Mollie Tibbetts was many things, a Hawkeye, a daughter, a volunteer and much more. She was also a runner who never came home.
In the wake of her murder many women are questioning themselves as they lace up their shoes. During this hour of Talk of Iowa, we’ll talk about what Mollie Tibbetts’ murder tells us about our culture, the risks girls and women face and what we can and should do to make our world a safer place.
Rehka Basu, a columnist for the Des Moines Register; penned an article asking readers to consider Tibbetts' death an act of misogyny, not a failure of the country's immigration system.
"I also know that as soon as word came out that he was possibly in this country illegally, it was going to kick up a huge reaction on the part of the right and people who wanted ot use that fact for political gain," Basu says. "To me the issue is so clear cut. It's one of violence against women. It's about misogyny. It's about the sense in general in culture in our society of male entitlement.... His sexual advances were rejected, and apparently this is what triggered her death."
"Why are we so unwilling to call it for what it is?" she asks.
To start this hour of Talk of Iowa, Basu talks with host Charity Nebbe. Kelly Teeselink, a trail runner and Executive Director of Girls on the Run of Eastern Iowa; Annette Lynch, a Co-Founding Director of the Center for Violence Prevention at the University of Northern Iowa; and Cody Howell, a Violence Prevention Specialist at the Women's Resource and Action Center at the University of Iowa, also join the conversation.
