Recently the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center launched a poll asking women to answer questions about whether they feel safe riding in taxi cabs in Boston, a response to reports of sexual assaults and other crimes perpetrated by taxi drivers. (Poll is available online at www.barcc.org/active/taxi/). As I read about and consider this poll, I think of how many safety tips I've seen that encourage women to bring taxi money as a way of getting out of an unsafe situation. If a taxi, the supposed safe alternative to the T or a drunk or otherwise untrustworthy driver, is also a source of potential violence, then how do we continue to live full lives in a society in which the threat of rape is as pervasive as it is?
As I took the survey I realized that I do feel safe in taxis. Not because taxis are particulary safe places, but because I know I have the skills to protect myself. This is the beauty of what I have gained from IMPACT-- the knowledge that someone's threats won't make me freeze. The confidence that comes from knowing that if someone attempts to physically overpower me, I have numerous strategies available to protect myself. That someone intending to assault me does not make that assault inevitable. More so, that what keeps the assault from being inevitable is not the help that someone else might give me but the strength of my own voice and body. Because of the skills I've learned I don't have to limit my life for fear of what someone else might do to harm me.
This is not to say that any self-defense training makes me or anyone else invincible, but it does mean that there are many fewer places where I feel unsafe. Having the skills to physically protect ourselves against rape means that there is an essential part of rape resistance that lives in our bodies and that nobody can take away from us. If a few women can make these shifts it is personal change, if a critical mass of women can, it's social change.
As the movement against sexual violence considers how best to respond to rapes in taxi cabs-- and rapes everywhere else-- it it critical to address the problem on multiple levels. How do people at risk to perpetrate sexual violence get licenses to drive cabs? How does law enforcement respond to survivor reports? Whether it's increased law enforcement, screening of drivers or education, demanding that institutions address this problem are key parts of change.
Just as key is the confidence that many IMPACT graduates feel in our bodies when we step into a taxi, or a bar, go on a date or climb a mountain. The confidence that comes from knowing that whether or not policing or educating or cultural change efforts stop an individual perpetrator, our voices and our bodies can.
Meg Stone, Director
