The poll listed 10 different strategies women use to try to avoid harassment, from avoiding parks or public transport to taking a chaperone or even failing to attend work, school or college all together. A quarter of the women polled had changed their travel route and 28% had prepared to use an everyday object, such as keys or an umbrella, as a weapon.
What is worse is that society encourages women to do these things. It regularly reinforces the message that it is women’s responsibility to keep themselves safe, not men’s responsibility not to harass or assault them. We see it in newspaper articles that emphasise a rape victim’s clothing or behaviour, implying the attack might never have happened if only she had taken more precautions. We see it in celebrity “warnings” to young women to avoid rape by not drinking, not wearing the wrong thing, not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because, the assumption goes, rape is a shadowy, inevitable force out there waiting for silly women who walk into its path, not the deliberate act of an individual criminal. We see it in police campaigns that tell women to avoid “becoming a victim of rape” by doing things that are legal, instead of telling men not to become rapists by breaking the law.
hmmm
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