If you feel confident enough to challenge your bigoted uncle this Christmas, you're privileged – as the Femicide Census proves

139 women were killed this year, most by people they knew, and almost half died at the hands of a current or former partner. Many of us will be left wondering what it's like to be able to talk back to our relatives

139 women killed this year by men – but call it terrorism and you're mocked (Composite by Clive Gee/PA)

The most shocking thing about men’s lethal violence against women is that it’s not shocking at all. According to the latest Femicide Census, conducted by Women’s Aid and Karen Ingala Smith, 139 women were killed by men in 2017 in the UK alone. Of these, 76 per cent knew their killer, and 46 per cent died at the hands of a current or former partner.

This is not front page news. It has not prompted any national crisis of conscience. There is no mass soul-searching as to why so many men hate the women closest to them so much that they’d like to see them dead.

Instead, life goes on. We think it is normal, or even rare (is 139 out of a population of 66 million really that much?) To call what is happening a form of terrorism is to court ridicule, at least until your average domestic abuser happens to graduate to killing strangers en masse.

We have other things to distract us: Brexit, the Royal Family, the fall of José Mourinho. Plus there’s Christmas just around the corner. Why focus on the outliers – the nice men who “lose it”, or the “sick” ones who are nothing like the rest – at a time when families and close relationships matter most of all?

The majority of us want to feel insulated from the violence others experience. We might feel very sad about it, but to put it into any structural context – indeed, to see it as part of how our own lives and choices are shaped – takes bravery and effort that few of us want to spare.

This year, Refuge found a clever way of prompting people to think again. In a series of reversible poems, mundane, schmaltzy yuletide cliché is contrasted with what is, for far too many women and children, harsh reality. Read the poems from top to bottom and all is well:

Mum’s laid out

Our best white tablecloth

A splash of Claret infuses

Dad’s traditional punch …

Reading from bottom to top tells a different story. This is more than just fancy writing. It neatly captures the way in which myths of family togetherness cannot always be separated from rituals of abuse.

While the Femicide Census can tell us how many women have died as a result of male violence, what it can’t show is the impact said violence has on those still living beneath its shadow. There is no way of quantifying the words not said, the clothes not worn, the meals not cooked, the friends not called, the choices not taken, due to the ever-present fear of prompting another explosion.

One hundred and thirty-nine is just the tip of the iceberg. Millions of women and children live half-lives, terrified of doing anything that might lead the man of the house to “turn”. Their stories are the prequels to all those tales of lovely, quiet, harmless men who suddenly go on the rampage. No one could have predicted it, apart from the women who have long been too petrified to leave.

Calls to domestic violence helplines tend to increase around Christmas and New Year. While money worries and an increase in alcohol consumption are often held to be responsible, this doesn’t account for the gender imbalance. Women drink; women worry about money, too.

Christmas brings with it specific cultural expectations of how families should be: close, cooperative, devoted. We are surrounded by images of perfect Christmas cheer. For a hyper-controlling head of the household, any failure to meet the required standards – perhaps the turkey is not cooked correctly, perhaps your partner has embarrassed you in front of relatives you want to impress, perhaps your children are not the grateful cherubs you want them to be – may prompt an outburst of rage.

While for a privileged few, Christmas might seem like the ideal time to confront your bigoted uncle or have it out with your other side-voting in-laws, for far too many people, avoiding any form of conflict is a major priority. There will be families in which everyone knows the cues: that particular curl of the lips or clench of the hand that makes it clear there’s no turning back and that bruises are to follow.

For these families, Christmas is a time of dread, yet their stories do not make the papers, at least not until there’s another number to add to the tally of those who didn’t make it. We should be outraged, not just for those dead and dying, but at the impossible pressures brought to bear on women attempting to hold it together behind closed doors.

If you look at the Femicide Census figures and think, “it could be worse”, you are right. That is one of the worst things of all. Until we recognise the price being paid for our ignorance, we’ll never know just how much needless suffering goes into protecting that Christmas magic.