How busy is your schedule?

Do you find it nerve-racking to go out at night by yourself? Have you ever hustled over to your car with your sharpest key between your fingers? Did you ever take off in a sprint when a car came flying around the corner next to you in broad daylight? If so, your schedule is probably as busy as any other woman’s.

This is not an article about what classes to take, when to shower, or how to fit a significant other into your life if you are married to your job. Stop for a minute, and take in this phrase: rape schedule.

Low and behold, the “r” word. If you came into this article looking for scheduling solutions, you stumbled upon something more important. Today, I am here to talk to you about something many girls and women experience in cultures across the globe.

What is a rape schedule?

For those of you who have never heard of the term “rape schedule,” feminisitcampus.org defines it is as, “the ways in which women alter their daily lives in order to limit their chances of sexual assault.” Considering that one out of six American women are the victims of an attempted or completed rape, it is not surprise we are brought up having to schedule our lives around protecting ourselves from an attacker. The real question here is, why? Why on earth should our lives be so deeply impacted by this fear? Does it have to be this way? Do we absolutely need to be in a constant state of unrest?

This is not about gender; it is defined by statistics.

Some of you may, at this point, be thinking, “Why does this only apply to women? What about men?” Women make up the majority of those sexually assaulted. Women are the ones who most often take on the habits that constitute a rape schedule. Women are brought up being taught how not to be attacked.

Society has not made it as much of a priority for men to take on precautionary habits. Most males are allowed to walk down their block starting at a younger age than females. Yes, rape should be a genderless issue, and I am not trying to overlook the men who have been assaulted. They need our attention to. However, in this article, the topic is about the term rape schedule, which mostly applies to women.

Why does this really matter?

In most cases where a woman takes an attacker to court, the opposing side’s lawyer tries to blame her. Victim blaming is sadly very popular in the US court system still. Men on the stand are not told, “Well, he was wearing something too revealing. He was asking for it.” Men also are not told, “He was kissing her which means he was looking to be promiscuous.” And men most definitely are not told, “Since he slept with someone before, he probably slept around and, therefore, is just now regretting his decisions.”

Ladies, we are living in a world that tells us that it is our job to protect ourselves. It is our job to not dress how we want because it can “give the wrong impression.” It is our job to lock the car doors the second we step in our vehicle to drive home, of course not before checking the backseat for a crazed lunatic. Do not leave your hair down, or someone can grab it. Keep an extra car in your driveway so a possible deviant will think you are not alone. Check the locks twice. All of these tasks fall on us as women; this way, no one can attack us. Forget one thing and we were just not careful enough, our fault. It is our job to fend off an attacker, because if we do not, we must have wanted it.

Let us talk about the big picture.

I hope by now you can start to see at least a little bit how incredibly disgusting this situation is. Why should the responsibility of protection fall only on us? Why not teach how to respect one another from a young age in schools? Programs to combat sexual violence seem scarce in elementary schools, and especially high schools. I never remember learning about this topic on a serious level before college. That is pretty alarming considering women in college between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are three times – that’s right, three times – more likely to be victims of sexual violence than women in general (RAINN).

How long do we want to stare into mirrors debating whether or not our outfit could be taking as an unwanted initiation? How many headaches will we endure keeping our hair up? How much time will we waste on self-defense classes to “feel safe.” How much money will we spend on high-tech alarm systems and deadbolts for every door and window in our living space? How many fake phone calls do we need to keep making to convince others that someone is watching us? Do you have a whistle, pepper spray, or a blunt object in your purse at all times?

All of these precautions do not only eat up a lot of our time, they are tedious and extremely exhausting. To constantly worry day-in and day out is to be cursed. To be uneasy leaving your house during the alter half of the day is to be plagued by an unforgiving system created by our own society.

Honestly, how much of our lives are consumed by our rape schedule? Take a minute to ask yourself how often you do these things, how much time and energy they devour, and really ask yourself why you do them. It is not hard to see the truth under the surface.

Where do we go from here?

The situation seems dim and depressing from here, right? Guess we are just doomed to have this burden thrust upon us. It seems impossible to stop an attack when our culture and society also expect women to be sexy and look and act a certain way, correct?

Do not resign yourselves to this ludicrous fate. We need to fight against the injustices that allow rape schedules to exist. The best way to be heard is if we join together to stop this from being further ingrained. How can we do this? The first step is always the same: awareness.

We need to make people aware of the term rape schedule and everything it implies. We need to educate our masses on the extreme bias behind the acts women are “supposed to” carry out so that we can “protect ourselves.”

Next, we need to tell people that rape is not the victim’s fault because they did not follow their schedule or for any other ridiculous reason. Victim blaming and shaming only allows rapists and attackers to think they have a right to woman’s body as long as the situation follows some sort of twisted guideline. There is no excuse for sexual assault. The people around us will continue to further validate a dated system on how to keep women safe, even though that system does the complete opposite and puts zero responsibility or blame on the rapist, if we do not change our society.

We have to get it through peoples’ heads that it is not the job of a woman to defend herself. It is the job of every single person to not be an attacker. Throwing rules at someone and saying, “From here on out, this is your problem, not mine,” is not only useless, it gives others the impression that they have no responsibility from that point on. It is our responsibility as a society to stop sexual assault from occurring. We need to all be aware that assault is detrimental to our society and all do something to help prevent it, even if it just wearing a t-shirt with the words, “Don’t Rape People,” on it.

Continuing on, everyone needs to start calling someone who rapes someone by the proper name. Rapist. They are not a “Stanford Swimmer,” for example; they are a rapist!

We need to stand together with the survivors. Thousands of voices are stronger than one. The media is always looking for a juicy story, so why not have public rallies and protests against things that are unjust? Stand together with other women who have fallen victim at the hands of a dirt bag, and raise hell!

Lastly, we need to educate our youth. Stop letting people grow up with the idea that it is okay to touch someone else without their consent. Stop letting boys grow up with a complex that their worth is in how many partners they sleep with. Start educating children from a young age about personal space and respect. The youth of today is the future of tomorrow. We can be the beginning of some sort of end, no matter how big or small, to the rape culture we live in. We need to break the cycle and take charge of the brighter future we so desire.