Safety Should Not Be a Full-Time Job
How much more are people disproportionately impacted by violence supposed to do to stay safe? For many, safety is not an occasional thought. It is a constant calculation that shapes everyday decisions in ways that are often invisible to those who do not carry the same weight. Women, girls, transgender and nonbinary individuals, people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, and people with disabilities are all disproportionately impacted by gender-based violence. For many within these communities, safety can look like checking the back seat before getting into the car, choosing a parking spot under a light, avoiding certain places after dark, texting a friend when arriving home, or sharing a location just in case. Over time, this awareness becomes routine. It is steady, learned, and exhausting.
Still, the messaging continues. Be careful. Stay alert. Protect yourself. Make good choices. These messages are often shared with care and meant to help, but beneath them is a deeper assumption that becomes hard to ignore once you see it. Your safety is your responsibility. When that message is repeated in a world where gender-based violence is widespread, it raises a more urgent question. Why are people disproportionately impacted by violence still being told to do more, instead of addressing why the violence continues?
The problem is not that people develop strategies to navigate an unsafe world. The problem is what happens when those strategies become the primary response to violence. When safety advice becomes the dominant message, it shifts attention away from those causing harm and toward those most likely to experience it. It suggests, even unintentionally, that violence can be avoided if someone is careful enough or prepared enough. That is not prevention. That is responsibility being misplaced.
Safety strategies can help someone feel more prepared in a particular moment, but they do not address the root of the problem. When we rely on them as the main solution, we reinforce the idea that safety depends on how well someone manages risk rather than whether others respect boundaries, understand consent, or choose not to cause harm. Over time, this framing shapes how people move through the world. Decisions about where to go, when to leave, or whether something feels worth the risk are not simply personal preferences. They are often filtered through the possibility of harm, and that constant calculation carries weight.
It can also normalize violence by treating it as expected. When the primary response is to tell people how to avoid harm, it suggests that harm is inevitable and that the best response is to keep adapting. It places responsibility on those navigating the risk instead of those creating it. Violence does not happen because someone forgot a precaution. It happens because people choose to cause harm, and because harmful beliefs and behaviors are often minimized or left unchallenged.
If we are serious about prevention, we have to be clear about what prevention actually is. Prevention is not telling someone to watch their drink or text when they get home. It is not asking people to shrink their world in order to feel safer. Those are safety strategies. They may help someone navigate risk, but they do not stop violence from happening.
Real prevention focuses on the conditions that allow violence to exist in the first place, especially the social beliefs that shape behavior long before harm occurs. It means challenging the idea that someone is entitled to another person’s body, time, or attention. It means teaching clear, ongoing consent and recognizing how often it is misunderstood or ignored. It means naming how alcohol is used to excuse harmful behavior instead of holding people accountable for their actions. It also means paying attention to the everyday comments, jokes, and behaviors that normalize pressure, coercion, or disrespect, and choosing not to let them go unchecked.
Prevention also lives at the community level. It looks like creating environments where people feel responsible for one another, where stepping in is supported, and where harm is taken seriously. It requires accountability to be consistent, not conditional. It asks institutions to respond in ways that support those impacted and address those causing harm. This is the work that shifts culture and reduces the likelihood of violence over time.
None of this means safety strategies are useless. People deserve tools that help them navigate the world as it currently exists. But those tools should never be mistaken for the solution or framed in a way that suggests someone is responsible for preventing another person’s violence. People disproportionately impacted by violence have already spent enough time adjusting themselves to survive. They have already carried the fear, the planning, and the vigilance. They should not also be expected to carry the responsibility of stopping violence.
A better vision of safety asks more from all of us. It asks communities to speak up, institutions to respond seriously to harm, and individuals to challenge harmful behavior when they see it. It asks us to stop confusing restriction with prevention. Real safety will not come from asking people to do more. It will come when we finally expect more from everyone else.
To continue this conversation, join us for an upcoming DARCC Lunch and Learn featuring Meg Stone, MPH, Author and Executive Director of IMPACT Boston. In “The Cost of Fear and the Benefit of Resistance Practical Safety Skills for Healing and Prevention,” Meg will explore the harmful and often evidence poor safety advice that circulates widely, how to fact check common social media safety messaging using federal data sources, and what trauma informed personal safety skills can look like as part of a broader sexual assault prevention approach. With decades of experience in domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy, prevention education, and abuse prevention, Meg brings deep expertise and a powerful perspective to this conversation.
References
NO MORE. (2025). Why Was a Guide to Women’s Safety Necessary?
Tomorrow Woman. (2024). Safety Rituals: The Mental Load of Women’s Everyday Self Protection.
World Health Organization. (2024). Violence against women.