Women Are Constantly Being Taught How To Protect Ourselves.

Women are constantly being taught how to protect ourselves.

Cover your drink.
Don’t walk home alone.
Share your location.
Carry your keys between your fingers.
Don’t live on the ground floor.
Text when you get home.
Watch what you wear.
Now…
Play Disney songs if someone is secretly recording you so that the algorithm recognises it and it won’t be able to be uploaded online.

Every new threat comes with a new set of instructions for women.

But where is the equal effort to teach people not to violate, harass, intimidate or exploit others in the first place?

I appreciate practical advice. Women deserve to know how to reduce risk.

But risk reduction isn’t the same as prevention.

We’re becoming experts at teaching women how to survive the problem while spending far less energy addressing the people creating it.

No woman should need a Disney soundtrack to defend her right to exist in public without being secretly filmed.

We don’t just need better advice for women.

We need a culture that expects better from everyone else.