WE NEED TO STOP TELLING WOMEN THAT THEY WOULD BE SCARED IF THEY SEE WE ALONE

Kristin Addis, from Be My Travel Muse, writes our semi-regular column on female travel alone. Nessa coluna, it deepens in the culture of shame that surrounds individual female travel and how women customarily say that it is not safe to travel (as men are not informed about it). It is not an easy topic, but it is very pertinent and needs to be discussed.

Many of us, lonely travelers, we receive retrocessos. Depending on what other people know we have to do in our lives, the pressure can vary from mild guilt to quite disturbing warnings.

“You will never get another job, you will never find a partner, you will never have money (or it will be established at your time) and you will never have financial security,” he says.

“You will be a more easy victim, you will be roubada ou morta.”

But one thing stands out when we consider solitary female travelers versus solitary men:

As women are informed more frequently than men that they will be “stupradas” if they travel sozinhas.

Based on my own research conducted by large Facebook groups focused on travel, with almost 1,000 responses, 69% of the interviewees reported having been informed that they would be raped if they traveled under 6,6% two men *.

Certainly, we will consider ourselves the data on the sexual assault of women versus men, many more women are victims of men all over the world. In the USA, according to the 2010 report of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in five women in the USA were raped at some point in their lives. The statistics are similar in Canada, where more than 600,000 sexual assaults are reported by women per year, which is estimated at just 5% two cases, while the rest are not reported. A 2014 report from the Agência dos Direitos Fundamentais da União Europeia shows similar numbers.

However, when we look deeper into our numbers, we see that most of the violence is inflicted by someone who is a victim. According to Canadian statistics, only 16% two violent attacks against women have been carried out by a total stranger in the USA and are estimated at around 22%.

And when do women travel abroad? I discovered that in countries with a lower socioeconomic level and even higher rates of sexual violence, the probability of the aggressor being someone who the victim does not even know was also low, according to the global and regional estimates of the World Health Organization.

Also, the numbers show that being sexually assaulted externally is rare. Or crime number um or stolen passport. Unfortunately, the US does not report on non-external sexual assault, but the British Behavior Abroad 2014 report shows that the government provides assistance to an average of 280 victims of non-external sexual violence in more than 19,000 cases of consular assistance per year in 2009. to 2014 .

Obviously, many sexual assaults are not reported outside. Also, the world is generally not a safe place for women. Coercion still occurs in the culture of excessive consumption in shelters and does not help keep women safe. However, based on all the above investigations, it seems that most of the rapes that occur outside occur between people who are known to each other and are not tourists.

This suggests that, when traveling, a woman is potentially putting herself in a less threatening situation of sexual violence than when she is at home.

Isso it made me think: why is warning women that they will be “attacked” if they travel sozinhas and is not widespread, even when the data does not support it? Why is it that every time a tragedy occurs with a lonely traveler, there is front page news that also suggests that she is to blame?

Compare this with when a homem sozinho finds a tragedy and is referred to as an adventurer and “lover of life.” Why is the opposite common for a woman – which, as many in the comment sections of these articles, we cannot avoid? Salientar, shouldn't you have traveled sozinho?

Why can we men travel alone and as women are not there?

Is it simply very threatening, does it consciously – or more often unconsciously – see a woman going against the typical status quo and tending more self-agência? Is it abnormal to see a woman decide that she does not need a partner, a friend or any type of companion on a trip to another country (or that, for Americans, it is probably statistically safer)?

When a woman goes against the status quo, it triggers the change of people and the discomfort of them in relation to a life not fully lived. It is for this reason that women are alerted to other women about the dangers of individual travel. Please note that there are always someone who has not attempted to travel alone and has not had an experience in the first place.

Além disso, embora a global population has exploded, as women are still blamed for being afastarem of the traditional gender role of marrying and having children. But this has only been a “tradition” for some hundreds of years. Integer villages, including children, are usually involved in the raising of children, but in modern motherhood

It's often a solitary job. This certainly makes it easier to take or greater power from a woman – and, in truth, from any human being – than to give life and become a burden. Isso pulls autonomy and pulls a work force. Is so keep women dependent and out of positions of power.

The results fail by themselves. As women we receive less, in the middle, than we do homages from the inner world. There are fewer female CEOs and fewer women in government (except in Rwanda, which also has the cleanest capital in the world), making people better off in female leadership.

Happily, we are selling a change all over the world and a discussion about the patriarchy that is at the forefront of great media – something that we have seen for a long time, after centuries of female subjugation -, but we still have a long road ahead.

After all, there is the psychological effect of this widespread warning given to female travelers to consider. Having doubts about a woman's sexual safety can have a powerful effect on her psyche, especially if she has experienced some sexual trauma at some point in her life and has an altered emotional response to these things.

This is so, this alert about statutory rape affects women, who have suffered sexual traumas or not. A study conducted at an American university discovered that women who are not victims of statutory rape have a greater probability of assuming typical gender roles after reading a realistic description of a rape that occurred on their own university campus, where a woman would feel more imminent for them.

Several similar studies mentioned in the same book, Sex, Power, Conflict: Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives, edited by David M. Buss and Neil M. Malamuth, discovered that only the threat of rape eroded the trust of men in women and negatively affected themselves. propria. -esteem and self-agência.

The threat of rape is a psychological weapon that will likely discourage you not only from traveling, but from trusting yourself and your own abilities.

Is a woman distrustful of men and, above all, of herself and her abilities, so why not should she raise the courage to travel the world, especially sozinha? It is much easier to keep a woman “in her place” if she does not become independent, experience other cultures and begin to accredit herself and her abilities.

How, in light of this information, can we see a woman saying that she will be “stuprada” as something other than cruel and manipulative?

There is nothing to blame us for, but simply to expose the facts: it is false that a woman is more likely to be raped for traveling than for staying at home.

We need to ask why female autonomy is a very scary concept in modern society. We need to reconfirm that, even keeping a woman long of her independence, even unintentional friends and countries are killing her self-confidence.

It is up to all of us to support women who want to grow and flourish in all the ways we choose, including traveling the world, especially alone. It was the only thing in my life that created more self-confidence and courage than anything else that did. I hope everyone experiences this hair at least once.

(Note: Unfortunately, there is a shortage of data on those who identify themselves as non-binary. There is also an option included in the data pool itself – which still has many answers to be statistically useful – I did not see this group referenced in numbers. de pesquisa governamentais.Com isso em Mind you, this post uses the given years when you have access, which concentrates on those who identify themselves as men or women.)