The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence (11 page)

A woman alone who needs assistance is actually far better off choosing someone and asking for help, as opposed to waiting for an unsolicited approach. The person you choose is nowhere near as likely to bring you hazard as is the person who chooses you. That’s because the possibility that you’ll inadvertently select a predatory criminal for whom you are the right victim type is very remote. I encourage women to ask other women for help when they need it, and it’s likewise safer to accept an offer from a woman than from a man. (Unfortunately, women rarely make such offers to other women, and I wish more would.)

I want to clarify that many men offer help without any sinister or self-serving intent, with no more in mind than kindness and chivalry, but I have been addressing those times that men refuse to hear the word “No,” and that is not chivalrous—it is dangerous.

When someone ignores that word, ask yourself: Why is this person seeking to control me? What does he want? It is best to get away from the person altogether, but if that’s not practical, the response that serves safety is to dramatically raise your insistence, skipping several levels of politeness. “I said
NO
!”

When I encounter people hung up on the seeming rudeness of this response (and there are many), I imagine this conversation after a stranger is told No by a woman he has approached:

MAN: What a bitch. What’s your problem, lady? I was just trying to offer a little help to a pretty woman. What are you so paranoid about?

WOMAN: You’re right. I shouldn’t be wary. I’m overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I’ve personally heard horror stories from every female friend I’ve ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whom I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me, or drives alongside my car pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven’t figured out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he’d do something that would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I’m made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards
DOESN’T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD ‘NO’
.”

Whether or not men can relate to it or believe it or accept it, that is the way it is. Women, particularly in big cities, live with a constant wariness. Their lives are literally on the line in ways men just don’t experience. Ask some man you know, “When is the last time you were concerned or afraid that another person would harm you?” Many men cannot recall an incident within years. Ask a woman the same question and most will give you a recent example or say, “Last night,” “Today,” or even “Every day.”

Still, women’s concerns about safety are frequently the subject of critical comments from the men in their lives. One woman told me of constant ridicule and sarcasm from her boyfriend whenever she discussed fear or safety. He called her precautions silly and asked, “How can you live like that?” To which she replied, “How could I not?”

I have a message for women who feel forced to defend their safety concerns: tell
Mister I-Know-Everything-About-Danger
that he has nothing to contribute to the topic of your personal security. Tell him that your survival instinct is a gift from Nature that knows a lot more about your safety than he does. And tell him that nature does not require his approval.

It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different—men and women live in different worlds. I don’t remember where I first heard this simple description of one dramatic contrast between the genders, but it is strikingly accurate: At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.

▪ ▪ ▪

I referred Kelly to IMPACT, which I believe is the best self-defense course for women. She is now an instructor there, helping others to heed the signals. At IMPACT, which is available in most major cities, women have actual physical confrontations with male instructors who play assailants. (The men wear heavily padded outfits that can withstand direct punches and kicks.) Women learn not only physical defense tactics but also about how to deal with strangers who make unwanted approaches. (See
appendix 2
for more information about IMPACT.)

Most new IMPACT students are very concerned that they must avoid making a man angry, reasoning that this could turn someone whose intent was favorable into someone dangerous. Be aware, however, that it is
impossible
in this context to transform an ordinary, decent man into a rapist or killer. Thankfully, though, it is possible to transform yourself into a person who responds to the signals and is thus a less likely victim.

▪ ▪ ▪

I recently got a close look at several of the strategies outlined above. I was on a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles, seated next to a teenage girl who was traveling alone. A man in his forties who’d been watching her from across the aisle took off the headphones he was wearing and said to her with party-like flair, “These things just don’t get
loud
enough for me!” He then put his hand out toward her and said, “I’m Billy.” Though it may not be immediately apparent, his statement was actually a question, and the young girl responded with exactly the information Billy hoped for: She told him her full name. Then she put out her hand, which he held a little too long. In the conversation that ensued, he didn’t directly ask for any information, but he certainly got lots of it.

He said, “I hate landing in a city and not knowing if anybody is meeting me.” The girl answered this question by saying that she didn’t know how she was getting from the airport to the house where she was staying. Billy asked another question: “Friends can really let you down sometimes.” The young girl responded by explaining, “The people I’m staying with [thus, not family] are expecting me on a later flight.”

Billy said, “I love the independence of arriving in a city when nobody knows I’m coming.” This was the virtual opposite of what he’d said a moment before about hating to arrive and not be met. He added, “But you’re probably not that independent.” She quickly volunteered that she’d been traveling on her own since she was thirteen.

“You sound like a woman I know from Europe, more like a woman than a teenager,” he said as he handed her his drink (Scotch), which the flight attendant had just served him. “You sound like you play by your own rules.” I hoped she would decline to take the drink, and she did at first, but he persisted, “Come on, you can do whatever you want,” and she took a sip of his drink.

I looked over at Billy, looked at his muscular build, at the old tattoo showing on the top of his wrist, and at his cheap jewelry. I noted that he was drinking alcohol on this morning flight and had no carry-on bag. I looked at his new cowboy boots, new denim pants and leather jacket. I knew he’d recently been in jail. He responded to my knowing look assertively, “How you doin’ this morning, pal? Gettin’ out of Chicago?” I nodded.

As Billy got up to go to the bathroom, he put one more piece of bait in his trap: Leaning close to the girl, he gave a slow smile and said, “Your eyes are
awesome
.”

In a period of just a few minutes, I had watched Billy use forced teaming (they both had nobody meeting them, he said), too many details (the headphones and the woman he knows from Europe), loan sharking (the drink offer), charm (the compliment about the girl’s eyes), and typecasting (“You’re probably not that independent”). I had also seen him discount the girl’s “no” when she declined the drink.

As Billy walked away down the aisle, I asked the girl if I could talk to her for a moment, and she hesitantly said yes. It speaks to the power of predatory strategies that she was glad to talk to Billy but a bit wary of the passenger (me) who asked permission to speak with her. “He is going to offer you a ride from the airport,” I told her, “and he’s not a good guy.”

I saw Billy again at baggage claim as he approached the girl. Though I couldn’t hear them, the conversation was apparent. She was shaking her head and saying no, and he wasn’t accepting it. She held firm, and he finally walked off with an angry gesture, not the “nice” guy he’d been up till then.

There was no movie on that flight, but Billy had let me watch a classic performance of an interview, that, by little more than the context (forty-year-old stranger and teenage girl alone) was high stakes.

Remember, the nicest guy, the guy with no self-serving agenda whatsoever, the one who wants nothing from you, won’t approach you at all. You are not comparing the man who approaches you to all men, the vast majority of whom have no sinister intent. Instead, you are comparing him to other men who make unsolicited approaches to women alone, or to other men who don’t listen when you say no.

In my firm, when we make complex, high-stakes predictions, part of the approach also involves comparison. Let’s imagine we are predicting whether a former boyfriend might act out violently toward the woman he is stalking. We first seek to identify characteristics that separate him from the population as a whole. To do this, imagine a circle containing 240 million Americans. At the center are the few thousand men who kill those they stalk. Figuratively working from an outer ring of 240 million people, we eliminate all those who are the wrong gender, too young, too old, or otherwise disqualified. We then seek to determine if this man’s behavior is most similar to those at the center of the circle.

A prediction about safety is not, of course, merely statistical or demographic. If it were, a woman crossing a park alone one late afternoon could calculate risk like this: there are 200 people in the park; 100 are children, so they cause no concern. Of the remaining 100, all but 20 are part of couples; 5 of those 20 are women, meaning concern would appropriately attach to about 15 people she might encounter (men alone). But rather than acting just on these demographics, the woman’s intuition will focus on the behavior of the 15 (and on the context of that behavior). Any man alone may get her attention for an instant, but among those, only the ones doing doingdo certain things will be moved closer to the center of the predictive circle. Men who look at her, show special interest in her, follow her, appear furtive, or approach her will be far closer to the center than those who walk by without apparent interest, or those playing with a dog, or those on a bicycle, or those asleep on the grass.

Speaking of crossing a park alone, I often see women violating some of nature’s basic safety rules. The woman who jogs along enjoying music through Walkman headphones has disabled the survival sense most likely to warn her about dangerous approaches: her hearing. To make matters worse, those wires leading up to her ears display her vulnerability for everyone to see. Another example is that while women wouldn’t walk around blind-folded, of course, many do not use the full resources of their vision; they are reluctant to look squarely at strangers who concern them. Believing she is being followed, a woman might take just a tentative look, hoping to see if someone is visible in her peripheral vision. It is better to turn completely, take in everything, and look squarely at someone who concerns you. This not only gives you information, but it communicates to him that you are not a tentative, frightened victim-in-waiting. You are an animal of nature, fully endowed with hearing, sight, intellect, and dangerous defenses. You are not easy prey, so don’t act like you are.

▪ ▪ ▪

Predictions of stranger-to-stranger crimes must usually be based on few details, but even the simplest street crime is preceded by a victim selection process that follows some protocol. More complicated crimes, such as those committed by the serial rapist and killer whom Kelly escaped from, require that a series of specific conditions be met. Some aspects of victim selection (being the right appearance or “type,” for example) are generally outside the victim’s influence, but those that involve making oneself available to a criminal, such as accessibility, setting, and circumstance (all part of context), are determinable. In other words, you can influence them. Most of all, you can control your response to the tests the interviewer applies. Will you engage in conversation with a stranger when you’d rather not? Can you be manipulated by guilt or by the feeling that you owe something to a person just because he offered assistance? Will you yield to someone’s will simply because he wants you to, or will your resolve be strengthened when someone seeks to control your conduct? Most importantly, will you honor your intuition?

Seeing the interview for what it is while it is happening doesn’t mean that you view every unexpected encounter as if it is part of a crime, but it does mean that you react to the signals if and as they occur. Trust that what causes alarm probably should, because when it comes to danger, intuition is always right in at least two important ways:

1. It is always in response to something.

2. It always has your best interest at heart.