IIt started with a crossbow. In July, Carol Hunt and her two daughters, Louise and Hannah, were killed in their family home in Hertfordshire. When Hannah was found, she was reportedly still alive, with a crossbow bolt lodged in her chest. Louise’s ex-boyfriend Kyle Clifford was arrested in connection with the murders but remains in hospital.

Three weeks later, three young girls – Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar – were stabbed to death in Southport. The children were doing yoga and dancing to Taylor Swift songs when they died. An 18-year-old man has been charged.

This month, nurse Alberta Obinim was killed in a knife attack in Greater Manchester. Her husband and 17-year-old daughter were in a critical condition. 24 hours earlier, Alberta had been dancing with friends in church. The man arrested was said to be “known” to the victims.

I could list many more women and girls allegedly killed by men in recent months, but there are too many to fit on this page. This has been Britain’s summer of male violence, when headlines about women being killed were as commonplace as news of the Olympics and the rain.

It’s not just the scale of the femicides we’ve witnessed recently that makes us seem different, but the fact that we’re even aware of them. Perhaps it’s the tragically young age of some of the victims, but the horrors of this summer have been brought home in a way that violence against women and girls rarely does.

When I read the Guardian’s report on the 50 women allegedly killed by men in Britain this year, I was shocked not only by the destructiveness of the lives taken prematurely, but also by how little I had heard about them before. These women met brutal ends, and most were barely mentioned on their local newspaper’s website. In an age of breaking news, the stories become even more sensational, but we are still better able to ignore them – a dead woman’s face next to pop-up ads for online casinos.

When a woman is killed by a man, it’s basically a “dog bites man” story. It’s so common, so predictable, that it’s generally considered barely worth mentioning. When it’s reported, the men are often excused – those tragic cases of girlfriends stabbed in “crimes of passion” or mothers smothered to death by “loving sons.” The conclusion is clear: violence is somehow a natural part of masculinity, and there are certain things women do that mean they “crave it.”

Even the few deaths that have made national headlines in recent months have quickly been marginalised. In the days following the Southport killings, the government and media spent their time talking not about the murder of three beautiful children, but about the unrest of the far right. These days, when you click on news of a murdered woman on social media, the comments beneath the story are often the same – not concern for the victim, but “what race is the perpetrator?” This kind of response is clearly racist, rooted in the white supremacist idea of ​​protecting “our women”, but it also serves to distort and erase the threat of violent misogyny. The rape and murder of women is still somehow about men’s feelings.

When news of a woman’s fatal injury comes to light, police rush to calm the situation and reassure the public that it is an “isolated incident.” But that’s not entirely true. Male violence – whether it’s domestic violence, stranger assault, or terrorism – is not a case of a few black sheep or a rare isolated event. It is systemic, the result of thousands of small and large moments that teach men to hate and women to fear.

The reason this summer’s spate of murders resonates with many of us is that they are both shocking and familiar. Women can associate the everyday humiliations and stresses – the catcalls, the flashing of headlights in parks, the groping on public transport – with the stuff of nightmares. This is neither hysteria nor an overreaction. There is evidence that men who commit murder, even as a terrorist act, often have a history of “lesser” crimes such as stalking or domestic violence.

The rape and murder of Sarah Everard by Metropolitan Police Officer Wayne Couzens in 2021 was widely seen as a turning point in the fight against violence against women. Three years on, it’s not that nothing has changed; in some ways, we’re regressing. ‘Incel’ culture and Andrew Tate-style misogyny appear to be radicalising young men online. Rape victims wait up to four years before they can appear in court, and most never receive justice. According to a recent Ipsos poll, Gen Z men and boys are more likely than baby boomers to think feminism is harmful.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s reported willingness to consider declaring misogyny a form of extremism is progress. But counterterrorism strategies that disproportionately target people of colour are not a panacea. Tackling the epidemic of male violence will require far-reaching societal change. This includes teaching boys more about consent and warning them about misogyny online, funding women’s refuges and services that are short on cash, and radically improving policing and prosecutions for rape, domestic violence and stalking.

But first, we need to encourage the belief that all this matters. As a society, we decided long ago that it was inevitable that an average of two women would be killed each week. We also tacitly agreed that it was up to women to change their behavior – to stop jogging in the dark, to stop telling friends where they were on a date – not to violent men.

If nightmares plague women, it is because we are all too aware that they are nightmares from which other women have not woken up. As summer draws to a close and the days grow shorter, I am reminded of those final moments before the victims’ lives turned grim. Little girls who were supposed to be back in school next week are now lying in their graves. There is nothing natural about this.

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words via email for consideration for publication in our letters section, please click here.