#Metoo / "Be Safe"
So I’m sure by now you’ve all seen this #Metoo campaign that’s been circulating on social media since Sunday. For those who haven’t, it’s a campaign highlighting the sexual assault and harassment women face on a daily basis in order to shed light on just how many women experience such indecencies. Even still, the numbers are not accurate. Women, and men, have been coming forward left and right either with their stories or just in support.
I’d like to stop for a moment and stress the necessity of understanding that sharing your story publicly is never mandatory. It’s your story and as such it is your right to share or to withhold depending on your comfort levels and how vulnerable you are comfortable with being in the public sphere.
Continuing on. This campaign also brings up many topics in need of discussion such as believability, victimization, a kind of captivity through fear, and the unfortunate universality of this reality..
I posted about an experience I had some years ago and it garnered some commentary. There are two in particular I’d like to focus on. One of the comments I received was, “...should women be learning self-defense in order to combat these men who take liberties?” Another was, “Be safe.”
Both of these comments, well-meaning as the speakers of them were, put the onus on women. That is where I take issue. It should not now, nor should it ever be, my “duty” as a victim of sexual assault to have to protect myself. This is not where the problem stems. Am I the one doing the sexual assaulting? Am I the one asking for harassment as Donna Karan would have you believe? No, I’m not. So why is it being put on me to make the injustices stop? Instead of focusing on how women can prevent these attacks from happening, we need to focus as a society on how to teach men to act. Not addressing the fact that men instigate, promote, and are comfortable with these actions are the root of the issue here. It promotes cyclical behavior, not only in the initial perpetrator but in those around him. If he catcalls or threatens to touch a woman in the street because she does not return his advances to his liking, and no punishment or anything educational happens to him as a result of this, he’s going to think it’s okay. Moreover, the friends he tells about it, laughing, later, will too internalize this acceptability and that’s how we arrive at women’s anxiety at just the thought of walking past a construction crew.
I’d like to stop for a moment and stress the necessity of understanding that sharing your story publicly is never mandatory. It’s your story and as such it is your right to share or to withhold depending on your comfort levels and how vulnerable you are comfortable with being in the public sphere.
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| Courtesy of my block and yours truly |
Continuing on. This campaign also brings up many topics in need of discussion such as believability, victimization, a kind of captivity through fear, and the unfortunate universality of this reality..
I posted about an experience I had some years ago and it garnered some commentary. There are two in particular I’d like to focus on. One of the comments I received was, “...should women be learning self-defense in order to combat these men who take liberties?” Another was, “Be safe.”
Both of these comments, well-meaning as the speakers of them were, put the onus on women. That is where I take issue. It should not now, nor should it ever be, my “duty” as a victim of sexual assault to have to protect myself. This is not where the problem stems. Am I the one doing the sexual assaulting? Am I the one asking for harassment as Donna Karan would have you believe? No, I’m not. So why is it being put on me to make the injustices stop? Instead of focusing on how women can prevent these attacks from happening, we need to focus as a society on how to teach men to act. Not addressing the fact that men instigate, promote, and are comfortable with these actions are the root of the issue here. It promotes cyclical behavior, not only in the initial perpetrator but in those around him. If he catcalls or threatens to touch a woman in the street because she does not return his advances to his liking, and no punishment or anything educational happens to him as a result of this, he’s going to think it’s okay. Moreover, the friends he tells about it, laughing, later, will too internalize this acceptability and that’s how we arrive at women’s anxiety at just the thought of walking past a construction crew.
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| Yes, let's |
Whether it be sexual assault and harassment courses in the workplace, in churches or by independent organizations. Whether it be by public campaigns or taught in schools (the younger the better). Whether it simply be men calling out other men for “locker room talk.” Lessons in appropriate conduct and ensuring the safety of women from this predatory behavior is paramount. It cannot be left to women alone to learn self-defense or simply “be safe.” It should not matter solely because there is a woman somehow attached to your life via a mother, daughter, sister, wife, cousin, aunt, babysitter. It’s so, so much more than that.
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