This week my mom bought me a tiny can of pink pepper spray with a keychain. It freaked me out. She also bought herself two of those little pink cans “for the moose when I’m hiking.” Side note: if anyone has seen a tiny can of pepper spray stop a charging moose let me know.
This weekend a friend and I went on a little two day backpacking trip. She insisted we both carry knives as we filtered our water and hiked around a lake. She brought her pickaxe/shovel in the tent with us, slept with her knife at her hip and made sure my knife was within easy reach. I thought our biggest danger would be a hungry chipmunk getting into our tortillas. On the walk back to the parking lot she told me two girls alone in the woods could make us prime targets for a bear, despite my insistence that the only bears would be black bears, nature’s big vegetarians or sexual assault.
I have lived a charmed, privileged life. I have been in very few situations where I felt like I needed a little can of pepper spray, knife or the real shocker: a gun.
I don’t like thinking that being a woman makes me a target for raging animals or sexual predators. The myth menstruating women attract sharks or bears has been thankfully busted. But being blissfully unaware of potential danger can be just as dangerous as those tourists that take ‘selfies’ with buffalo in Yellowstone.
College women are more likely to be sexually assaulted than attacked by a wild animal. One in five college-aged women will be sexually assaulted and close to 95 percent of those attacks will go unreported, according to 2014 White House Task Force to Prevent Students from Sexual Assault. More UW students feel “campus is safe and secure for all students,” than the national average according to the 2014 Noel-Levitz study but ask around. Rape and sexual assault happen far too often on this campus.
A few students saying they feel safe is very different than all students actually being safe.
The university offers many resources to help protect you and your friends, which include counseling, bystander intervention and self-defense classes, so we don’t have to think that a weapon is our only defense.
I don’t like to think that I’m in danger walking across campus anymore than I like to think I’ll be mauled in my tent by the one angry black bear in southeast Wyoming or a high altitude mountain lion but statistics show many of us, especially women, are at a high risk for sexual assault or rape.
I have my little can of pepper spray in my car. It scares me because I never want to have to use it.
