Just adding to the sentiment in the linked post, the major problem with
“advice” for women on how to stay safe from the roving bands of rapists
is that it makes them responsible if something does happen. Sure not
going out at night by yourself in relatively unsafe areas is good
advice, but it also isn’t advice an adult human can follow while also
having a fully functional existence if you live in such an area.
Basically it’s advice which says “you cannot have a normal functioning
adult life and if you do and anything happens to you we warned you!”
I heard this a lot in college, which granted was more than a decade ago now, but it always pissed me off then, too. If I cannot walk alone safely on the streets where I live, at any hour of any day, that isn’t just a problem for me. That’s a problem for everybody, and my staying inside doesn’t solve it. Giving young women a de facto curfew that makes them responsible for their own rapes if they venture out past it does nothing to solve the problem of rape, and all it does is make girls paranoid and thus less free to do what they want, which plays right into patriarchal hands.
To this day I get grief from older male acquaintances who want to walk or drive me home from work at night, and act as though I’m playing Russian Roulette if I refuse them. Simply existing as a woman in this world should not be viewed as a risk behavior. Sensible precautions I understand, I mean, I’m a big girl and I lock my doors at night. But you do get to a point where you have to take some kind of risk in walking outside your four walls and having people act as though that’s unconscionably cavalier is NOT HELPING.
A.