent annually, instead deaths have INCREASED by nearly 30 percent in 2023. Don’t reduce the number by 25 percent or 50 percent… how about make it so NO women are killed by their partners.

Stop censoring a nipple on Instagram, instead, censor the views of misogynistic violent men online, start believing women when they say their scared, listen to the stories of those who have experienced violence first hand, increase funding for those offering the frontline services, like crisis centres, safe housing and support services, give them sustained funding so they can spend their time HELPING women not lobbying for their next round of funds, don’t allow violent offenders the chance to offend again,

I don’t know… I absolutely do not have the answer… but there so are many groups out there who spend their life working in this area… they know some of the answers, listen to them.

If you think women are becoming shrill, think again, if you think we are being dramatic, think again, if you think we are sensationalising the issue, think again, we are SCARED and we are asking, PLEADING, for help. 

Do something.

And stop killing us.