I think this issue is a thorny one, for sure.

Right now we are in the middle of a shift in cultural perspective, where we want to (quite rightly) place the responsibly of stopping harassment/assault on the people perpetrating those things, versus always blaming the victims and placing responsibility for stopping it on them.

It is a long-overdue shift and so it is understandable, to me at least, that whenever someone tries to shift responsibility back on victims – even if their intentions are good – on any level, that can be seen as distracting from the larger goal of wanting victimizers to be the ones held responsible.

Let’s be honest – most women and even young girls already know a million safety tactics. Most women are hyper aware of all of the stuff we are “supposed” to do to keep ourselves free from harm.

So we really don’t need it laid out for us, by anyone. It’s like telling someone who just got their car broken into “You know, you should always lock your car!”

Like, duh – we know that. We know there is safety in numbers. We know how to deflect, and we know to keep away from drunks with potentially grabby hands. We know not everyone is “hitting on us,” but we still keep our guard up a bit to avoid being accused of “leading someone on.” Most women learn these things by the time they are seventeen.

So when women read articles that tell us what we already know so well that we do it almost instinctively, it can feel insulting and as if the conversation is yet again being turned back around on what “women can do to be safe.”

We do not need more personal safety lectures. We need to talk about ways that can make things safer in a wider sense – and that means focusing on the folks actually doing the harassing.