Keeping Girls Safe
When culture won't
Women are vulnerable. That’s not something I was taught as a child or a young woman. I know that my mother felt it. When I was a pre-teen, she tried hard to keep me from wearing anything that made me look feminine. There was an assortment of shopping trips that included me begging for dresses that had frills and a waistline instead of the boxy, shapeless clothing she wanted me to wear. I won. I was clear I was female, even if I did like to climb trees and was good at math.
Mom did encourage me to think I could be as good as a guy at anything, and the feminist culture of the time supported her message. Despite my small stature [always the shortest kid in class] I believed it. And I was pretty athletic. I was faster than every boy in the playground, and I took riding lessons and spent as much time around horses as my mom could afford. Horses are big. Handling them made me strong for my size. And I knew how to throw around what weight I had. I didn’t realize women were vulnerable until I hit my teens.
Suddenly, the boys got taller and stronger. A lot stronger. And I got my period. And those boys were interesting in different ways. And my mom got more anxious.
In this 2018 essay, James Pinkerton talks about the song from the 50s, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which has been described as an ode to date rape. The song is a beautifully sung duet [it won an Oscar] performed by a woman trying to leave a man’s house while he tries to convince her to stay, and - presumably - have sex with him.
As a liberated young woman, I found the song amusing, perhaps even charming when I first heard it. But then popular music of the 70s and 80s was full of expressions of love, desire, and lust, mostly sung by men, and sometimes by women. There were messages all over the place telling me I was an independent person and that I had a right to have a healthy and active sexuality.
My mother would have preferred the opposite. But I grew up knowing the pill was an option - an option my mother didn’t have. In her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry condemns the pattern culture was taking during my youth and young adulthood. She legitimately points out that culture exists to protect the young and the vulnerable, and that historically that included young women. Having been one, while I and my friends were able to bear children, we weren’t all mentally mature enough to make good choices while around adolescent boys in pursuit of their biological imperative: sex. Perry makes good points and backs them up with statistics, both social and biological. One of my closest friends dropped out of school because she was pregnant, and another married the day after graduation with an oversized wedding dress. In an earlier generation, such things were less likely to happen. It’s what my mother wanted to protect me from.
Culture is the process of creating containers for our conflicting survival impulses. We have a collection of such impulses as part of our genetic heritage. We all, as part of that heritage, carry the darkest impulses, the worst of each aspect. Ethical systems whatever they are based on, give behavioral patterns a way to express what is the most productive for the environment in which that culture developed.
And our culture is now wholly disrupted. What’s a parent to do? Young girls don’t stop being vulnerable to predators because women got the vote, can own property, can make contracts, and work a well-paying job. Ignoring this reality is dangerous for young women and children.
I didn’t want to be protected. And I paid a price for claiming my sexuality as I did. It could have been worse. But it could have been a lot better. How?
Women are are now viewed as being equally responsible for their lives. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, and several things can help keep our daughters safe from the very real predators in our midst. Good fathers are the most basic. As women, we should be choosing good men with whom to raise families. Men who are looking for the responsibility of adulthood will be invested in their children. A good father knows exactly what kind of threat other men present to their daughters, and will know how to teach their sons not to be ‘that guy.’
Getting girls involved in sports is highly beneficial. It teaches them the same lessons as it does boys, while also reducing the likelihood of early pregnancy.
Not all girls care for team sports. But martial arts gives both the skills and confidence to back off the most persistent of pushy young men. I’m blessed to be able to teach martial arts to young people, and both the girls and the boys are amazing. The boys grow into polite, respectful, and confident young men. The girls know how to keep a cool head when they’re threatened. That aspect alone makes them less vulnerable because they don’t look like easy prey.
Another option is teaching the shooting arts. Both bow and firearms require focus and learning responsibility. These are inherently dangerous activities, but no more dangerous than what a young woman faces when she walks out of the protected space of her home.
Now that women have more rights, we need to take up the responsibility of making sure that we - and our daughters - are safe.
Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments do creep in. She lives with her husband, and is Mother of Cats; four boyz and one cranky gurl. Selina has written The Young Woman’s Goodlife Guide: Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 20. Or… Learn From My Pain, and How to Train Your Cat: Using a Clicker and Leash to Keep Your Indoor Cat Happy and Healthy. She’s currently working on the Goodlife Guide to Nutrition.