” Since I can remember, I’ve known that as a woman I am not safe. At least not as safe as a man. I’ve been taught preventive measures and though the word rape was hardly, if ever, used during these instructions, a woman knows that this is what she’s being prepared to prevent.”
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Since I can remember, I’ve known that as a woman I am not safe.

At least not as safe as a man.

I’ve been taught preventive measures and though the word rape was hardly, if ever, used during these instructions, a woman knows that this is what she’s being prepared to prevent.

These are lessons I have never heard my brother or male cousins or friends receiving. Men seem quite free to go about their business and frivolity, day or night, without fear of their safety.

I doubt many men take the same precautions women do on a regular basis, sometimes without conscious awareness.

If I have a night class and it’s dark when I leave and my car is far away, I know to walk in a group. There is safety in numbers.

If I walk alone, I know to walk fast, head up, aware of my surroundings; I know to have my keys out and ready, possibly with pepper spray or a whistle in hand; and I know to not be fiddling with my cell phone, distracted as I walk to my car.

If I go to the bar, I know to go with people I trust, never leave my drink unattended, drink responsibly and then leave with the same people I came with.

The list goes on and on.

But there are four problems with these preventative measures.

Number One: Prevention doesn’t meant protection. There are no guarantees.

Number Two: They all seem to imply that women don’t know their attackers.

We have the idea that rapists are complete strangers who jump out of dark alleys or from behind bushes or parked cars and rape women late at night, out of sight.

This does happen but no one tells us that roughly 75 percent of all rapes are committed by someone the victim knows, including classmates, friends, family members or current or ex partners.

If rapists aren’t strangers, how do we prevent rape?

What measures should we take if our pepper spray, keys, phones and our diligence to stay safe, aren’t good enough? If we go willingly with these people alone into a room because we trust them, what then?

Number Three: In the event that women do not know their attackers, that they are complete strangers, these preventative measures seem to be set-ups for blaming the victim. These are ways to protect oneself, so if she wasn’t being smart, what did she expect to happen? This is just slightly off the idioms, she was asking for it or she deserved it. Just because women, don’t take these preventive measures does not mean that they expected, asked or deserved to be raped. No woman asks or deserves this. Is it not women’s, and all people for that matter, basic human right to feel safe? To not be raped?

Number Four: All of these preventive measures are taught to women. What about men, a majority of the perpetrators? While we sit here and educate our girls on how to be safe are we educating our men about what consensual sex is? What the word no means? That they shouldn’t rape women?

I’m tired of women being taught ways to prevent something that they may have absolutely no control over. I’m angry that people think they can justify or clarify a woman’s rape based on what she did or did not do that put her in that position, and I’m sick of women being responsible for stopping rape while men are left unaccountable for their actions.

Men shouldn’t rape women. Women shouldn’t be raped. Period.

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