Standing Up in the Moment

Recently I've run across a couple admonishments on Facebook that women who are being harassed or otherwise believe they might be in danger need to remember that there's a lot they can do to stand up for themselves, usually attached to a number of recommendations about what to do in that situation.

The weird thing for me is that I'm largely in agreement with that sort of project. Not everyone knows or has practiced how to respond in stressful or disturbing situations, and brainstorming or practicing responses ahead of time is a great way to help people who may be less comfortable standing up for themselves become more willing to do so. And having more people willing and able to do that is a major step forward in our efforts as a society to solve these problems.

But there is a major problem, and that is that the posts I've seen are telling people that this is something they have to do, or that they're in the wrong if they don't. To be blunt, that sort of blame directed at people for not taking those actions or for not standing up for themselves in the moment is exactly the sort of reason why anyone ever had to worry about victim blaming.

The problem is that there are still plenty of good reasons for people not to take the risk. There are some creepers who are just looking for a victim and will back off in the face of resistance... but there are some who grow more belligerent when they're confronted. There are plenty of store employees and police officers who will take the side of someone standing up for themselves... but there are still plenty who will regard them as the problem for complaining or fighting back. Even if we can know for certain that things will turn out all right in the end, that's not going to make the short term consequences any less significant... or survivable, for some people.

If someone comes to me and says they don't know what to do or want to try to be more assertive, I'm completely in support of that. But if they come to me to complain that something happened and they felt their best choice out of the bad options presented was to disengage as quickly as possible and without making a fuss, I'm not going to blame them for that. And if I don't know whether they're asking for advice or looking for sympathy, I'm going to ask if they actually need advice before I assume that they must not have known what to do.

I definitely am not going to withhold my sympathy until they've satisfied me that they did everything they could have to stand up for themselves - because even if I could tell for certain that they were too cowardly to stand up for themselves, that wouldn't make them any less deserving of sympathy.