TW: mention of abuse, rape and sexual violence
I first came across the term living by a rape schedule at the age of 18 when I was trying to articulate the steps I have to take while coming home from work, late at night, to a friend who is a cis-man. I started writing this article from a place of bringing to life the experiences of folks like me – people for whom constantly forced trade-offs for our personal safety are now entrenched in our muscle memory. I did a short dipstick survey to assess how much time and money people of different demographics in urban India spend daily because of the fear of sexual assault to understand this better.
“Never thought of it as living on a rape schedule. It’s so obvious when you think about it.” [29, Cis Woman, Heterosexual]
‘Living by a rape schedule’ is a phrase that is used to illustrate that women are conditioned to place restrictions on and/or make alterations to their daily lifestyles and behaviours as a result of constant fear of sexual assault. These altered behaviours may occur consciously or unconsciously. I have expanded the use of this phrase to understand the experiences of cis women and queer folks. 30 valid responses have been counted towards this analysis: out of this 2 identified as cis men, 23 as cis women and 5 as gender fluid, trans or gender non conforming.
The data highlights significant gaps in time and money spent among people of different genders. When accounting for religion, caste and sexuality, further differences emerge. While the data set is small, it is indicative of larger trends of time and money usage, resulting in reduced control over one’s lives and choices, if belonging to a marginalised gender. The respondents through their qualitative answers shared that this time spent was not just in public spaces but also in private realms: at home, workplaces, educational institutions etc.
“I spend more time than money because I don’t have the money to spend” [24, gender fluid]
A key insight that emerged from the responses was that being hindu or from an oppressor caste directly correlated with more access to financial resources to expend. As the ability to spend money increases, the time spent towards ensuring safety decreases to a fair extent. For example: if someone is able to afford to drive back in a personal vehicle from a late night at work, they do not have to spend longer hours scouting for transport that feels safer. In some situations, while the amount of money one could access or spend was lower, it was indicated that it was a large chunk of their income. The fight against sexual violence is an intersectional struggle and one that requires a material / class analysis. Money creates and expands choices, and there is an urgent need to build a community alternative that supplements these resource needs.
The survey also asked an open question, “What else do you do daily to ensure your personal safety against sexual violence? Are there impacts of it on your health, life aspirations or anything else?” This is a place where I discovered many insights and found my own desires and constraints reflected.
Consequences of living by a rape schedule
Apart from the increased daily effort and financial requirements, several converging concerns came up. Several folks stated they don’t use washrooms in public spaces because they often tend to be in more secluded places with very real effects on their health and personal sanitation. I have observed people joke about women going to the bathroom in groups all the time, and perhaps it is our survival instinct that has made us so. Many also stated that they have had to move cities, jobs, and let go of opportunities in their navigation of safety. Many respondents stated that they feel unfree in how they are able to experience where they live, they are unable to go about late at night or participate in experiences in their cities because of the constant sense of threat to safety. Joy, leisure and the ability to do nothing in public spaces is stolen from people as a consequence.
The biggest thread that emerged was that of how these experiences lived on in the bodies of respondents. Almost all respondents, especially queer folks, shared that they had a heightened awareness of their surroundings, their bodies had adapted to being in survival/fight mode constantly and that they were always finding ways to shrink themselves to not draw attention. Over time this had led to seeing our bodies as a permanent site of violence and conflict. A parallel that emerged was the inability to engage with desire playfully or without a perception of threat to oneself, limiting the possibility of intimacies and connection. For one person their first encounter with expressed desire had been through harassment (being catcalled on the street), leaving an imprint for future interactions and a questioning of their own needs and desirability, “Can I only be desired in a way that violates my agency?”.
“What a privilege it is to be annoyed rather than afraid.”
“I dress differently in different places.” [27, Transwoman]
All trans, gender non-conforming and gender fluid folx and several cis women responded stating that they are always changing how they dress according to where they are. They control their personal self-expression and also limit the expression of their identity. For many respondents this was also true for them within their own homes. Presentation, clothing and overall attire is historically assigned heightened morality and narratives around this are used to control who is deserving of respect and who isn’t (i.e. respectability politics).
Responding to safety needs institutionally
The existence of this phrase and the conditions around it are a very real tangible expression of rape culture getting embedded in our lives. I remember friends in college sharing names of people to stay away from because of history of sexual violence and assault. However, if a policy of an educational institutional bans such communication among people of marginalised genders as an attempt to prevent such violence, that is where it further embeds rape culture into the system rather than addressing its causes.
Similarly, when organisations propagate self defence classes as a way to tackle sexual assault – they are embedding the ideas that (1) rape can and will happen (2) it is the personal responsibility of the potential victim to fight it off and not of the system to prevent it. There is an immense danger of stakeholders responding to this concept with efforts to institutionalise, what are currently personal measures. We don’t have to look far for such examples, it often starts within our own homes. Many respondents stated that they were forced to lie at home about safety needs, several had curfew restrictions or were not allowed to stay out at night.
The fact that so many people could relate with and respond to the idea of a rape schedule is indicative of a systemic failure to care about or prevent sexual assault. Persistent rape culture has shaped dominant narratives of how sexual assault happens – building up the idea of stranger danger when 95% sexual violence is perpetrated by someone known to the victim, internalising in vulnerable individuals the belief that there is something we can “do right” to prevent getting sexually assaulted / or that there is something we must be “doing wrong” and that is why we deserve this violence. It is also related to people responding to the high incidence of sexual assault with further policing of those vulnerable to such violence rather than supporting our quest for liberation.
How can this be made into a business model – for purpose, for profit