The Inherent Truth About Being A Woman
Why is it more dangerous to be a woman than it is to be a man? And why have I never, in my whole life, questioned why this seems like an inalienable truth in the world?
I was walking through the streets of New York City with my eight year old daughter, handing out water, toiletries, and food to those we saw who were homeless, when my daughter commented, innocently, “There doesn’t seem to be many homeless women, Mom. Most of the people we talk to are men.”
“Sure,” I replied, “most people on the streets are men, but there are a lot of women and children who are homeless, too. They just often stay in shelters and avoid being out on the streets.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Well, because it’s much more dangerous to be a woman on the street.”
In a moment I will never forget, she looked at me bewildered, completely uncomprehending, and said, “Why would it be more dangerous for a woman than it is for a man?”
Logically, there is absolutely zero reason why it would be more dangerous to be a woman than it is to be a man. And yet… that is most certainly the world that we live in, and accept without question. Violence against women is a core component of our culture. It is pervasive, and yet widely swept under the rug as not that big of a deal. Women who do speak up about it are almost universally shamed and blamed for the violence perpetrated against them, or for simply making people uncomfortable for bringing to light something that as a society we would rather not acknowledge.
If we acknowledged it, we might have to actually question why we don’t do anything to stop it.
Statistics are widely reported in a world where we can gain knowledge about any topic that we want with a simple Google search, but somehow they never seem to carry much weight. I wonder if they would be more powerful if framed a little differently…
For example, one in five women report being raped at least once during their lifetime.
That means that my daughter has a 20% chance of being raped in her lifetime. Your mother, your sister, your wife or girlfriend, your daughter, your best friend… All of them have a 20% chance of being raped in their lifetime. Which means, statistically, at least one of those five women I just asked you to think of have been or will be raped.
One in three women will experience domestic violence at the hands of an intimate partner.
That means that my daughter has a 33% chance of being beaten and abused in her lifetime by someone she loves and trusts. Your mother, your sister, your wife or girlfriend, your daughter, your best friend… All of them have a 33% of being the victim of domestic violence, meaning at least one if not two of them have been or will be beaten and abused by someone they love.
“Why would it be more dangerous for a woman than it is for a man?”
The innocence and purity in that question hit me like a slap across the face.
Mostly, I was shocked. It was as if she was asking what color the sky was, or why she shouldn’t walk in the middle of the freeway.
I mean, the answer is pretty obvious, even to an eight year old… right?
Shock turned to happiness and relief, then immediately to sadness and fear, which was quickly replaced with hot, burning rage.
They say children are gifts. For sure, the way my daughter looks at the world is often a gift to me. Through her eyes, I sometimes get to see things without the lenses that life has put on mine. This was one of those moments.
Why the hell is it more dangerous to be a woman than it is to be a man? And why have I never, in my whole life, questioned why this seems like an inalienable truth in the world?
I have an excellent memory, with my earliest memories showing up around the age of two. And yet..
I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know that being a woman was dangerous, and being a man was the potential to be dangerous.
I had never questioned this, or even consciously thought about it. It was a simple truth, like 2+2=4, learned early in my life and then incorporated into my psyche as fact.
I grew up in a violent household. Some of my earliest memories are of my parents fighting, screaming at each other while they threw things across the dinner table, or across the living room, or at walls, or at each other’s heads.
But it wasn’t all that bad, I would argue. Even now, I want to put that caveat in. My mom’s best friend lived next door, and she definitely had it worse. Her husband was known to put her in the hospital.
Men were scary. Part of the deal of being a woman was that you tried to keep yourself safe from men, who were scary. I got that.
And then, when I was eight, I learned just how scary men could be. I was molested by a father in our neighborhood.
Any innocence I had left was taken from me. My life would never be the same, and I did not fully trust a man again until I was in my thirties.
Until my daughter asked me a seemingly simple question that day, I didn’t know it was possible to not know that it is dangerous to be a woman in this world. I didn’t realize that there were females of any age who didn’t inherently know this.
“Why would it be more dangerous for a woman than it is for a man?”
My daughter didn’t yet know that being a woman in this society is inherently dangerous. Somehow I’d been able to keep her safe for eight long years. Somehow I had managed to shield her from the actions and words that would tell her what I had always considered to be an existential truth.
“How much longer?” a tiny voice inside my head asked.
It can’t possibly be too much longer before she knows, before she would never think of asking such a question, before she deeply and personally knows the answer.
The truth of this voice breaks my heart into a million pieces.
Are you jumping up in outrage yet? Demanding change and taking action? No? Why is that?
If half of the people in our lives had a 20% to 33% chance of being destroyed emotionally and physically when they walk outside because of bad air, or water, or runaway SUVS, or a megavirus, as a society we would be up in arms, screaming for change.
In terms of violence against women? Mostly, we are silent. Accepting. It seems that at some point, we just decided that this is the way things are.
Every single woman I know could tell you of a time when a man inappropriately touched her in some way, making it known to her that her value lies in her body, in her sex, in her looks, in the way she pleasures or displeasures him.
Recently, many of the women in my life have done just this, publicly. I’m sure many of the women in your life have done the same. Again and again, I heard shock from male friends as their feeds filled up with the personal stories of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, assault, harassment.
They were surprised.
I am not.
This is not okay.
It is not okay that it’s more dangerous to be a woman than a man in this world.
It’s not okay that the stunningly beautiful young girls in our lives are going to find this out for themselves soon, if they haven’t already.
It’s not okay that as a society we are so often willing to explain this away as “boys will be boys,” or “girls should be more (fill in the blank… quiet, loud, strong, weak, modest, chaste, dressed appropriately, etc).”
Public campaigns like the #MeToo campaign that are making sweeps across the nation are finally bringing this topic into the light, which is where it must be if we ever have a chance of addressing it. But once it’s there, we have to know how to listen. We have to know how to be present with pain. We have to know how to hold compassion. And then we have to get to work.
I wasn’t able to answer my daughter’s question that day. There really is no answer that I can give her, because the only acceptable answer to, “Why would it be more dangerous to be a woman than it is to be a man?” is that it shouldn’t be, and that each of us should be doing every single thing possible to make sure that some day, it isn’t.
*This will be the first in a series of articles discussing the epidemic of violence against women, and what we can all do to start to take action and start to address it. Please follow along and engage on Medium, on Facebook, on Twitter.
*The incident referenced with my daughter was in 2016, as we traveled the country on a humanitarian volunteer project collecting stories of homelessness. You can find out more about The Just Say Hello Tour on the website, or on Facebook.
