There’s a great article at Broadsheet, the feminist column over at salon.com, that gets to the core of the backlash against women rape survivors. Tracy Clark-Flory responds to the latest crappy journalism claiming that there’s no real sexual assault crisis on campus, that the very real and well-proven statistics simply represent women who consented to sex and then felt bad about it later.

Do women sometimes consent to sex and then feel bad about it later? Sure.

Does that mean sexual assault is rare? Uh, no.

I’ve taught self-defense and personal safety on college campuses for years, and we have to start every class with a lengthy and detailed discussion of what constitutes sexual assault. Sometimes we spend two sessions, that’s four + hours, on the topic. Even when groups of students are able to come to consensus about the definition of “sexual assault” (sexual contact without consent) they struggle with the definition of “consent”.

Most students I encounter believe the definition of rape is: “When a woman I don’t know is out alone at night, and she’s attacked by a male stranger who uses physical force and usually a gun, and who forces her to engage in a very specific sexual act, and she later reports it to the police.”

Actually, sex without consent is rape.

I’ll never forget the student who told me succinctly one night after our first class together: “I thought I didn’t know anyone who’d been raped, but now I realize that I’ve been raped.”

This month there have been a series of incidents in my town of men standing outside women’s homes, looking in the windows at night and masturbating.  I can’t stand the cutesy appellation “Peeping Tom” – what’s cute about this behavior?  Like most forms of sexual abuse, this perpetrator method has been lauded and mythologized and turned into a sexy little joke in the media way too often.

I know that a lot of men really do not comprehend the chronic, pervasive, and exhausting fear of being raped that women live with every day.  When I taught self-defense classes at sororities this month, no one laughed about these incidents. 

The women wanted to know what to do if one of these guys was outside their house.  Their questions included “What if he grabs me by the neck and chokes me?” and “What if he has a knife?”  and “What if I’m alone and he tries to come in and kill me?”  No one subjected to this abuse thinks it’s cute.

I point out that most of these guys have a slightly different profile than other sexual assailants.  That mostly they’re frightened guys, interested in shocking and observing, not in attacking and killing.  And I also teach them how to physically defend themselves if they have to face their fears.

And of course, it can help to close the drapes at night, keep the doors locked, and
report,
report,
report. 

I would love to see every one of these creeps on the front page of the paper, exposed to the community for the damaged and damaging people they are.

At my local library we can request books online and they’ll be marked with our last name and held on a shelf to pick up.  I love this.  Last night, I went to pick up some novel that Oprah told me to read and guess what?  Right next to the novel on the hold shelf was MY BOOK!  Someone had submitted an online request to reserve My Book, the One I Wrote. 

It felt like a special Be Happy gift from the universe after a long, gray February day.  Not only did someone want to read my book, they reserved it on the very day I would be there, and they had a name starting with M-A so it would be shelved right where I would see it.  I shyly told the librarian how excited I was, and she said “Let’s go look at it together, how wonderful!”

Thanks reader!

(Note to self – I simply must get a cell phone with a camera in it……)

Over the years I’ve tried a variety of responses to sexual harassment on the street.  I’m a big fan of drawing attention to inappropriate behavior for the entire community to judge.  You’ve probably heard the story of the woman on a subway who found someone groping her?  She grabbed his hand, held it up in the air and shouted “Does anyone know whose this is?  I found it on my ass!”  Take the shame and secrecy away – say what just happened.

I found a great community-wide project called HollaBack that encourages just that.  Women are invited to take cell phone photos of men harassing them and send them directly to a website to be published.  There are subpages for different cities, and a great video about the project here.

I have experienced a WIDE continuum of harassment – for example, at least twice in college I was followed while walking by a man in a car masturbating and calling out to me.  If I had a time travel machine, I would ensure both of those guys were immediately arrested.

To be perfectly honest, this is one of my least-favorite questions. I feel aggrieved to point out that self-defense is deeply personal and complicated to learn, that every student is different, that there are no “one size fits all” techniques. Frankly, if “tips” worked we’d have them all memorized by now and be living in a world of peace and justice.It’s not that simple.

That said – yes – I have tips!

Say no. Practice saying no to requests you feel pressured to go along with. Whether it’s loaning a co-worker another $5, or giving your sister a ride, or staying late at the office. The more difficult it is for you to say – the more you’ll benefit from this practice. Most perpetrators test their victims verbally long before exerting any physical force. No is a complete sentence, try it!

Yell. Loud and often. Shout NO or Leave Me Alone or whatever you want, just start shouting. It will break through the fight-flight-or-freeze response, may attract help, and will startle many attackers into giving up. Practice in the car if you’re feeling shy or goofy, we’ll just think you’re yelling at traffic.

Don’t get in the car. If you aren’t feeling safe, don’t get in the car with someone. Even if he’s threatening you, even if you don’t feel safe at your current location, and even if he promises not to hurt you. Someone who wants to get you in a car (his or yours) is planning to take you somewhere less safe than where you are now.

Tell someone. If you feel unsafe or uncomfortable around anyone in your life, ask for help. Shame often prevents victims from revealing ongoing patterns of humiliation, sexual harassment, or sexual abuse. If your ex- won’t stop calling, if your boss hugs you too long, if your father keeps walking into the bathroom when you’re naked, tell someone. If the first person you tell doesn’t help (or worse, implies it’s your fault) tell someone else!

Targets and weapons. Target an assailant’s eyes, throat, groin, and knees. Use your fingers, palms, elbows, and feet. Strike hard and shout NO while you’re striking. This isn’t rocket science, you might be surprised to know how quickly you can break off most attempted assaults.

I saw an amazing film recently – Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony is a documentary about the centrality of music in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, especially in the 1980′s. What moved me most was the description of music as a form of self-defense.

The Black South Africans faced simply insurmountable odds, an entrenched and well-armed police state willing to use as much violence as necessary to destroy them. But they were led by the artists and the musicians and the dancers, both inside the country and in exile. The dvd has some astonishing interviews with ex-military officers and prison wardens. These white men (some heart-broken and repentant, some not) try to convey what it felt like to hear a condemned man singing a victory song on his way to the gallows. Or to watch thousands of children dancing toward their machine guns.

Can singing as self-defense really work? Well. Here’s a link to the revolution on the South African Embassy’s Website in Washington, D.C.

Out of all your friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances, what percentage have had meaningful self-defense training? And by meaningful I mean training that gave them lots of physical practice, in a wide range of defense scenarios, and left them feeling stronger and more capable. 10%? Less?

In my personal experience, most of us will answer “None” or less than 5%. But if you ask that same group of people – I can guarantee you that more than 5% of them have worried about being assaulted. In fact, it’s not unusual for women to experience some fear of being attacked on a daily or weekly basis. And of course the actual risk of facing assault is quite significant, here’s just one link to some pretty overwhelming statistics.

So why haven’t we all taken a self-defense class? Why isn’t personal safety training mandatory for every grade school, middle school, high school, and college curriculum? Why don’t employers offer it like they offer health care packages, parking passes, and credit union membership? Why are we often taught to swim, sew, cook, hunt, drive and balance a checkbook – but not taught how to protect ourselves? I think the answers to these questions are complicated, and I promise not to write you a 1,000 page treatise as my first blog entry!

Here’s one explanation: Self-Defense is to Sexual Assault what Breast Self-Exam is to Breast Cancer. Regularly examining your breasts for lumps or changes is one of the best defenses you have against breast cancer. This simple action helps detect the disease early, when it’s most treatable. BSE protects us from breast cancer.

In an analogous way, meaningful self-defense training protects you against sexual assault. It’s a positive, proactive step to take, and greatly decreases the likelihood that you’ll be victimized or that an assault will progress past the initial attempt. Because it makes me feel bad. The whole time I’m doing it, I’m thinking about cancer. Or worrying that I’m doing it wrong. Who wants to think about breast cancer? I can think of at least a hundred things I’d rather think about at any given moment. So I don’t do it. And I rob myself of the action that could actually protect me.

So I have a lot of compassion for people who don’t sign up for self-defense training. Who wants to spend an afternoon, or a month, or a year thinking about the possibility of being assaulted, maybe even sexually? Even worse, who wants to think about their children being attacked? But if you could rape-proof your daughter, would you? What would it be worth to you? Who else do you care about? How uncomfortable or uncertain would you be willing to be, in order to provide meaningful protection to someone you love? To yourself? OK, I’m off to go raise my arms in front of a mirror now.