I hate all the “never do this” and “always do that” garbage I see out there passed off as self-defence advice. I’m tired of seeing victim-blaming masquerading as empowerment. Here are nine tips that don’t engage in victim-blaming, are applicable to anyone, and can work as well as a kick in the balls.
1. Get comfortable. Not complacent, not lazy, but actually comfortable. With yourself. With life. Know you are valuable and expect to be treated as such. This isn’t easy, and most people can’t maintain it always & forever, but it’s a good thing to work toward for most of the time.
2. Build some good relationships that enhance your sense of self. Surround yourself with as many people as you can who are more likely to sincerely uplift and empower you than put you down.
3. Establish comfortable boundaries for you and reinforce them, first in those safe settings and increasingly as you get more comfortable doing so. Things like, “Hey, Bob, could you please not make those offensive jokes?” are a fairly good, safe place to start. This won’t necessarily stop an attack, but it will make it easier for you to recognize discomfort early.
4. Familiarize yourself with the differences between passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and assertive. In everyday interactions, assertive is the most respectful of you. Since you are the most important person you know, it follows you should be most respectful of you out of anyone. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Know that aggression can be appropriate too. Know that passivity is acceptable now and again, like after a hard day, especially if you are with people who have already demonstrated respect for your established boundaries.
5. Practice saying and hearing, “No“ and reading how the word is received – not because an attacker will necessarily hear and respect it, but because you will and that will contribute to you recognizing discomfort and disrespect early. The earlier you recognize it, the earlier you can do something to change it.
6. Stop apologizing. You and a friend can practice not apologizing for everything. Not only do women apologize for things that are not their fault (please excuse the genderalisation), but things for which nobody can be at fault – or worse, for things the other party need apologize for instead. Practice this with and around each other first, and then let it spread like your use of the word “no” has. The hyper-vigilance associated with constantly being on the lookout for things to apologize for can be very damaging to your health, both physically and psychologically. Excessive passivity is disrespectful to yourself, and you are worthy of respect (see #1).
7. Know that no matter what, anyone who -either physically or otherwise- attacks another person is to blame for the attack. Nobody can “invite” attack through clothing/appearance, behaviour/lifestyle, location, or any other act or omission. The responsibility for an attack always rests squarely on the shoulders of the attacker. Knowing this won’t necessarily stop an attack from taking place, but it can a) increase your awareness of how the people around you treat others (including you), b) help to keep you from engaging in victim-blaming that can contribute to the damage of anyone around you who has been victimized (either as a primary victim or secondary/tertiary), and c) help you to deal with the lingering aftermath of any attack you may yet -or did already- experience.
8. Take a self-defence class if you want to. Self-defence lessons can (if they’re good) enhance your sense of empowerment. We are all complex beings capable of understanding more than one dimension of violence at a time, and the idea we cannot learn self-defence while condemning an attacker’s actions denies our ability to be that complex. That said, if faced with attack the choice to violently resist can only be made in that moment by the person being targeted and does nothing to affect blame and responsibility for an attack. Defence takes many forms, and can be counter-violence, can be silence in the moment, can be reporting to police, can be seeking counseling, can be talking to friends or family or religious leaders, can be many things, but needn’t must be anything. Remember the decision to employ counter-violence is made in the moment, with the influence of many factors – some of which may be on a level beyond conscious understanding. The decision to employ any means of defence is solely up to the individual involved, and no amount of armchair quarterbacking is helpful.
9. Advocate for change. In your personal circles, in your workplace, at your school, in government, in life. The focus needs to be taken off what can “provoke attack” (nothing) and placed on what creates attackers, off the idea that neutral – or even poor – decisions can prompt someone else to disrespect other human beings on the most personal of levels, and onto what instils in people the notion this behaviour is acceptable. Teach those around you intent creates access, but access does NOT create intent.
In a future post, we’ll delve into some of the more physical aspects of self-defence. In the meantime, if you’re interested in exploring more options, contact The Best Defense Program today.
Thanks for the sensible advice. It seems to be a knee-jerk reaction that if somebody is attacked they blame themselves or others do that for them. Where does risk assessment fit into the blame game that goes like ‘if I’d only not walked through that alley in the bad end of town I wouldn’t have been attacked’.
Excellent question, Jim.
The self-blaming statement could just as easily be, “If I’d only walked down the alley instead of the sidewalk, I wouldn’t have been attacked.” It’s important to know a neutral decision – one which carries no penalty in and of itself – doesn’t actually increase our threat potential. The “alley in a bad end of town” likely has foot-traffic on a fairly regular basis, and most of those pedestrians aren’t attacked, so to consider the decision to walk down an alley to be poor is victim-blaming (and it often starts in ourselves), either preemptively or after the fact. In fact, the alley could be chosen as a way to avoid a perceived threat and an attack can happen anyway.
It’s also important to know what a poor decision actually is, so we aren’t condemning our neutral (or good) decisions. A poor decision is one which carries a natural penalty regardless of how many times it’s made without causing damage. If I drive drunk I increase my likelihood of a motor vehicle collision. It doesn’t matter how many times I “get away with it,” if I crash I only have myself to blame. On the other hand, someone else deciding to attack me (even if I’ve been drinking) is based on decisions outside my control.
It makes sense, though, when we start looking for answers as to why a crime occurs, we look to our own behaviour first – after all, it’s the only behaviour over which we have any control. Sometimes, this can lead to some decent changes being made to our routine that might enhance our safety, but most of the time it leads to unhealthy self-blame and/or superstitious behaviour modification.
For instance, consider the advice given to children: “Don’t talk to strangers” seems like good advice until we look a little closer and realize we are dependent on strangers for our survival; they grow the food we eat and at least partially prepare it, make and sell us our clothing, build and repair our homes, answer the call when we dial 9-1-1, and a great many of our closest friends were strangers when we met them. On top of this, most children (most adults, too) aren’t harmed by strangers.
So the lesson to take from all of this is the offender is the only person responsible for an attack, as that’s the person who had intent, created opportunity, and inserted him/herself into the life of the victim in such a way as to exploit the encounter and do damage.
Take a look at Blame v. Responsibility for more information, and feel free to ask any more questions you have. This is sometimes a difficult topic to grasp, as it goes against what we’ve been taught most of our lives.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to comment, and for the question!
Sincerely,
Gaz
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I’m a little taken aback by what I _think_ it is that I’m reading on this blog.
Everyone always has to take responsibility for their actions, including not putting them selves in a situation where something you wouldn’t want to happen would have a greater likelihood of occurring.
Even as an adult male who trains martial arts, there are certain areas of Winnipeg I would not walk the streets alone, especially at night. If go there and I get attacked, no it’s not my “fault”, but I most certainly contributed to it by my own decisions. A huge part of not being in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ is not intentionally going to the wrong place.
Are you saying you disagree with that basic premise?
Essentially, I am.
The “wrong place” isn’t determined by the victim of a crime, it’s determined by the person who harbours intent, makes a plan, selects a victim, and carries out an attack. Most violence isn’t perpetrated by a stranger, either, so the advice to not go to “certain areas” alone isn’t really all that helpful as the person who accompanies you is just as likely to be your attacker as anyone else. Additionally, classifying “certain areas” as unsafe tends to be more classist than it is about actual safety. Clearly, just being there doesn’t lead to assault since there tend to be residents of any given area present at any given time who are not assaulted.
“Don’t go there” is restrictive advice, not empowering. “This is how predators behave” is empowering advice.
Incidentally, the language you use, “I most certainly contributed to it” is blaming language. You’ve assumed blame/responsibility/fault with it. If you are assaulted based on something you contributed to, how much responsibility do you bear? 10%? 50%? Is the perpetrator that much less responsible? If not, then did you actually contribute or are you just reflecting internalized blame in the form of “If only I had/hadn’t done X?” If we consider the idea you “contributed” to your victimization, how easy will that make it to heal psychologically from it? How does that impact an ability or desire to find and punish the perpetrator?
“Don’t go there” and “Don’t go there alone” are magical bits of advice based in mythology. It’s an illusion that it works, as it cannot be proven to have prevented any assault.
That attitude makes me worry about the people you teach. The most important part of self-defense is to avoid conflict where ever possible. “Blaming language” doesn’t help after the fact, but it most certainly should be foremost in your mind in terms of avoiding the incident in the first place.
Yes, we shouldn’t have to worry about bad people doing bad things. The unfortunate fact is, we do. You advice only works if those bad people don’t exist in the first place.
Your advice on how to avoid conflict only works if one has some sort of precognitive ability. It’s the stuff of martial mythology, not of a rational mindset. Again, “Don’t go there” and “Don’t go there alone” are not empowering statements, they are judgmental, restrictive, classist, and -more often than not- sexist. At no point do I suggest we shouldn’t “avoid conflict where ever [sic] possible.” You and I differ on how one can avoid conflict and, it would seem, where that conflict is to be found. I would never tell you to be someplace you aren’t comfortable being, though I might challenge the thoughts that contribute to your decision that any particular area is unsafe.
The “wrong place” and the “wrong time” are both decided by the perpetrator of a crime, not the victim. Your mindset is magical, as it wrests control of those two factors from the grasp of the perpetrator and into the realm of the victim. It’s particularly useless as it assumes a) the wrong place can be known, b) the wrong time can be known, and c) the perpetrator of crime is somehow bound by your arbitrary decision on where and when those are. This is the same sort of mystical thinking behind restricting what a victim of sexual assault wears, and is just as nonsensical.
The advice we give works not only because we know perpetrators exist, but because we also take into account how they exist. We also consider the realities faced by those who might fall prey.
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