In a world obsessed with terror and, even more so with its antidote, security, I don’t feel very safe.

I’m not talking about anthrax threats and leaky borders, I’m confident that’s all under control. My fears, it seems, are different than those of the powerful people who amass weapons and armies to address their safety concern. I don’t feel bombs or guns, criminal profiling or police, are going to protect me from the terror that is mine.

This societal fixation on protecting ourselves from foreign terrorists makes me want to scream “Where’s my security?!” I’m not sure my screams would be heard, though, by politicians busy handling the real issues of terror and security, hunting down the real enemy an ocean away.

Let me put it bluntly, then: I’m not likely to be beaten or raped by an Al Qaeda member. For women, terror is much closer to home.

The Reality of Terror

“Despite significant strides forward in the struggle for equality and fairness, women still experience high levels of violence and abuse in our society.”
— B.C. Ministry of Health, 2002

Terror is terror, an act of violence or a whispered threat, whatever the source. The reality of mine isn’t international, but domestic. It is not the result of a clash of civilizations but of a societal power dynamic that continues to allow men to hurt women and get away with it. It’s as simple as that. And it’s a terror that haunts me, as it does many women.

Violence against women, including date rape, accounts for the majority of violent crimes in our society:

  • According to a 1997 Crime Statistics Report by Statistics Canada, male on female violence accounts for 48 per cent of all violent crime in Canada.
  • In 1998, women and girls were the victims in 85 per cent of sexual assaults, 78 per cent of criminal harassment cases and 74 per cent of other sexual offences; 62 per cent kidnapping or abduction victims were female and 52 per cent of “common assault” victims (Status of Women, 2000.)
  • Half of all Canadian women have survived at least one incident of sexual or physical violence (Statistics Canada, 1993.)
  • Homicide data reveals that women are at higher risk of being killed by men they are or were married to than by anybody else (Statistics Canada, 2002.)
  • Only 10 per cent of sexual assaults on women are reported to the police (Ontario Women’s Directorate, 1998.)

So, whether Canadians are mentioned in Osama Bin Laden’s next dispatch or not, no, I’m not scared of him.

The Devil You Know

Eighty-seven per cent of women who are raped know their assailants (Statistics Canada, 1997.)

This one keeps me up at night. It’s one that we all know, though we live in a society that likes to pretend we don’t.

It may be comforting for some to believe terror is from another country, another religion or race despite the indisputable fact that the assailants and their victims often share the same office, the same friends or the same bed.

That must be why the overwhelming message women are still being fed about their safety is to be wary of strangers — especially if he happens to be black, we learn, as if by osmosis. Helpful. And, yes, when they say “stranger” they mean strange as in foreign. Foreign as in different than ’us.“ Foreign as in “the other.” Really helpful.

This fear of the foreign, scary other is drilled into us from childhood. I lament now that our young minds were imprinted with stereotypes when they could have been armed with facts.

Handier to know to watch out for the Robert Picktons — a farmer, a neighbour, white, known for his friendliness. Instead, we helped give him camouflage. His is not the face of terrorism on the news each night.

Big Money, Cheap Security

Canada, which already spends billions on security, upped the spending another 1.1 billion last year (2001/2002) and again by 1.5 billion this year. This money will go to bolster border security, upgrade planes, purchase chemical antidotes and equip our military.

All that money and yet I have to walk with my keys clenched between my knuckles. All that money . . .

Imagine what even a fraction of that money could do to make this country safer for women or to provide better support and services for survivors. Imagine if funding to programs and service already doing both those things hadn’t been relentlessly cut by federal and provincial governments across the country for the last several years.

How about some billions for better equipped shelters, counselling and affordable housing for women who want to escape a violent situation?

Sometimes, I fear all the money in the world wouldn’t be enough to stop the violence, the terror we live with, sleep with, breathe into ourselves. But we’ve got to try.

And I mean really try. Not just by locking up the assailants, but by changing society and the attitudes we hold towards women and sexual violence, towards the men who do it, so we can confront the real root of the problem, and stop it, for good. Only then, will I feel safe.

* * *

For me, it’s the names of fourteen women that come to mind when I think of victims of terror. The date isn’t September 11, 2001 but December 6, 1989. That’s when those fourteen died at the hands of a gunman who hated women, at l’Ã0/00cole Polytechnique in Montreal. They’re not war heroes who died fighting a foreign terror but ordinary women who died on a domestic battlefield, the unwitting enemy.

The many people who will brave the cold to attend memorials tomorrow provide me with some comfort, perhaps in the name of outrage and solidarity if nothing else, but I can’t help but wonder: What if as many people marked December 6th as mark November 11th?

That’s a war on terror I would proudly fight.

Krystalline Kraus

krystalline kraus is an intrepid explorer and reporter from Toronto, Canada. A veteran activist and journalist for rabble.ca, she needs no aviator goggles, gas mask or red cape but proceeds fearlessly...