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Safety Tips or Behavior Rules for Women?
Kathy Hopwood ©2011 SafeSkills®, Inc.
Everyone has heard them - the list of “Safety Tips” - most often immediately said after a highly-publicized sexual assault. Women and girls can recite them as if they are a magic poem:
• Don’t walk alone
• Don’t shop alone
• Avoid walking in dimly lit places
• Don’t travel at night
• Avoid walking near doorways, shrubs or bushes
While these “safety tips” contain some valid and logical advice, if you look closely, you will see the tips are variations on one theme: Don't be where an attacker can get you.
It would be wonderful if we could always do this, but we have to live our lives and realistically that means we are sometimes in situations where we are at slightly higher risk.
The larger problem with safety tips is that once an attack has started they no longer have any value. Safety tips also have an unintentional element of “victim blaming”. If she only follows these safety tips/behavior rules then she will be safe. If she is raped, the question becomes which rule did she fail to follow?
These tips do not empower women and girls with choices or the knowledge of how to defend themselves once an attack has started. They do not address the more common situations that women face from acquaintances or a “gradual build-up” attack that is subtle in the beginning stages.
On a social conditioning level, imagine hearing this advice over and over throughout a lifetime. Add up all the “don’ts, avoids, nevers, and always”. Imagine how limited you would feel in your life. Limiting women’s lives does not make us safe.
When a man is robbed, mugged or assaulted, he is not given the litany of safety tips to follow. No one ever says to a man, “always go shopping with a friend”. He is encouraged to “take care of himself”. He is expected to know how to defend himself and even defend other people.
Women and girls are not attacked because of what we wear, where we go, or who we relate to. We are attacked because the rapist has decided to attack someone. He could be a total stranger, an acquaintance or the person you are in a relationship with. He has made the decision to force someone against her will. The individual who decides to cause harm to another human being is the one to blame.
Certainly there are some prevention strategies that can decrease the possibility of being selected. However, these “safety tips” are not magical solutions that guarantee safety. When assessing this type of advice, I suggest that you incorporate the information that works with your approach to living. Most importantly, you must know that once an attack starts, by a stranger or acquaintance, you need to immediately switch to another way of thinking and take action to be able to stop, escape or survive the attack.
Personal safety is something that we can all create within ourselves. That knowledge is a real safety tip!