If you have not recently travelled, while being female, in this rape culture, let me take a few minutes to fill you in on what I (we) did to attempt to keep ourselves safe.
NOTE: I say 'attempt' because, while we did a lot to travel "safely" and be "smart", we were at no time guaranteed that we would ultimately return home safely and without experiencing trauma.
We were staying in an AirBnB (our first time) once arriving in Chicago and to feel safe about doing so I...
- verified the hosts on AirBnB
- searched them on social media
- Google searched their names to verify that they did not come up in news stories, etc
- Google street searched the address given as the location
- read the host's reviews from past travelers
- made sure that check-in would be mid-day to take advantage of daylight
- communicated with both hosts via their respective mobiles beforehand and asked questions to see if they would answer them differently/the same (I did this sparingly as I wanted to keep the majority of communication through AirBnB where it can be documented)
- texted my partner with the street address, names of hosts and listing on AirBnB
That was all before even leaving my home! Once we had travelled to the hosts condo I...
- made sure that we walked into the condo together AFTER making sure that there was no one else present in the hallway leading to the condo door
- I left my purse on my body so that I would have a defensive weapon of some kind
- I instantly looked for and took note of exit strategies (for instance, I noted that the windows were old and single pane glass, making it easy to throw something relatively small through the glass to draw attention to our location and being around the corner from UIC there was near constant foot traffic from students in the area)
- during a brief tour of the small condo I watched the host more than I looked at the décor
After receiving keys and verifying that they worked for both doors, our host left us alone in the condo and I...
- searched each and every room
- looked inside of every closet
- opened cupboards and drawers
- searched vents for cameras or other devices
- checked window locks
- checked door locks
- made another mental note of more/other escape routes and exit strategies
During our travels to Chicago by train I/we...
- sat near each other
- took note when each other used the facilities
- went together to find the café car to get food
- noticed anyone sitting near us
While exploring in Chicago we...
- made sure our mobiles were fully charged before leaving our AirBnb (although mine did die while we were exploring on our last day there)
- purposed to stay to well-lit, heavily trafficked areas of the city
- purposed to not walk at night (we did end up walking to a restaurant one of the nights but it was 2 blocks from our condo and in a well-lit, busy with student foot traffic area)
- stayed together at all times
- discussed where we were going, and pulled it up on our Maps app, before leaving the condo, do avoid looking like dopey, lost tourists as much as possible
It was an exhausting 3 days, and all in effort to just feel safe! At no time were we actually 100% safe.
As women, just existing in this culture is exhausting. We do SO many things on a daily basis to try to guarantee our personal safety just going about our lives; from locking car doors immediately after getting in, to not going out alone, to having some sort of defensive weapon at the ready when approaching our own cars in a parking lot... in broad daylight, to critically taking note of every single person that we interact with in public, to analyzing and over-analyzing everywhere we go and everything that we do.
Goddammit, I should not have to travel with a man in order to be safe(r) in this world! Fuck!
So, #ThanksMen, for creating a world for women where this is our reality. Can you please help us fix it now?
We are dying here...
