The murder of Monika Ghurde in Goa last week had more than one victim. As news of the gruesome act spread, peppered with many salacious details, single urban women under fire from well meaning friends and family, became collateral damage. It recalled the murders of lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha and artist Hema Upadhyay under similar circumstances, murders reeking of revenge and power, ostensibly a result of their liberal lifestyles and devil may care attitudes. Fathers who worried about their single daughters living by themselves exhorted them to be careful. Women who lived alone— divorced, single, separated, widowed—started conversations they never wanted to. How to look out for themselves and each other? How to be more careful?

Is there ever a time, though, that women are not careful? Armed with cellphones programmed to speed dial, keys handy at all time, pepper spray on shoot mode, looking over their shoulder at frequent intervals, they are on high alert all the time. The fear quotient peaks after sunset, as if the darkness of the night, not the darkness of the heart, is responsible for the danger that looms. Being careful they seek the company of other people whenever possible, take cabs instead of public transport even when they can’t afford it, and text the number to a friend. Fear is their natural instinct, deeply programmed in their genes, a friend that they hope will keep them safe.

And yet these women who have elevated carefulness to a finely honed craft, are told their efforts are not enough. Eternal vigilance means not just changing their routines but their very inner selves. Because Pallavi’s and Monika’s were not crimes of passion, but acts of revenge by men who felt slighted, when the power equations shifted. When women, a species they had always controlled, had the temerity to order them about.

Urban women do this every day without thought. It comes naturally to them, an aggressiveness and loud voice born out of confidence in their abilities and out of necessity to deal with men who would otherwise ignore their instructions. They loudly berate the invariably late television technician or water purifier maintenance man for wasting their working day. The idea of a woman at work is of course a concept entirely alien to the said man, for whom a woman’s place is in the home. They fight with the rickshaw driver publicly, sometimes with expletives thrown in, when he overcharges or takes a wrong route, which is often. They rage at the watchman for sleeping on duty, not ready to accept the fact that all watchmen consider sleep as one of the perks of a boring, underpaid job.

To other women, these rants seem completely reasonable, a professional telling another to up their game, get the job right, or leave. However, to the men it is directed at, men with fragile egos already bruised by class difference, men forced to bear the brunt of the rages of their male superiors without any avenue of retaliation, these are ravings of what they imagine is a mad woman. To them the confidence the woman seeks to project is arrogance. And to the men in her life, well meaning, but with perhaps greater empathy towards the fragile masculinity of the male help she rages at, it is yet another opportunity to counsel carefulness.

Being careful now involves more than a change in routine. It is not the darkness outside that she has to worry about anymore, but the one within. It means questioning her very sense of self, accepting that her actions, not society’s diktats are at fault. It means changing the core of her character, not for anything as lofty as self-actualization, but to cater to the patriarchal mindset of those she fears could be her aggressors. Safety lies now in curbing her natural anger and flashing a demure smile. Safety lies in letting ignorance be, not pushing back against a particular errant individual, for the entire system is rigged against her. Safety lies in not holding a man under her accountable for his unprofessional conduct, never complaining, sacking or even threatening to do so.

For these men hold the trump card. They know where she lives.

What Monika and Pallavi had in common, apart from their unconventional relationship choices (Monika was separated, Pallavi had a live-in boyfriend), is the fact that they dared to have a voice, to complain against their murderers. That was their undoing, for the men they complained about were men unused to women like them. Independent women, who came home when they wanted, spoke as they pleased and slept with whomever they chose. Modern women who had managed to shrug off the cloak of patriarchy in their own families, but could hardly wall themselves off from the rest of society where they were seen as outliers. This particular type of woman deserved revenge, thought these men, and meticulously planned it.

Monika’s attacker lay in wait for her on the terrace for two whole days, before entering her flat and extracting what he thought was his due. Pallavi’s murderer brought a knife fifteen days in advance, and on the night of the killing, staged a power outage to steal her keys and gain access to her home. These were no crimes of passion, committed in a burst of anger, but well thought out attacks where these women paid for their freedom with their lives. And their murderers were no hardened criminals or serial offenders, but victims of a toxic masculinity channeled to uncontrollable rage.

The honour killings of women for transgressing family and clan norms come from this same mindset of women not staying within the prescribed boundaries. As do the many acid attacks that are acts of revenge by insecure men for rejections, real or perceived. The perpetrators see their actions as righteous and bear no traces of guilt. But the scars these cause the women both physical, as in the case of the victims of acid attacks, and mental for the ones that survive, never go away. Scars that remind the woman that it is her actions, not that of her attackers, her being her natural self, that is the root cause of her trauma.

It is all very well in all these cases to say that the victims must not be blamed, that clothes or lifestyles don’t matter, but scores of women changing their very character, means that in the end the onus is upon them. Drilling it into women again and again to be careful, every time incidents like the ones above occur, is how our victim blaming culture works. In an ideal world, a rape prevention campaign would be aimed at rapists, rather than exhorting already hyper vigilant women to be more careful. It would mean teaching men about consent, about raising them without entitlement, never ever saying men will be men.

Instead women are advised to speak softly. Smile more, for they look better when they smile, they are told, better a not so subtle code for non-threatening. And so women are forever prepared to be pleasant even in the face of danger. Making infinite adjustments to make others feel comfortable. Smiling through their rage at the refrigerator repairman who was supposed to arrive hours ago. Overcompensating the lazy security guard with a Diwali bonus bestowed with cheery greetings. It is a posturing that they are getting used to, always ready to perform with the strength and skill born out of experience.

Giving up the resistance of their younger selves and staying silent may appear to be the easier choice, but it is not. While it may lend an illusion of safety, women learn to hate themselves for what they see as their complicity in perpetuating patriarchal attitudes, for they know deep down that their silence is endorsement.

As they start conversations with each other, identifying themselves as a heterogeneous group of unsafe women, checking up on each others’ whereabouts, as phones ping in the darkness of the night flashing Uber driver details and safety message updates, woman are losing more than just the justifiable anger they are entitled to. With each ping comes a corresponding loss—of spontaneity, of freedom, of the very concept of carefreeness.