Personal Safety

I. What does personal safety mean to you?

Personal safety, to me, can exist on multiple levels dependent on context and environment. The most obvious perhaps would be physical safety, which determines how I might navigate through physically dangerous scenarios, usually in relation to other people (I am more scared of people than I am of external environmental factors). I would say a sense of physical safety is most often gained through tangible products, such as pepper spray, weapons, protective equipment, etc, though I personally don’t carry any of those things. Another level of personal safety, though, is emotional safety, which I would say is much less physically evident or “solvable”. While a sense of physical safety could change the way I move through a space, my sense of emotional safety might determine what I disclose and what risks I take while in a new environment. As a young woman, I often find myself in situations where physical and emotional safety considerations overlap, and emotional danger leads to physical danger or vice versa. I would argue the lack of a feeling of personal safety on all levels is what often leads women (and really all targeted groups of people) to hold back and draw very little attention when placed in a new or unfamiliar context.