\u201cHow do I let people know that I\u2019m safe?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was the topic of a big discussion in my circles awhile back. How can men signal to women that they are safe? How can strangers signal to strangers that I\u2019m a person who will help if you are in trouble? How can I communicate that you can tell me things, trust me with things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People were looking for symbols, secret passwords, a rainbow flag to pin on their backpack\u2014so to speak. Like when queerness was underground but you could find each other by saying you were a friend of Dorothy. A shortcut to flag how safe you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I understand the conversation well, the desire for those around you to know you are safe. But I think we\u2019re all asking the wrong question here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not: how can I let people know I\u2019m safe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s: how can I be<\/em> safe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n How can I\u2014every day\u2014do the work to become a safer person?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because the truth is that you don\u2019t have to scream it from the mountaintops. You don\u2019t need the rainbow flag pin. You don\u2019t need a secret password.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can symbols help? Sure. Do they sometimes act as shorthand that can identify you to people who are ideologically aligned (or misaligned)? Certainly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the real work isn\u2019t flagging your safety to others. The real work is recognizing that no matter how wonderful your intentions are in the world, it takes work to be safe (in any context).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Safe isn\u2019t a pin, a label, or even an intention. It\u2019s how you show up every day in your actions. People don\u2019t feel I\u2019m safe because I bought the right t-shirt, wrote the right line in my bio. They feel I\u2019m safe because they were at the table with me when someone started joking about violating another person\u2019s consent and I was the one who said \u201chold on a second.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Safety is not passive. It\u2019s active. It takes intentional self-education and care. And it\u2019s a skill cultivated over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So let\u2019s turn the question on its head. It\u2019s not how do I prove I\u2019m safe or how do I let others know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s how do I become safer every day in a real, tangible sense?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And as you do that, the result is this: you don\u2019t have to tell anyone anything. They feel safe because you show up as you, as the person who cares about being<\/em> safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cHow do I let people know that I\u2019m safe?\u201d It was the topic of a big discussion in my circles awhile back. How can men…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-findom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourgoddesspandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
People don\u2019t feel I\u2019m safe because I say that I am. They feel I\u2019m safe because they saw me opening my home to the community during the power outage across all of Portugal, Spain, and parts of France in the early summer\u2014feeding everyone from the backyard grill because no power means no cooking for most in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n