HeckNo When it is someone you know: why resisting is harder
- The delay is not cowardice. It is four extra problems arriving at once.
- If you froze, you did not consent and you did not fail.
- Noticing early, leaving early and a good lie are what actually get used.
WHEN YOU KNOW HIM
Why it is harder with someone you know
One decision becomes five.
Fighting off a stranger is a decision about danger.
Fighting off someone you know is different.
It is also a decision about the friendship, the party, his feelings, whether you have misread it, and what everyone will say tomorrow.
That is arithmetic, not nerve.
That is not weakness — it is four problems stacked on top of the one you were trained for.
The women in the studies named the same three things.
Women in the studies described exactly this: shock that he would do it, concern about embarrassing him, uncertainty about whether it counted yet.
Something is happening and you have not moved. What is most likely holding you?
Answer: Not wanting to embarrass him, and not being sure it counts yet
The social ones. Women describing this afterwards name shock that he would do it, worry about embarrassing him, and uncertainty about whether it counted yet — not fear of losing a fight.
IF YOUR BODY STOPS
Freezing
of women at a rape clinic reported significant tonic immobility during the assault — the body going rigid and unresponsive.Möller, Söndergaard & Helström, 2017 — tonic immobility during sexual assault, 298 women at an emergency rape clinic, Stockholm.
It is not a decision.
Tonic immobility is automatic. It is a brainstem response to inescapable threat, shared with most mammals, and it is no more chosen than a flinch.
What is said about it afterwards does damage of its own.
It is also strongly linked to PTSD afterwards — partly because of what people are told it meant about them.
Afterwards, she remembers going rigid and silent. What does that tell you about what she wanted?
Answer: Nothing at all
Nothing at all. Of 298 women seen at a rape clinic, 70% reported significant tonic immobility during the assault and nearly half described it as extreme. It is a brainstem response, like a flinch, and it has never been evidence of consent.
Möller, Söndergaard & Helström, 2017 — tonic immobility during sexual assault, 298 women at an emergency rape clinic, Stockholm.THE POLITENESS PROBLEM
Permission to be rude
What stops women early is not fear.
Politeness: not wanting to make a scene, not wanting to be wrong, not wanting to insult someone who might be harmless.
And it is being counted on.
Attackers who know their targets rely on that, because it buys them the minutes they need.
The skills that got used were not the ones you would guess.
The skills women actually used most were not strikes. They were noticing early, leaving before anything happened, saying no plainly — and lying.
Of everything in this course, which are you most likely to actually use?
Answer: Noticing early, and leaving before anything happens
Noticing and leaving. Two years after the programme, among the women who had used anything at all, 47.6% named spotting the situation early and 44.9% named leaving early, against 22.7% for forceful physical resistance. Shouting him down came last, at 7.6%.
Crann, Senn et al., 2021 — which resistance skills graduates of the programme actually used afterwards.Including the one nobody calls a skill.
Inventing a phone call, a friend outside, an early start tomorrow. A lie that gets you out of a room is a skill.
You want out of the flat, and the true reason is that you do not like how this feels. What do you say?
Answer: Whatever gets you out of the door
Whatever works. A phone call, a friend outside, an early start: the programme names lying as a legitimate way to leave, and its graduates said the same thing in their own words two years later.
Crann, Senn et al., 2021 — which resistance skills graduates of the programme actually used afterwards.Sources
- Möller, Söndergaard & Helström, 2017 — tonic immobility during sexual assault, 298 women at an emergency rape clinic, Stockholm.
- Senn et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2015 — randomised trial of a sexual assault resistance programme, 893 women.
- Crann, Senn et al., 2021 — which resistance skills graduates of the programme actually used afterwards.