Victims, aren't we all?

Media, mothers, women, what are we teaching our daughters, our sisters, ourselves? Some would say that with the rise of “raunch culture” we are training ourselves to be sex objects. To dress trashy. To consume porn and sexually mold ourselves for the pleasure of men. Hooters restaurants, the playboy bunny, Pam Anderson, Victoria’s Secret, Girls Gone Wild, teen sex parties. All in effect. Yes, sex is everywhere.

But while some bemoan the thought that women are taught to be objects, I fear the thought that we are taught to be victims.

You know, it is true, every single time I walk out my front door, I could be raped. I could be raped in my home. Women like me are often raped on the job. I could be raped in a dark parking lot. I could be raped on a subway. I could go to a club or a party and get slipped a ruffie and get raped. I could be raped in broad daylight; I could be raped at night. I am female, therefore every second of every day I could get raped. This is true. My sex, by default, makes me a potential victim. My work makes me even more high risk. There is the very real possibility that I, or any other woman, could be raped at any time.

This is truth. But I see the world teaching women to be victims. I see the world telling women it is not a matter of if; it is a matter of when. I see the world telling women that no matter how hard they try, no matter what they do, they can be raped. And it is true. But I also see the world telling women to live in fear, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

The media tells us we are nothing but victims. Dateline warns us nearly weekly that the Internet predators are coming for our children. Oprah & Montel do the same, and also add that at any moment, any woman could be raped, kidnapped and killed. Court TV and A&E provide us with an endless stream of stories and studies and documentaries about serial killers and rapists and all the foul people out to get us. And the message is in fictional television as well. Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, CSI, Cold Case, Without a Trace, the Profiler, each week, each night of every week, we can turn on our televisions and see women victims. Women who have been raped, brutalized, killed. Women who are whores, or college girls, or naïve teenagers, or executives, or wives, or mothers. Women who are gay, women who are straight, women who are promiscuous, women who are virgins. Young women, old women, girls who are not yet women at all. All victims. All victimized. Generally, their tormentors are men, but L&O: SVU has even done episodes about the rare (yet really out there) female sexual predators who prey upon other women or children. And the message is clear, no woman, no matter who she is, can ever be safe. She is not safe from her father, her teachers, her friends, her husband, her neighbor, her boss, her family, a random stranger, a person on the net, or even other women. There is no safe place, not her home, her car, her gym, her favorite café, her place of business, the neighborhood bar, her webpage, her own body. Nowhere she can hide, nowhere she can run, nowhere that she is not a potential victim.

And this message is not coming from porn, or Playboy, or raunch culture, it is coming from EVERYWHERE.

So, what do we do? Do we take self-defense? Do we buy guns? Do we lock ourselves up and shut ourselves in and train ourselves and other women and girls that we are nothing but potential victims no matter what we look like or where we go or work or what a “good girl’ or “bad girl” we might be? Do we fear the world and men and everything that is out there? Do we teach every girl to look at every boy she ever lays eyes on as a potential rapist and act accordingly? Do we teach her that looking at boys might not be enough but she has to look at other girls that way to? Do we constantly have to wonder if any man in our life, from our father to that fellow we fancy might be a rapist? Might have raped, might rape us? Do we glance at every coworker and every neighbor and every passenger on our train or every person on the street and wonder if they might rape us?

We are, each and every one of us, potential victims, and I see the world teaching women that potential victims are all we are. I see the world impressing upon us the need to teach our daughters the same thing. I see the world telling us all to live in fear, because, true enough, at any second we could become victims, at any place, at any time.

And I, for one, will not play along. I know in reality all of it is true, and I can accept that, but I refuse to become a victim in my heart and head and soul when I just might not ever become one in reality. I refuse to lock myself up and shut myself in. I refuse to look at everyone I see, everywhere, and think the worst of them in my own overblown defense. I refuse to fear love or friendship or fun because I might be a victim. And I refuse to bow down and teach other women that they are all victims in waiting. I may pay for it later, but for now? I refuse to be a victim when what I really am is a woman.