Women’s risks and women’s rights

When we talk about risky behavior, what do we really mean? What does risk entail, and who’s responsibility is it to reduce risk? Our current views on risk limit the basic rights of women and dehumanize men. Let’s get rid of ‘em. 

Putting oneself at risk

When I was a victim of revenge porn, some of the first reactions I got were people telling me that taking nude pictures was “risky”. That they could “end up” somewhere. They talked about it like this was something that could happen without any wrong doing as if they could “slip” out of my secure email. I knew this to be wrong. They had been stolen from me by force, shared as a decision. This led me to think about the way we talk about risk. 

Every person wants to have as few bad things as possible happen to them. But what is a risk and what happens when we conflate accidents like a slip or a fall with willful acts carried out against us? 

We end up with a weird, destructive relationship with risk. 

Most women who have suffered sexually motivated or gender-based violence, consent-violation,  or harassment have heard the same questions. What were you wearing? What did you do? Why were you out that late at night? Why did you have that on your computer in the first place? And the list goes on. All these questions have the same goal: to assess the position victims put themselves in that facilitated abuse. If it is revealed that a woman was walking home alone at the time of an attack, for example, the act of walking home alone is defined as risky behaviour. This defines “running a risk” as the direct cause of violence or harassment. But what does this definition of risk actually entail for our views on victim and perpetrator?  

Who’s the risk?

What is the difference between the risks of climbing a tree and falling down, and the risks of being alone at night and suffering an assault? Actually, it’s pretty simple. Falling down a tree is not a direct consequence of someone else’s actions. It is an accident that is related to the climber and gravity, a predictable force of nature. Only the climber’s actions could have hindered or caused the fall. The climber must weigh their wish to climb with the risk of falling down, and then make a decision based on experience. She might have fallen down a tree before perhaps, and found out she was clumsy. We learn from these experiences, and they become part of our decisions about risk.  Likewise with skiing, rollerblading, or running downstairs. We know ourselves, we know our tree-climbing skills, and we know of gravity. When we fall, yes, it is probably our fault. This is not the case when a person suffers an assault.

When an individual is harassed or violated by someone, the situation changes, and so should our definition of risk. This is because another person’s decisions enter the realm. Another person not only is part of the risk: another person is the risk. If that person was not there, there would not be a risk. When we treat assault the same way we treat accidents, we make violators sounds like gravity, like forces of nature that we can predict and should expect. We make assaults sound like something we can learn from, something that is a general rule. Most of all: we make the violator’s chosen actions the victim’s responsibility. By dehumanizing and rendering the assaulter faceless, we absolve them of guilt. We turn them into a risk, not something that will happen for sure, but something to be expected.

Resigning our rights

We give up on a society where these people do not exist. We do not consider raising boys differently, we do not consider prosecuting them, and we do not consider what makes a human want to assault another human. We treat violence like gravity, something that will always condition the life of every woman.  

If we tell a woman that walking home alone is risky, it is, in effect, the same thing as saying that it is not a right to not suffer assault. Introducing risk into this equation takes a right (walking unaccosted) and turns it into a privilege. Sure, a woman can be alone; but it carries risks. This is what feminists talk about when we talk about rights for women. It is the right to move around freely, and not have to expect violence. It is the right to not be held responsible for the chosen violence of others. It is the right to not see yourself as a walking, breathing target.  

Telling a grown person that climbing a tree is risky is not that important a limiting of rights. It is something else entirely to tell her that there are places it is risky be, things it is risky to wear, pictures it is risky to take, and homepages it is risky to use. Talking about risk this way is a manoeuvre that lets you not care about women’s rights. It is a lazy cop-out. It is to place women in a constant state of danger, and give up on ever making them safe or giving them full human rights. Making a woman wholly safe from violence and harm, they claim, is as improbable as upending gravity. 

Turning humans into “risks”

This discourse on risk is two-sided. When people started to inquire me about risks, about whether I thought the perpetrator was my ex, for example , I was stunned. I resented the way they talked about him, as if it had been stupid and naive to trust a person that I loved and continue to have tremendous respect for. Because when we make assaults and abuse “accidents”, we make men inhuman. 

Because while this destructive discourse of risk conditions women’s behavior with the threat of ever- imminent violence and pain, it also tells a story about men that is oppressive, destructive and normative. Like I mentioned earlier, talking about assault as a “risk” is an acute dehumanizing of an assaulter. Because while it absolves the person of guilt, it also renders them a person who we cannot expect to make informed decisions. A person we expect to be violent if they have the slightest chance of getting away with it. We are in effect teaching young men that they are animals. That every woman is taught from childhood that a meeting a man late at night is dangerous, and that she is naïve to trust a man she has just met. We teach young men that in the dark, or when drunk, or when alone with a woman, they are no longer human. That they cannot be expected to act with empathy. 

In short, when we talk about risk as something that can exist between two human beings, we put them both in construed positions (target and unstoppable force, respectively) that have no place in a society that strives to be equal. We must expect outmost humanity from men, and unapologetically seek to emancipate all groups from a life conditioned by the threat of violence. 

The victims of violence should never be blamed for the suffering that they are caused by the choices of others. Being alive at a certain place in time is only “risky behavior” when we stop expecting empathy from other humans. We should be above this. Sadly, I have yet to hear about a place in the world where this dynamic does not still have a firm grasp on the discussion of gender based violence. 

Violence is not a force of nature, it is a choice a human makes. A victim is never to blame. Let’s never forget it.   - Emma Holten