Recently, Buzzfeed posted an article “29 Avoid Doing Because We Fear For Our Safety.”
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Like most viral articles, it triggers an emotional – if not very reason-based – response among its readers. As the title implies, the article lists common ways that women avoid harm (mostly sexual assault) on a daily basis, from not leaving drinks unattended to avoiding running at night.
While the article was probably written with good intentions, it’s severely misguided. Here’s my much shorter list of the reasons why:
1. The data doesn’t back up the paranoia.
There’s nothing wrong with victim avoidance strategies, but they shouldn’t dominate your entire life.
If we leave out prison rape, then yes, women are more likely to be victimized by rape and sexual assault. It’s reasonable that women should feel that sexual assault is a pressing danger, but statistically speaking, women are not victimized by the creep on the subway or the guy shouting things about our asses out of his car window.
Women are much more likely than men (64% compared to 40%) to know the people who violently victimize us. Look at specific crimes, women are more likely to know the person who victimizes us in all types of violent crime except for robbery.
Sexual assaults are committed by non-strangers 73% of the time!
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
Violent crime in general is also declining (as well as violent crime perpetrated by strangers against both men and women).
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t avoid crime, even if it’s less likely. RAINN, the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, has information about ways that women can go to in avoiding being victimized in public or in social situations and some of them are similar to the Buzzfeed article: awareness, not leaving your drink alone, and not walking alone.
And there’s definitely nothing wrong with taking steps to keep yourself from being victimized. But…
2. Acting like there’s a rapist behind every corner takes the focus away from identifying real behavior of predators
As RAINN points out as well, rapists aren’t “hiding in the bushes.”
The scary serial rapist on Law and Order is not a realistic picture of the person most likely to victimize you. Lots of sexual assault happens in the context of domestic abuse situations. It’s even more likely that the offender is a friend or acquaintance.
And while no sexual assault is 100 percent preventable, there are real things to look for in preventing sexual assault that are often overshadowed by unhelpful victim narratives like “I don’t leave my house at night #yesallwomen”.
3. Avoidance and passivity is not the most productive way to deal with real dangers
What bothered me most about the Buzzfeed list was the avoidance techniques that included passivity and, in my estimation, making yourself appear helpless.
Apparently women fear that they shouldn’t “talk back to harassers, because you never know if the abusive words will escalate to violent actions,” “make eye contact with strangers, because it’s seen as an invitation to approach us,” or even smile, because “smiling can be seen as tacit approval to talk or approach us.”
Leaving aside the ridiculous implication that anyone who talks to you in public may physically victimize you or that unwanted attention is tantamount to sexual assault, ignoring behavior that makes you feel uncomfortable is exactly the opposite of what you should do if you want to keep yourself from being a victim. From RAINN:
Social norms put pressure on many of us to be polite and passive. Relying on these norms, many victims of such assaults may suppress feelings of fear and discomfort in an attempt not to offend. Acquaintance assault prevention demands that we set aside such social norms and listen to our instinctual sense of fear and discomfort.
So not only is the creepy stranger who leers at you statistically unlikely to victimize you beyond that, avoiding situations, not voicing displeasure at people crossing lines, and being passive is actually counterproductive to preventing sexual assault.
If someone is doing something that makes you feel uncomfortable, don’t ignore it and look away, let them know. And also be aware that sexual assault prevention includes more than walking a friend to her car at night. It also includes being aware if her classmate, her friend, or even her boyfriend is doing things that make her uncomfortable or isolating her.
You can’t stop all rape. But there’s no rational reason to avoid normal activities out of fear that there’s a rapist hiding in every alley or subway car. Fear is rarely rational. And entertaining paranoia to make a point is actually counterproductive to preventing real dangers. So no, I don’t walk down every street afraid that I’m going to be grabbed and raped.
Women have been dealt a tough hand in some areas. Let’s not make it worse by promoting irrational fear.