Don't Give Up Your Safety Ladies

I know this is a sensitive topic and there are very vocal people leading the charge against men that don’t behave properly with women. I’m all for that. Improper behavior should not be condoned. But it is ludicrous to tell women that they don’t have to take precautionary actions because men should leave them alone. Life is not that simple.

You will never control everyone and have them do what they should. If we could, we wouldn’t have prisons full of lawbreakers. A woman taking precautions to insure her safety doesn’t mean that bad behavior of men is being condoned. And it doesn’t mean that women are adapting their behavior so bad men don’t have to adapt their wrongful ways. It means a woman is being smart and desires to take her safety into her own hands instead of leaving it to happenstance.

Anyone offended by preventive safety measures is welcome to not take them and deal with whatever outcome results from that choice. I for one am not going to count on outrage against bad behavior as my only means of keeping myself alive and well. I’m going to take measures of self protection and know what to do in a variety of circumstances because the reality is outrage will not stop the actions of a predator. If outrage alone worked, consider that every man alive had a mother - those mothers haven’t stopped some of their sons from becoming predators and it isn’t fair to say it’s the mothers’ fault. I put fault squarely on the shoulders of the man doing the bad behavior. Some people are assholes and dangerous and nothing will make them otherwise.

I truly have a real issue with any person that thinks they can throw away their personal duty to their own protection simply because a predator doesn't have the right to assault a woman or worse. Once you're assaulted or dead, no amount of the predator being "wrong" is going to undo what happened. No amount of punishment or even the predator’s death will bring you back to life or reinstate your quality of life prior to the actions against you by the predator.

So definitely I'm going be prepared. I am alert to my surroundings, I don't knowingly or willfully put myself in dangerous situations, I avoid making myself easy prey. I taught my daughter these same things. Does that mean I am giving assholes in this world a pass so they don’t have to adapt their bad behaviors? Hell no! But I can’t change anything by becoming a victim. The asshole still didn’t change his behavior even if a woman threw all caution to the wind and plowed through life yowling about her right to live freely, unencumbered. The predator still existed and he still sought prey and victimized her.

I don’t know why the concept of women taking precautions for their safety is so heated. Children shouldn't have to fear inappropriate behavior from adults either and yet we have the uncomfortable burden and duty of educating our children about right and wrong with adults and urge them to tell someone when wrongful behavior occurs. Getting livid fixes nothing. Putting yourself purposely in harm's way fixes nothing.

Absolutely toxic male culture needs cleaned up and males need to police their own, mother’s need to watch for unacceptable behaviors in their sons at all stages of life and correct them. And once men become adults and choose to be predators, those crimes need to be harshly dealt with. You will hear no disagreement from me about that. Use your sphere of influence to educate the young men you have access to. But definitely do not give a young woman a false sense of the world and expect her to be totally safe because there shouldn't be assholes in it. The assholes are real and she has to be prepared. It is a two prong effort of educating boys/men not to be predators/assholes and simultaneously educate girls/women to be prepared to avoid and survive the predators/assholes that exist despite society’s best efforts to eradicate them.

Don’t give up your safety ladies. Predators are wrong but willfully being prey is also wrong.

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(First published on Medium.com)