No, I won’t SMS you to tell you I got home safely.

I’m told that every time I walk down deserted streets at night, there’s a rapist waiting in the bushes somewhere who is going to get me.  It’s only a matter of time.  No one will be there to save me.  Jones’ mum tells me this most often when I’m about to make the astounding 700 metre trek to the other side of danger-filled Normanhurst late at night (late being 7pm and danger referring mostly to old people trying to find a Country Kitchen Buffet and yes, I’m being ironic). Normally I don’t believe violent anonymous rape is a compliment paid only to hot sexy young things, but if there really are waiting there, and I keep walking down all these alleys that are the Perfect Opportunity, completely defenseless  then maybe it is about looks.  Maybe I should dress sassier… do my hair nicer…   actually brush my hair perhaps.   Wear a t-shirt that says "I don’t know any martial arts, promise".   

After walking back to the city from a gig in Marrickville,  I was given reason to think about all this and I came to the conclusion that this is total bullshit – the whole "you gunna git raped in a dark street, girly" jibe.  I’ve done the walk in that area loads of time, but before I left I’d been talking to people, swapping anecdotes about sex predator taxi drivers.  I knew a friend who had something happen to her, and thinking about it made me nervous.  There were gale-force winds blustering through Sydney that night, and every time some rubbish on the ground rattled about I turned around to see if I was about to meet my doom.  I’ve never worried before but I started to think that if it is dangerous, then the more times I walk alone like this the more chance I have of it happening.   If it’s a 1 in 50 chance, and I’ve walked that way 49 times….  

Then I got up to Newtown (aka Spewtown), which had more people and is supposedly more safe than walking alone in the dark.  At this time some of the pubs were closing and telling people to move on, and other ones were open but not admitting new patrons due to a post-2am curfew imposed on them, and others were open but dealing with a lot of people who couldn’t handle their drink slash drugs slash deep-seated emotional problems dating back to childhood.   Bloodied shirts, pools of vomited, broken glass.  I walked with my head down, not making eye-contact, not saying anything, but I still had 4 idiots yelling at me, some of them right in my face.   The lunacy stopped when I got down to the park at Broadway that I’m warned is another alleged Danger Zone, then started again in the city, until I got into a Nightride bus.  No fights tonight, just a kebab smeared all over the bus floor and idiots tossing a plastic ball around like we were in a nightclub in Ibiza.  THIS IS NOT A PARTY BUS, LET ME SLEEP.

It seemed in practice as though I was in way more danger of being run over by a drink driver in the city or glassed in the face by some cokehead pissed off at the Towney chucking him out or groped by the douchebag I have to sit next to on the bus, than I am of being taken from the shadows of a deserted industrial area.  Particularly at 4am in the morning.

I thought about it and I remembered at uni being told that most murders, assault & battery and indecent assault cases had a perpetrator known to the victim, and quite often related to or in a relationship with them.  I checked it out again and it’s true, I’m still far more likely to be raped, molested or beaten up by someone I know.   Getting a lift home with a friend or acquaintance, especially when I’m exhausted or drunk, is statistically more risky than walking home alone.  For every person with an anecdote to tell me "no, you’re wrong, because this one time I was walking down the street and…." there are more people who can tell about their friend, partner, parent, grandparent, aunt/uncle, cousin, flatmate, neighbour or sibling who hurt them or threatened them, often in their own home.  It’s sad but true.  

Also, I was forgetting how probability works.  If it is a 1 in 50 risk when I walk through that area, then it’s 1 in 50 each time I do it.  It’s not 49 in 50 if I’ve done it 49 times, and it’s never 50 in 50 aka 100% probability.  It’s just 1 in 50, or 2%.  I made that number up as an example, but if it’s true, then there’s a 98% chance that nothing will happen ever.  It’s not that I’m lucky it hasn’t happened yet, but that I’d be pretty unlucky if it did.

Even if I was unlucky and something like this did eventually happen to me, what then?  If I chose to stay the night at someone’s house and a tree outside fell on the room I was sleeping in, killing me, should I be chastised for that poor choice?   Cause & effect is not the same as choosing your fate.  You don’t really know when bad stuff is going to happen, just the probability, and it’s never 0.   So I know I’m in some level of danger, but no more than any other option I have open to me, and in some cases, less.  

 If someone is so afraid of car crashes that they avoid driving and crossing roads, I’d think they were neurotic and maybe even needed professional help – after all, it’s a fear stopping them from doing the things they want to do in life. That’s what this idea of Asking For It does, whether it’s about walking home alone or wearing a low-cut top.  It’s asking people to restrict their lifestyle, wardrobe and savings (it’d cost me around $95 for a cab fare home from that part of Sydney) for no real benefit.  We live in a society where we’re relatively safer than most of the rest of the world, why not enjoy that to the fullest?

I’m not saying it doesn’t happen or isn’t a major concern, or that it doesn’t happen way more than it should at all.  The statistics aren’t great – there’s still a high number of people who experience something like this at least once in their lifetime and ideally it shouldn’t happen to anyone ever.  I’m just saying that I’m sick of being given crappy advice that puts the blame on the victim and doesn’t actually protect anyone. At least I know for 100% sure that I won’t be a victim of being ripped off by a taxi driver every Saturday night.

So no, I won’t SMS you tell you I got home safely. You’ll be asleep or unconscious by then anyway.

Sources to back up what I’m saying:
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/4906.0.55.0042005?OpenDocument  <— NSW females table applies to me specifically, so I looked through that one.
http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/056A404DAA576AE6CA2571D00080E985/$File/49060_2005%20(reissue).pdf