There's no balance between "women gotta learn to protect themselves because men are total garbage" and "we need to make sure no man is ever garbage and women should be able to be safe all the time". The point is not the prevention, tbh. It's part of the solution, but that won't come until the "cure" is changed.

What's frustrating is not that women are given "strategies" to keep them "safe". It's that, when a someone is assaulted, this mentality of "predators will always exist and they can't help themselves" isn't vilified and punished but rather handwaved away like a fact of life. The blame, the fault, the shame, all is on the victim. (Across genders, tbh)

I was rewatching Marisha Ray's Between The Sheets interview [content warnings for assault etc] recently and she says something very insightful: people don't like insecurity. They don't like weakness.

A victim is an embarrassment, not someone to be believed, supported, given justice. That's something that really needs to change in our general narratives about almost anything.

So many comments from women saying "I'd rather learn to protect myself", as though that isn't lowkey insinuating that allowing oneself to be a victim of circumstance is shameful. Because the responsibility of your own safety and happiness lies with you and only you, right?

While that might be true in practice, we should expect and demand more from the societies we are a part of. What's the point otherwise?