Women always have to be alert to the threat of sexual assault

Early this month, the police alerted the public after three women were sexually assaulted in the downtown area. Two of the attacks took place within a few blocks of my apartment. I regularly walk alone at night past both of the attack locations. I’m a young woman. I weigh the risks of choosing one route over another every day. I’m cautious. Sometimes I take a cab but this is my neighbourhood and sometimes I walk home alone at night. Relatively speaking, I feel safe. One night after the assaults, I went out with a friend and, citing the recent police advisory, asked him to give me a ride home. My friend is worldly, well educated. He’s a photographer who has to protect himself and keep his wits about him in riots and war zones around the globe. He, knowing me as someone who is savvy and guards her independence, was a little surprised that I asked for a ride. As we drove, he told me that he didn’t think I had to worry. In a misguided attempt to be comforting, he started to tell me that those things (random sexual assaults) happen when people (women) aren’t cautious. I had to stop him there. Yes, women have a responsibility to themselves to be cautious but these women didn’t get attacked because they made a poor decision about where to walk. They were attacked because a man made a violent and repugnant decision to violate another human being. That causal distinction is important. He agreed. Then in another misguided attempt, this time to commiserate, he reminded me that he’d been in many unsafe situations in Brazil, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He knew what it felt like to be afraid to walk down the street. In telling me that, he was also trying to make the point that Kensington Market is hardly Kandahar. And there’s the rub. He’s right. I don’t live in a war zone. But he’s wrong to think that he knows what it is to weigh your options to get home at night. I don’t intentionally put myself in harm’s way in volatile parts of the world for weeks at a time to film atrocities. I walk home at night in my quaint neighbourhood, in my quaint country and every single time I do the onus is on me to keep my wits about me. Every day. In Canada. After the advisory was released, I checked the stats published by the Toronto Police Service. In Toronto, reported incidents of sexual assault have steadily gone up from 2,537 in 2007 to 2,961 in 2011, when 85 per cent of the reported sexual assaults were perpetrated against women. Now, the argument is made that the odds of a woman being attacked haven’t really gone up over the years, but rather the odds that she’ll report the attack have gone up, so it only appears that violence against women is on the rise. Whether that assertion is accurate or not is difficult to substantiate — regardless, it isn’t consoling. Why haven’t sexual assaults in Canada markedly dropped? Why do even a small percentage of men still feel compelled to assert themselves by violating women? We are a relatively affluent, well-educated society with myriad social supports, annual Take Back the Night marches, and most everyone has access to newspapers and cable shows that reflect the general consensus that violence against women, especially sexual violence, is abhorrent. Who could possibly still be unclear about that? We don’t live in a war zone. Why were two women sexually assaulted near my home this month? I can’t begin to imagine what rationales go through people’s minds when they choose to violate another human being. But talking to my friend on the ride home, we both learned something about sexual violence in Canada. He, a progressive, worldly, compassionate man realized that I, a savvy, independent, self-assured woman, have to watch my back every night that I go out. Some situations call for more vigilance than others. Some days I may not even be conscious of my vigilance. I’m used to weighing my odds. But until that conversation, I don’t think it had occurred to him that I, like most women, weigh my odds all day, every day to one extent or another. Until that night, I hadn’t realized how literally foreign that experience is to my straight, white, male friend. Should the advisory have me concerned? Is asking for a ride home really an over reaction? After all, I’m probably more likely to be killed in the proverbial car accident than sexually assaulted in my neighbourhood, right? Nope. Approximately 3,000 people die in car accidents in Canada each year. There were 2,961 sexual assaults reported in Toronto in 2011. I’m roughly 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted in Toronto than killed in a car accident. And aside from the unfavourable odds, it is also critical to note that car accidents are accidents. Sexual assaults aren’t accidents. They are perpetrated by people who may or may not be known by the victim, and for whatever reason choose to make an abhorrent decision to violate another human being. The police are asking the public to remain vigilant. But being vigilant about safety from sexual violence isn’t as easy as clicking a seat belt and driving within the speed limit. It means second-guessing yourself and others every day. It means paying for cabs, or getting rides with people you trust, even when you are six blocks from home. For single, heterosexual women, it means taking an extra leap of faith each time you like a guy well enough to bring him home. Sometimes, when extra vigilance is called for, it means spending hours, writing down your thoughts to make some sort of sense of it all. That’s my reality, here in Kensington Market, in 2012. It is a reality shared by women across Canada. It’s tiring. It shouldn’t be necessary. Just like it shouldn’t be necessary to defend my concerns to a friend, especially one whose first response was to say the assaulted women weren’t cautious enough.