Stop exaggerating the risk of violence for women
When my daughter was 16, she got onto an airplane in a city in Mexico. I dropped her off at security. After that she was on her own. She went through customs on her own in a city in Texas. After spending some time in this airport on her own, she got on a different plane and proceeded home. Someone was there to meet her at the airport… although she joked that she would have been fine taking public transportation home. Everything went fine as we all knew it almost certainly would.
This was an adventure for her, something new. But there was extremely low risk to this trip. For all of the stories, teenaged girls are not at risk of violence from strangers, particularly in airports. As we were planning this, I did joke that “I have a very particular set of skills”, just in case something happened (of course, reality is significantly more boring than Hollywood).
My daughter is smart, competent and confident. This is the way I would want any young person to enter adulthood.
The real risks to women
Let’s look at some facts.
- Women are significantly less than half as likely than men to be a victim of homicide as men are. This is true across demographic groups.
- Women are less likely than men to be a victim of a violent crime.
- When women are killed, it is more likely that the perpetrator is a close relation, friend or partner. It is less likely that it is a stranger.
- All other things being equal, prison sentences are longer when the victim is a woman.
Looking at this, my son is far more at risk of violence, particularly violence on the street, then my daughter is. In our urban middle class neighborhood, there is no reason for her to be any more fearful than my son.
My daughter is more at risk of domestic violence, and she should be learning about consent, and healthy relationships. She is learning about these things from both her parents and her (rather progressive) school system.
The difference between boys and girls
The narrative is that girls are delicate creatures that need to be protected. This message existed since the middle ages; long before the invention of feminism. And yet it persists.
The summer my son turned 18, he took a 1000 mile bus trip to visit someone he met. What he did was crazy… there was a chance he could be assaulted, robbed or killed (as young men are killed every day). I thought it was a little crazy, but that is youth. I accepted the risk… for young men to get out and explore is a healthy part of growing up.
Why don’t we have the same attitude toward girls? Living life comes with some amount of risk, shouldn’t young women have these same experiences? Somehow risks toward women are exaggerated, not just the amount of risk, but the perceived severity.
There has been plenty of discussion of “Missing White Woman syndrome”. Female victims, particularly White female victims make for a story. A missing male person doesn’t grab your attention. The death of a man is somehow not quite as tragic.
Society puts a greater value on the life and safety of women than of men. An offender who murders a woman is significantly more likely to get a death penalty than someone who murders a man, and in general prison sentences are longer when the victim of a crime is a woman. This likely plays into the narrative that women shouldn’t take risks (while men should). But this isn’t a healthy narrative.
If we are going to state that women should have the same opportunities as men, that they should take the same risks and reach for the same goals, we must reject this idea that girls need to be protected. When girls are “delicate, precious creatures” they will never be able to compete or to thrive in the real world.
Fear is not Feminism
My daughter is smart, assertive and confident (and I am proud of the part I played in that). She is not afraid to live in the world she inhabits or to go after what she wants. She rejects the notion girls are delicate, at risk and need to be protected. This is a narrative that feminism should reject.
It is troubling to me the number of stories, here in elsewhere, where feminist voices are perpetrating the myth that women are at risk and need to lock themselves away. If I believed this narrative, I would never let my daughter travel, I certainly wouldn’t let her go to college.. Heck I wouldn’t let her out of the house on her own.
I reject this, and I wish people would just stop repeating this narrative.
