How to Survive Alone in the World as a Woman
Your go-to guide!!
First, you must accept that you only have so much control over whether or not you survive. You are a woman, and the world is a dangerous place for you. In fact, people are going to go out of their way to remind you of that when they ask you who you’re traveling with and you tell them that you’re alone.
“You’re so brave!” they’ll exclaim in a tone that implies they would never let their daughter do what you are doing. However, there are a few things you can do to mitigate risk.
Don’t wear anything too flashy. If you have an engagement ring or any real stones, turn them so they face your hand. Keep your key ring around your finger so you can jab anyone in the eye. Keep your purse zipped, and wear a crossbody bag or some other kind of bag someone would struggle to get off of you. Run with an Apple watch on in case you get raped and murdered. Maybe someone will be able to collect it post-mortem. Maybe you’ll even be able to call the police and live.
Have your finger ready to hit 911 if you feel unsafe. Look over your shoulder often, but not so often that other people perceive you as feeling uncertain. Walk confidently. If you need directions, stop to look at your phone as if you’re texting someone.
Listen to music if you feel comfortable doing so, but keep one earbud out if you’re not certain of your surroundings so you can hear what’s going on. Strive to look uninterested in everything around you. Never show fear. Never say no. Never ask to be left alone.
Find easy ways to escape undesirable situations(e.g., someone talking to you when you would rather them not.)
If you suspect you’re being followed, stop and pretend to call someone or make a turn you weren’t going to make. See if the person follows you. If they follow you wherever you go, actually call someone.
Keep them on the phone until you find a stranger who looks trustworthy and pretend to bump into them like you’re an old friend. Loudly exclaim how glad you are to see them and quietly explain you are being stalked and need their help.
How do I know this? Any of this? I’ve been stalked. Short guy, red jumpsuit, Boathouse Row, police on scene, too little, too late.
I’ve said no. We had sex that night anyway.
When I showed up in Paris last May, my Airbnb host handed me a shower rod - you know the kind, they expand as you screw them open - and said, brow furrowed, “Hopefully if you stick this between the wall here and the door, it can prevent anything.”
Thanks, Guillaume. You’re a real one.
I forgot the most important one.
Don’t live in fear. Don’t get me wrong, sister, these are good tips I’ve gathered from living in big cities and seemingly safe suburbs, from being assaulted and being stalked. These tips aren’t bullshit advice to make you feel safer. Sometimes, they actually work. But the best advice I have for you is not to live in fear.
This one took me longer to learn, you know? When I first realized the world was not a safe place for girls, I was probably 14 or 15. It could have been when someone catcalled me on the street or when an older guy shoved my hand down his pants. But I shoved those reminders down.
I woke up, all the way, when I was assaulted in my bed in college. It’s okay, you don’t have to say sorry or some shit like that. Everyone says sorry. Of course I wish it hadn’t happened, but I learned a lot from it.
Things like, anger festers. Fear festers. Letting the past control your life is no way to live. There’s a line between awareness of danger and constant fear. Making everyone your enemy will only hurt you. Forgiveness isn’t for them, it’s for you. Empathy isn’t a pass; it opens us up to greater healing.
It opens us up to the possibility that there is more good in the world than bad, if you want to be that binary, that no one is the sum of their actions, that the beauty is there if we can teach our minds to look for it. That we are not what has happened to us or what will happen to us. We are divine beings having a human experience, as a teacher of mine often says.
Knowing all of the right things to do — to have mace ready and to not dress too flashily — can be great weapons in your arsenal as you go to survive in this world. But so can the softening of your heart. So can compassion. So can approaching life from a place of love, rather than a place of fear.