Safety in numbers

I grew up in the city. When I was a kid, I was constantly reminded by nervous parents to stay in touch, be home before dark and avoid isolated routes. Constantly reminded that, as a girl, I was vulnerable.

My most important lesson from the self-defence classes provided by my school came at home, when I realized none of the techniques my 13- year-old self learned would be at all effective on my dad, a grown man.

My most important lesson, as I walked home from school or work in the evenings, came when strange men would ask me to smile at them, and I learned about battles that can’t be won—do and you’re harassed, don’t and you’re heckled as you walk by, pretending to be oblivious and dying a little inside.

The city is populated with uncaring bystanders, loaded with people who would rather not get involved. In that way, I always felt living in a small community was better. Safer, somehow. That is naïve—humans are our own natural predators and where there are humans, there is always risk.

So the County learned this weekend, when a woman was brutally sexually assaulted on the street in Picton, in an area surrounded by shops and houses.

This, of course, is an anomaly. Random aggravated sexual assaults are incredibly rare. While the community should remain vigilant until the perpetrators are caught, there is no need for folks to be walking scared and hiding indoors.

But this does highlight a problem. Should women refrain from walking alone, at night and in isolated places? Should vulnerable people keep an eye over their shoulders, gripping a set of keys in a clenched fist?

Or that line everyone must have heard at some point: “She shouldn’t have been out by herself so late.” Why not?

Fear and vigilance are helpful, to a point. They keep us alert in a world that, unfortunately, contains a few bad people. But when I think of my teenaged self, walking through the city and projecting the fear my parents had bestowed upon me while dodging potential predators at every turn, I worry the most effective lesson I learned was about fear. And that’s the wrong lesson to learn.

When I was a kid, adults spent a lot of time teaching young women how to protect themselves from predators. And that makes it really easy to say she should have known better. Today, we tell girls to avoid taking naked photos of themselves (probably wise), but we don’t remind the people they send those photos to that they’re private.

We teach girls not to drink too much, how to fight back or how to avoid getting into dangerous situations, but we don’t teach everybody how to take care of each other, how to keep each other safe and happy. Because safety doesn’t come from self-defence classes, it comes in numbers.

It comes in remembering to take care of each other, to teach each other, and to put the onus of safety on all of us.

mihal@mihalzada.ca