The rape EDUCATION conundrum

In our attempts to end victim shaming, we have ended up silencing and shooting down anyone who suggests that we could be teaching risk awareness to our girls.

It is going to take time to change our entire society.

It is going to take time, to raise a generation of men who do not see women's bodies as their personal playthings.

There are quite a lot of steps we need to take before we even get to the point where baby boys will not be born into a culture that views women as holes to fuck.

Until then we are fighting within the confines of our current existence. And those confines mean that we have to approach the issue from both sides.

1) teaching boys to question the paradigm
2) teaching girls risk prevention strategies

A few months ago I read this account of a man's experience at a workshop on preventing gender based violence. The men were asked what they do to protect themselves from being raped or sexually assaulted. 


Cue silence.


Then the women were asked the question.
Every single woman raised her hand.

• always travel in pairs
• don't run at night
• carry your keys between your nuckles
• always cover your drink 
• only order drinks in bottles with the lid
• ride in the conductors carriage on the train
• pretend to be talking on the phone if you are walking somewhere empty 
• cross the street to avoid men (especially if they look drunk)

Their responses took several minutes.

Reading the things the women said resonated strongly with me. They are all things I do, or have done. They are the epitome of the #YesAllWomen campaign, and honestly, reading them made me feel like crying.
 
But at the same time. I have had a post swirling around in my brain since before I read that article. A post about the ways that in our attempts to end victim shaming, we have ended up silencing and shooting down anyone who suggests that we could be teaching risk awareness to our girls.


and here it is:


It is going to take time to change our entire society.


It is going to take time, to raise a generation of men who do not see women's bodies as their personal playthings.


There are quite a lot of steps we need to take before we even get to the point where baby boys will not be born into a culture that views women as holes to fuck.


Until then we are fighting within the confines of our current existence. And those confines mean that we have to approach the issue from both sides.


1) teaching boys to question the paradigm
2) teaching girls risk prevention strategies


Eventually, we won't have to. Eventually a girl will be able to wear whatever she wants, go to a party and sleep on her mate's couch without fear. Without being raped. Without her character and integrity being questioned. Because eventually we will live in a world where all men have grown up in a society where women's bodies are unquestioningly their own. Where women's bodies are not used to sell everything and anything - constantly dehumanised and sexualised. Where no man thinks that a woman is "asking for it" for simply existing. Where men have control over their desires, and "manliness" is not linked to sexual conquest.

But until that time comes?


We actively teach children risk prevention in crossing the street or bullying prevention, or stranger awareness. We teach both adults and children risk prevention for the internet - spotting scams, keeping your personal info safe etc. 

In fact when you look at what we do to try to curbe pedophila and child abductions - it is almost entirely focused on skilling children with risk prevention tactics even thought the burden to stop pedophilia and trafficking should never have to fall on children. 
 
But that's what we do. We teach them the correct names of their anatomy, talking openly about sex and bodies, talking about touches that make you feel strange and why you souldn't keep secrets. We restrict them from going on sleepovers, teach them not to friend people they haven't met in person, not to accept lifts from strangers, or help an adult they don't know look for something, to go to public toilets in pairs. 


It is all about minimising their chances of being in a situation where they might become a victim. 


What's more, whilst the child, with their incomplete brain development or via grooming may blame themsleves - we adults would never blame a child for being molested. 


We would also never claim that teaching risk management was victim blaming, or focusing on the victim and what they "could have done" "if only they were more careful" 


WIth kids, when we teach risk managament it's "empowering". When a product comes out that can help keep them safe, it's "vital" and "all parents should know about it". We have workshops in schools that teach them to look out for themselves and understand risk. We make videos of scaring teens straight. 


With women, we shoot down anyone who suggests risk management strategies as "victim blaming"


now, I fully understand that these stratergies are by no means a gurantee of safety. 
They aren't with kids either. But we still teach them. We still see the need to do something, knowing that we can't erase all the pedophiles from existence.


We have to find a blance between teaching our kids to "be careful" and wrapping them up in cotton wool. We have to take any steps we can to help them stay safe, because we don't know how to stop people from becoming pedophiles.


With rape, we have that advantage. We can fight for a world where women are seen as equal, as full people, as more than a mans plaything, holes to get off in. We are fighting for that world. 


but it won't happen overnight.
It won't even happen in one generation. 


We can make a hell of a big impact in one generation, but we won't erase it for good, untill we have dealt with all of the underlying issues (violence, power, control, sexual entitlement, dehumanisation and comodification of women's bodies, porn/prostitution etc etc), and that is going to take decades. 


In the mean time, we need stop gaps. 
We need things that women can do to reduce their risk. 
We need things that good men can do to reduce womens risk
We need things that society and government can do to higlight the issues




This doesn't mean we don't recgonise that the person in the wrong is the perpatrator. 
This doesn't mean we are victim blaming. 


This doesn't mean we should live in a world where women feel they can't go out alone, or run at night, any more than we should live in a world where kids can't have sleepovers or go to the park without a parent. 


One day, we hopefully will have a world where all women can live their whole lives without being sexually assaulted, or even living in fear of sexual assault. 


One day we will live in a world where the smeminar on preventing gender based violence won't even need to exist, and if it did exist and the question "what do you do to prevent rape" was asked, everyone, men, women, and children would all be able to say "nothing" because  it's never been something anyone needs to worry about.


But until then. 


We have to look at both sides.