Content Warning: This piece contains descriptions of sexual assault. If this is not something you want to engage with right now, that is okay.
During my junior year of college in 2016, I took self-defense classes from an MMA fighter, where I learned a lot of different skills and had a lot of fun. The classes were empowering, and I felt a little safer with the knowledge that I now knew how to fight back.
Fast forward to September 2018, when I was in the Peace Corps. I was in a larger town for the weekend, staying in a hostel with a couple of friends, and I was sexually assaulted by another guest at the hostel. Even though I knew how to fight back, I just froze. My body felt like it had completely shut down, and I had lost all control. What happened to me was not my fault because I froze; we can’t anticipate what our bodies are going to do in harmful situations.
While I employed a risk reduction strategy, it ultimately failed to prevent violence from occurring.
Often, we see risk reduction strategies like self-defense classes mislabeled as violence prevention strategies. Reducing the risk of something does not make the issue go away; harm may still occur. But when we dig into the roots of the problem, we can prevent potential harm in the first place.
Let’s learn the differences between risk reduction and prevention and how we can shift our focus to prevention.
What is Risk Reduction?
Risk reduction is the act of reducing or minimizing the risk of harm occurring and often involves placing the responsibility on potential victims to stop harm from happening to themselves.1 Risk reduction strategies include (but aren’t limited to):
- Taking self-defense classes
- Carrying pepper spray/mace or other defensive devices
- Drug detection materials, like testing strips or drink covers in social settings
- Establishing an incident reporting structure for a team/organization
Strategies like these can be great tools to help mitigate potential risks and can be empowering for many people. However, they shouldn’t be relied on to stop potential harm from happening.2
What is Prevention?
Prevention refers to any action taken to prevent harm from happening at all. Prevention strategies include (but aren’t limited to):
- Education — presentations, demonstrations, curriculum, and/or conversations on topics like consent, boundaries, bystander intervention, power imbalances, types of abuse, available resources, etc.
- For athletes, this could include discussions about what to expect when working with a coach/trainer/physical therapist, and what behaviors are okay versus not okay
- For athletes, this could include discussions about what to expect when working with a coach/trainer/physical therapist, and what behaviors are okay versus not okay
- Changing culture by calling out harmful jokes, words, and behaviors
- Advocating for survivor-centered policies and systems
Prevention strategies focus on reducing or even eliminating the likelihood that someone will choose to commit sexual violence.3 The intent behind these strategies is to create hostile environments for abuse to take place.
What Is Missed by Risk Reduction?
If we focus only on implementing risk reduction rather than long-term prevention, we might miss nuances and factors that can make certain strategies ineffective.
It is reported that at least 60% of victims of sexual violence, and 93% of victims under the age of 18, have some kind of pre-existing relationship (intimate partner, friend, family member, co-worker, employer, coach, acquaintance) with the person who harmed them.4 These relationships may cause some risk reduction strategies, like using pepper spray or fighting back, to feel at odds with our previous understanding of the relationship.
When we experience harm, our bodies often engage in fight, flight, freeze, flop, or fawn. We often don’t have conscious control over this. It doesn’t matter how many self-defense classes we’ve taken or if we carry around a can of pepper spray, because if our bodies decide to “freeze”, then we are probably unable to fight back.5 Because of this, focusing only on risk reduction can lead to victim blaming and shaming.
When I reported my assault, I was asked, “You know how to fight, so why didn’t you? If you fought back, this wouldn’t have happened.” This placed all of the responsibility for what happened on me, instead of on the person who harmed me.
Risk reduction places responsibility on individuals rather than on collective, community-driven action. Instead of coming together to pursue lasting change, we often end up isolated in our choices and ultimately do little to address the root causes of sexual violence.
Why should we focus on prevention?
Prevention creates lasting change by digging deeper to address the root causes of sexual violence: oppression, power imbalances, and systems that uphold these as norms.6 Through prevention efforts, we can work together as a community to change the culture that accepts these norms. Conversations, education, and advocacy are crucial tools to create this change! Risk reduction strategies can also play a role as long as they are presented as tools for empowerment and lowering risk, rather than eliminating risk altogether.
Prevention is a multi-layered, collective effort that can be done in so many ways across all aspects of life. When we work together to prevent sexual violence, we work to build safer communities in the short- and long- term for all.
Elizabeth Romary, MSc
Communications Manager at #WeRideTogether
eromary@weridetogether.today
Footnotes
- NSVRC, PCAR
- AASAS
- CDC, 2024
- RAINN
- Schmidt et al, 2007
- NSVRC
References
- AASAS. (n.d.). Rethinking Prevention. Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services. https://aasas.ca/ending-sexual-violence/rethinking-prevention/
- CDC. (2024). Preventing Sexual Violence. Center for Disease Control. https://www.cdc.gov/sexual-violence/prevention/index.html
- NSVRC. (n.d.). About Sexual Assault. National Sexual Violence Resource Center. https://www.nsvrc.org/about-sexual-assault/#:~:text=Oppression%20is%20the%20root%20cause,people%2C%20and%20people%20with%20disabilities
- NSVRC, PCAR. (n.d.). Child Sexual Abuse Prevention and Risk Reduction: Literature Review for Parents and Guardians. National Sexual Violence Resource Center. https://nsvrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Publications_NSVRC_LiteratureReview_Child-Sexual-Abuse-Prevention-and-Risk-Reduction-review-for-parents_0.pdf
- RAINN. (n.d.). Statistics: Perpetrators of Sexual Violence. Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network. https://rainn.org/facts-statistics-the-scope-of-the-problem/statistics-perpetrators-of-sexual-violence/#headline-H2_3
- Schmidt, N. B., Richey, J. A., Zvolensky, M. J., Maner, Jon. K. (2007). Exploring human freeze response as a threat stressor. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. Volume 39, Issue 3, 292-304.
