Tomato Nation - War Is Not the Answer

Word on everything this article says, and not just the parts about banks and Buffy.

The other day somebody sent me that self-defense e-mail that's going around. Reading through it, I became so angry. Not because it's not good advice, but because such advice is even necessary. Because a woman can't even wear her hair in a pony tail or talk on the cell phone on the way to her car without turning herself into a potential victim.

No, scratch that. Women don't need to do anything to become potential victims. We are already potential victims simply because we are women. So many of us--too many--have already met that potential and are now survivors. And what can we do about it? Not much, short of turning ourselves into minor paranoiacs and learning to be generally mistrustful of anyone who might be able to overpower us. And that is just a sucky way to live.

I'm not a man hater. There are a lot of good men out there, decent men who treat women with respect; but there are also a lot of creeps out there who don't think very highly of women, who, like Sep said, push us down and use and abuse us simply because they can. And a lot of these wolves come in sheep's clothing. You don't know that you're in trouble until it's too late. You don't know that you've married a wife beater until the first time he hits you. You don't know that you've gone out with a date-rapist until he's trying to get on top of you and force you down. You don't know that the guy who stopped to help you change your tire is a psycho until he's trying to load you into his trunk. There is just no way to know. Sometimes there are warning signs, but often there aren't. It's easier to just stop trusting, safer to be suspicious of everyone; but again, that's no way to live.

So what is? War is not the answer, but neither is cowardice. What's the middle ground? Is a safe and sane compromise even possible? I don't know any more than Sep does. Do you?