Safety for Women

I will be a Solo Female Hiker for Te Araroa.

I am frequently a Solo Female Hiker.

(Just for what it’s worth ‘female’ is about the worst word ever to delineate a lady-person but it works for this narrative so please bear with me.)

I’ve been a shift worker for approximately forever years, so often my free time falls during the week when none of my mates are around to hike with me. I’m accustomed to hiking alone now; I’m comfortable with it and I also enjoy it. If I couldn’t find a way to do that, then I most likely wouldn’t hike at all.

But inescapably, my solo hiking escapades attract a certain kind of safety-splaining comment. I should be careful out there. Keep myself safe. Aren’t I… *worried*? About things that can happen?

Obviously, anyone who heads out to the bush for a day or so of frolicking in nature assumes a certain level of risk; from the elements, or the terrain, or of getting lost or injured. It’s why we learn how to use navigational tools and our first aid kits, and carry a PLB.

I’m inclined to suspect, though, that a fair percentage of the admonitions to keep myself safe are to do with the perceived risks from men.

My Mum is starting to get questions from her peers as to whether I’ll ‘be alright’ as a Solo Female Hiker. There are discussion threads on hiking forums about whether women should carry a weapon or pepper spray as a defence against ‘creepy guys.’

Let me be clear. I have never, ever, once felt threatened or at risk due to inappropriate behaviour from men I’ve encountered while out hiking or bushwalking. And the hard data backs up my instincts. Time and time again studies show us that women are most at risk from men we already know. The trope of the Rapist Hiding In The Bushes is a statistically infinitesimal occurrence, although it receives a disproportionate amount of media attention. What maybe does justify attention and worry and energy is, I dunno… I’m a woman who has intimate relationships with men? I’m a woman who catches public transport in a major city, occasionally at odd hours? I’m a woman who works in a male-dominated profession and I frequently socialise with my coworkers?

Look, I get it. I know we are all well conditioned to this shadowy and nebulous fear and I know from whence it comes, but it also bores me and it shits me to tears. Believe me – women are told from Day One that the world in general is not a safe place for us. We’ve been practising risk assessment from puberty and before, and on the whole we are already very good at it – the way that people get good at anything they practice a lot for many years. This concept, that as women and girls we are constantly told to *keep ourselves safe* and yet also assumed to be useless at doing so, is just another no-win Catch 22 that we are constantly expected to absorb and negotiate. It’s patronising and it’s infantilising.

Violence against women doesn’t just happen in isolated places and in isolation. And my hiking alone shouldn’t make me the object of anyone’s fantasies of being the Interventionist Hero or whatever. Violence and sexual assault and degradation of women happens right in front of us, in families and workplaces and communities and social circles ALL THE FUCKING TIME. And societally we are extremely good at denial of the uncomfortable. People look away.

It’s not so much that I feel perfectly safe hiking alone. More that I know I’m just not perfectly safe anywhere at all. So I may as well not let fear of the worst things that can happen to me keep me from doing what I love best. And maybe that makes me foolhardy or pig-headed or fatalistic or even just a silly girl but I will raise a giant middle finger and hike to every horizon before I will let myself be caged by the notion of supposed grisly outcomes that, in the end, I will have no control over whether I am in the middle of nowhere or sitting in my lounge room.

My exposure to risk is definitely more visible as a Solo Female Hiker, but that does not make the likelihood of harm coming to me any higher. If you really want to make a difference… Don’t tell women to stay at home and stay indoors and stay afraid. Watch your friends and watch your family and watch the everyday, and be ready to give support where it’s needed. That’s how you be a fucking hero. That’s how we keep women and vulnerable people and each other safe.