Inappropriate Jokes about Oscar Pistorias ... or rather Reeva Steenkamp

Okay I know this piece may well get labeled "humourless feminazi" ... but tough.

I was disgusted to see this image on facebook earlier, shared by someone I hadn't expected to do so.

Let's bring this away from the abuser for a moment to the murder victim, his abuse victim.

She didn't go to the toilet, she hadn't locked herself in the loo for a bit of privacy while she peed. She ran into the bathroom in fear of her life. Knowing that the person she loved, the person she was now fleeing from had it in his power to kill her.

This fear is NOT a joke, it is no more funny than a rape joke. It is very real.

According to Women's Aid UK 2 women a week are killed by a current or former partner as a direct result of an abusive relationship.

Each time they physically and sexually abuse you, that fear is there in the back of your throat. But you're conditioned to believe it is your fault, either you're overreacting or you caused the abuser to act as they did, or you're imagining things. That is how the abuse becomes more intense, however it is as you begin to see the reality, to break free of the abusers constructed reality that you are in the most danger. This is what happened with Reeva Steenkamp. She was beginning to question his reality, she told him his behaviour scared her.

With me the way my abuser (who also happened to be my father) reinforced his control was by out of the blue holding a garden fork to my throat. No preceding argument, no negativity, just a pleasant summers evening gardening, we'd had a bonfire of garden waste and had been extinguishing it for the evening. The sun had almost gone down, there was just the embers from the fire. I will never forget the glow from them on his face as I turned around and he held that fork at my throat. His face was contorted into a dark grin, his eyes told me he could kill me or not and barely care. I knew he would have simply concocted some story as he had done before that I'd lost my temper and went for him, and in my rage hadn't seen the fork ... worse is knowing how few people would have questioned that version of events. Standing there, just knowing there was no fighting back, as the fork was right against my throat so to do so would, in his eyes, have made the decision for him.

I understand the fear that Reeva Steenkamp felt, I understand the sheer mind numbing, horror and the incomprehension of the situation even as it's happening.

So no this is NOT something to joke about this is happening to someone right NOW - as I write this, as you read this, somewhere there is someone fleeing or fighting for their life, exactly as Reeva Steenkamp did. And it is possible, even probable, that their abuser will succeed and kill them, or succeed and rape them.

It isn't funny, it isn't clever, it isn't witty, it is taking away from what this woman faced at the end of her life, the very real fear that, that son of a bitch put her through when he murdered her. The very real fear every abusive bastard (and bitch) put their victims through. And each time they murder their victims or push their victims to suicide that fear is simply indescribable.

I would hope that each and every person who sees this 'joke' and any like it posts this blog or one like it and brings the reality of just why these 'jokes' are NOT jokes and are NOT funny.

That woman deserves better - keep it about Reeva NOT that disgusting excuse for a person her abuser. And NEVER about making her end of life fear into a fucking internet meme 'joke' ...