• Cross the street to avoid large groups of men
• Take a longer route to avoid badly lit or wooded areas
• Change your commute or route to school to avoid an area in which you’ve previously been harassed
• Switch to exercising indoors or give up exercise altogether after outdoor harassment
• Record a man’s voice on your answering machine to give the impression you don’t live alone
• Wear a fake wedding ring
• Carry some kind of weapon, such as pepper spray, a knife or even aerosol deodorant
• Always let someone know where you are going
• Use an app to send your tracking location to a friend or partner
• Always text girl friends to let each other know you’ve got home safely
• Go to the bathroom in groups
• Dance in groups
• Watch your drink like a hawk and cover it with your hand
• Carry a whistle or rape alarm
• Check and double-check that the cab you’re taking is licensed
• Change your clothing to avoid harassment
• Wear headphones, even with no music playing, to try to fend off unwanted advances
• Don’t wear headphones so you’ll be able to hear someone approaching from behind
• Wear flat shoes in case you need to run
• Wear your hair in a ponytail so you attract less unwanted attention
• Don’t wear your hair in a ponytail in case it provides someone with an easy way to grab you
• Don’t turn your back on boys in a school corridor
• Stand against the wall in the playground at break time
It can be a real shock for people to read that list. For women, it may be shocking to see so many of the things that are second nature to you written down together like this. Shocking to realise that you aren’t alone: that other women are doing these things, too. Shocking to see the list in this context and to begin to recognise that this isn’t just you being a bit ‘paranoid’ or nervy.
That it is the result of growing up in a world in which you’ve learned, through experience, to fear for your safety pretty much all the time; a world that has socialised you to believe that the person responsible for fixing this frankly outrageous reality is you. Shocking to discover that you have been living in a fairly constant state of hypervigilance for so long that you have ceased even to recognise it as anything out of the ordinary.
For most men, the list is often shocking for a different reason. The realisation that they have rarely, if ever, thought about taking these measures. The shock of learning that the women they love and care about in their lives do all this and more on a day-to day basis.
Extracted from Fix the System, Not the Women by Laura Bates (Simon & Schuster, £12.99).
