Preventing sexual assault is different from reducing the risk that you will be assaulted. Prevention focuses on the potential perpetrator, and risk reduction focuses on the potential victim.
Truly preventing sexual assault means sending clear messages to potential perpetrators that it will not be tolerated, downplayed, or joked about, and that we as a community will react decisively if it does happen. It means talking about sexual assault and teaching everyone that sexual assault is never okay. It means informing ourselves about the issues and learning what we can do.
Risk reduction includes a wide variety of personal safety methods aimed at reducing the risk of being assaulted. It can be argued that risk reduction measures are unfair because they restrict freedom about where to go, what to wear, how to act, and what to do. They are often exclusively applied to women, and any man who does all these things would be considered paranoid.
Unfortunately, sexual violence still happens in our community, and as long as our prevention work is unfinished, certain precautions and restrictions may make people feel safer.
Sunshine Hedlund (MS in Women's Studies, 2003) wrote this to help us understand the difference between risk reduction and prevention.
experts say that the average woman
does 189 things a day to prevent
being assaulted or raped.
what would a woman do?
hold her keys in her hand, one key
protruding between her knuckles, just
in case she needs a weapon. pepper spray
on her key chain and personal alarm
in her purse. never walk alone at night, never walk
in an unknown area alone—day or night.
before getting in, look under the car
and in the back seat. cross to the other side
of the street when a man is coming
toward her. never, never make eye contact,
or did they say always make eye contact?
take self-defense class and assertiveness
training class. lock the car doors and roll
up the windows. lock the front door
and the back door. never set her drink down
in a bar or a party, and never accept a drink
from a stranger. and of course, she should
never flirt or get drunk, cause if she does
and he rapes her, she was asking for it,
she wanted it. how can we expect him
to stop himself?
how many more things seem as normal
as waking up or brushing our teeth?
experts say a man who does 189 things a day
to prevent assault would be diagnosed
paranoid schizophrenic.
but not a woman. she's being
smart, doing what she's
supposed to do.
i'm tired. tired of holding the responsibility
in the way i dress and where i walk. tired of
holding the responsibility just because i am
a woman, and that's just the way it goes.
189 things a day. 68,985 things a year,
so that i can stop the rapist from raping me?
why don't we start with the one who holds
the power, the one who wants the power?
why not teach us all it is wrong
to control, to hurt, to dominate?
why don't we give him a list of 189 things
to do each day to prevent rape: avoid
using sexist language, listen to women.
stop when she says stop. volunteer
with children. stop staring at our breasts
and slapping our asses. learn about feminism,
masculinity and love.
As Sunshine's poem indicates, there are many risk reduction measures that may help people feel safer, but it is never the victim's responsibility to prevent sexual assault from happening. It is always the perpetrator's responsibility to not commit sexual violence, and it is our responsibility as a society to send strong, clear messages that we do not tolerate sexual violence. We should be careful not to judge ourselves or others harshly if they do not do things "according to the book." How you choose to handle a situation must be decided according to your own needs and best judgments. It is important to remember that the majority of sexual assaults are committed by an acquaintance in a familiar setting, rather than a stranger in a secluded area.
