athena25

My mother always used to imply that you had to be wary of everyone on the streets because if a potential attacker managed to be within about five feet of you, you were essentially done for. It has taken me a long time to realise how wrong-headed and unhelpful this assumption is. It implies that every male has an unshakable will to do harm.

This got me thinking (after I'd kicked myself repeatedly for *not* knowing about Reclaim The Night beforehand, although I'm not sure whether I'm totally keen on their all-women approach, I like multi-gendered approaches to gender-specific problems, let's get boys onboard with this thing).

I very rarely get scared walking by myself. This might be because I am unaware and ignorant of the Terrible Dangers that lurk on London's streets. Or it might be because there really isn't any danger. However, a lot of women I know are frightened, and that fear, whether justified or not, is very real. I'm actually less interested in the whether women are physically weaker or not, because I think that is a secondary problem (still a problem, though), it's the perceived threat of violence that causes the fear, rather than any assessment of whether or not one could deal with it if it occurs. Because actual violence is somewhat different. It doesn't matter who is stronger in a fight where they have a knife and I don't. Or a gun. That's got nothing to do with my gender as to whether I am more or less threatened. 

I'm interested in why women feel less safe than men. Why are women scared? And what can we do about it.

(WARNING - This is long and angry and it might trigger some folk)

I'm not sure that Kung Fu for everyone with two X chromosomes is neccesarily a practical response (yeah, you heard me, Violence NOT the answer, make a note in your diary, folks), although if it makes people feel safer then that can only be a good thing. That's just medicating the symptom, not dealing with the cause. Which is that we are made to believe it's unsafe, we are indoctrinated, whether well-intentioned or no, into believing that the world is just somehow more dangerous to women than to men, and that we should do things to ourselves to protect themselves from this terrible, violent world.

Fuck that noise.

I should not have to arm myself with ninja techniques to leave the house. I should not have to think about what I am wearing to "be safe" on public transport. I should be able to go where I want, and do what I want, looking however I want, without any sort of social implication that *somehow* it is my responsibility to not-get-stabbed. Or raped.

Because that's really what it is about, isn't it? When someone talks about the safety of women on the street, they don't mean safe from shootings, stabbings or the wolf whistles of builders. They mean rape. They mean a world in which every man you don't know you should cross the street to avoid, in which every sip of a martini is a sliding scale of accountability, in which, because the statistics for reporting and conviction are so depressing you'd think there was an active and well funded campaign to shove it all under the carpet.

I can get extraordinarly angry about this topic. From the pathetic neanderthal attitudes of judges and others in the public view to the embarassing lack of resources for understanding the scope of the problem and tackling it in a constructive and grown-up fashion. From the fact that, alone of all crimes, there is an unwritten, yet very obvious, onus on the victim to prove that a crime took place at all. Because for some reason we, as a society, cannot comprehend the simple formula that rape is not sex. It is assault. And yet, there does not seem to be such a difficulty in picturing male rape as assault. Just female rape. It's "difficult", it's "complex" - the woman knew the man beforehand, she was wearing a revealing top, she had a few drinks and made a few comments. So? If I got stabbed there would have been no question of whether I had been "asking for it" even if I had been screaming bloody murder at my attacker, had consumed my own bodyweight in gin and was wearing a bikini. No-one wants to be stabbed. That is obvious. Everyone can see that. But in the case of rape, there is a social decision not to see. 

And because of this blindness, because of the perceived "difficulties" and "complexities" the crime is mitigated, watered down, reduced to something that it is not. So the treatment for the fear is left to those who suffer from it. If you want to feel safe walking the streets, you need to do something about it yourself. It seems to be that the main course of action is for women to alter their lives in order to avoid rape. To take "sensible precautions". As if such a thing existed. As if each inch of leg showing was somehow an increased threat level. 

I'm not saying that there is no such thing as personal responsibility. Of course there is. But it shouldn't be touted as the main way to reduce the occurance of the crime. Prevention is good, sure. But who are we trying to prevent from doing what? Surely we should attempt to prevent people from raping women, rather than scaring women to death in the belief that they will stay indoors and therefore, never be raped.

Or do anything. At all.

I think I prefer cure to prevention.

EDIT for correction of genetic make-up