When Women Have to Soften the Language of Safety: 10 Ways Policing Women’s Words Can Undermine Sexual-Violence Prevention

And here our country stands examining every uttered word of a woman who says that she was harmed....... We all exist together on a planet that seeks t

And here our country stands examining every uttered word of a woman who says that she was harmed……. We all exist together on a planet that seeks to correct the woman before hearing the woman.

Women have been trying to tell society something for a very long time: requiring us to make everybody comfortable while we are trying to communicate discomfort can create danger.

Women have been told not to embarrass him, not to assume the worst, not to make a scene, not to hurt his feelings, not to be paranoid, not to sound angry, and not to judge too quickly. Now some women are saying they feel another layer has been added: do not describe a person’s sex if that description conflicts with how the person identifies, even when sex is part of what the woman is trying to communicate about safety, privacy, vulnerability, or boundaries.

We should be able to examine what that does to sexual-violence prevention without pretending that every disagreement is hatred. This is not an argument for cruelty toward anyone. It is an argument for keeping women’s ability to communicate clearly intact, particularly when something feels wrong.

Here are ten reasons I believe we need to have that conversation.

1. Women cannot communicate danger clearly if we are editing ourselves while danger is unfolding.

Imagine a woman walking toward her car who realizes someone is following her. Imagine a girl trying to explain what happened in a bathroom, dormitory, hospital room, shelter, locker room, or other vulnerable setting.

Those are terrible moments to make female human beings perform complicated social calculations about acceptable terminology.

Clear safety communication requires people to be able to say what they observed, what happened, who was present, where the person went, and what frightened them.

2. Women have already been trained to distrust their discomfort.

Many women recognize the old lessons because we were raised with them. “Be nice. Don’t embarrass anybody. Give him another chance. Maybe you misunderstood. Maybe he was only joking. Maybe you are overreacting.”

Sexual-violence prevention has spent decades trying to loosen those knots. We tell women and girls that discomfort is information. It does not prove somebody intends harm, but neither does a woman need proof of criminal intent before moving away, refusing access, seeking help, or setting a boundary.

We should be extremely careful about building new social expectations that send women back into the habit of overriding themselves.

10 Ways Society Trains Women to Doubt Their Own Safety Instincts – WE Survive Abuse

3. A safety statement is not a verdict on another person’s humanity.

“I don’t feel safe” does not mean “you are an evil person.”

Those statements have become tangled together far too often. A woman can recognize another person’s humanity while refusing proximity, intimacy, privacy, access to her body, or participation in a vulnerable situation.

Nobody is owed a woman’s declaration that she feels safe around them.

4. Describing someone’s sex can be relevant information.

There are circumstances where sex is not incidental information. Interesting how everyone knows this when it is time to control the bodies of women and girls. Sexual assault, pregnancy risk, forensic evidence, intimate searches, medical treatment, prisons, changing facilities, competitive sports, shelters, and certain safeguarding situations can all involve sex in different ways.

A woman describing someone as male is therefore not necessarily making a statement about that person’s worth, personality, intentions, or identity. She may simply be communicating the characteristic she believes is relevant to what happened.

When institutions teach people to report incidents, we usually want greater factual precision, not less.

5. Women need permission to describe what happened before everyone agrees about what it means.

This principle reaches far beyond sex and gender.

A woman may not know whether what happened legally qualifies as “stalking.” She can still say, “He has appeared outside my workplace four times this week.”

She may not know whether something qualifies as coercive control. She can still say, “He checks my phone and becomes angry when I talk to my friends.”

She may not know whether something legally qualifies as sexual assault. She can still describe exactly what someone did.

That is one of the most valuable lessons sexual-violence advocacy has learned: start with what happened.

We should not abandon that principle when the description becomes socially uncomfortable.

6. Calling women “hateful” can become its own silencing mechanism.

“Hateful” is a serious accusation. Sometimes people really do behave hatefully toward others, and prejudice should be challenged.

But when that word is applied automatically to a woman who says she is uncomfortable, identifies someone’s sex, refuses intimate access, requests female-only assistance, or establishes a personal boundary, something different can happen. Instead of examining her concern, everyone begins examining her character.

The conversation quietly moves from “What is she telling us?” to…. “What kind of woman would say that?”

Women know that courtroom. We have been standing in it for generations.

7. Sexual-violence prevention cannot depend upon women being agreeable.

One of the most dangerous myths women inherit is that “goodness requires endless accommodation.” This is not even true. And that is before we get to the question of whether or not it is expected by males.

“A good woman is understanding. A good woman gives people chances. A good woman does not humiliate anybody. A good woman makes room. A good woman understands everybody else’s struggle.”

But safety sometimes requires behavior that looks impolite from the outside. Leaving the elevator. Locking the door. Calling somebody. Refusing the ride. Walking away. Saying no. Asking a person to leave. Choosing a female professional for an intimate service. Refusing to undress. Refusing to share sleeping quarters.

None of those decisions requires a courtroom standard of evidence. Personal boundaries are not criminal convictions.

8. We cannot teach girls that boundaries are firm AND simultaneously teach them that boundaries become negotiable when somebody is offended.

This contradiction troubles me deeply.

We tell girls, “Your body belongs to you.” We teach them that they do not owe hugs, kisses, dates, physical affection, sexual access, or explanations for saying no. Yeah, that’s when they are toddlers but then…..

Then adulthood arrives, and suddenly boundaries can become philosophical debates.

But consent cannot survive that transformation.

If another person’s disappointment is enough to reopen a woman’s no, then we have not actually taught her that no is complete. We have taught her that no begins a negotiation.

9. Rape culture grows wherever women’s perception becomes less trustworthy than everybody else’s comfort.

Rape culture does not require people to openly celebrate sexual violence. It can survive through smaller cultural habits: minimizing coercion, blaming victims, treating women’s boundaries as unreasonable, demanding perfect behavior from victims, excusing persistence, or expecting women to manage men’s emotional responses to rejection.

If women begin saying, “I no longer feel free to describe what I see,” “I am afraid I’ll be called hateful if I say I’m uncomfortable,” or “I have to choose my words carefully before anybody will hear my safety concern,” sexual-violence advocates should listen.

We do not need to exaggerate the evidence and claim that every language dispute causes sexual violence. We can ask the more responsible question: are we creating conditions that make straightforward safety communication harder?

10. We can protect people’s dignity without requiring women to surrender reality, boundaries, or clear speech.

Human beings deserve basic dignity. Nobody needs to be mocked, harassed, threatened, or humiliated.

Women deserve dignity TOO.

That includes being able to name our bodies, recognize our sex, describe the sex of another human being when relevant, establish intimate and physical boundaries, choose whom we date, decide whom we undress around, leave situations that frighten us, and communicate concerns without first demonstrating that our feelings are sufficiently generous toward everyone else involved.

There has to be room in a humane society for both courtesy and boundaries.

But when those two genuinely collide, I will never teach a woman or girl that politeness outranks her ability to protect herself.

We Need to Listen to What Women Are Actually Telling Us

Women are not merely debating terminology. Some are describing a change in the social cost of speaking plainly.

That deserves examination because sexual-violence prevention depends upon disclosure. It depends upon people being willing to describe uncomfortable things. It depends upon adults listening before correcting, investigating before judging, and allowing victims and potential victims to communicate what they experienced in language they can actually use.

For decades, women have told us what happens when we make female people responsible for everybody else’s comfort.

We hesitate.

We minimize.

We explain things away.

We remain where we wanted to leave.

We give another chance we never wanted to give.

We worry about being cruel while somebody else is testing whether our boundaries are movable.

Sexual-violence prevention should be moving women further away from that training, not quietly rebuilding it under newer language.

A woman saying “I am uncomfortable” is information.

A woman saying “I don’t want this” is a boundary.

A woman accurately describing another person’s sex is not automatically hatred.

And a woman does not need to make her language softer than her circumstances before the rest of us agree to listen.