Much of On Her Own is about personal safety in the context of our normal, ordinary lives, but I’m not the only voice in this community. One of the others is Lee of The Obscene Sailor, who looks at these issues from a more male perspective. We join forces this month to talk about safety in the context of dating and relationships. In many cases, we find that the issues aren’t gendered, because these issues that affect women and men both and sometimes in the same way.
In this first episode of four, we dive in to the scary world of online dating and how we can stay safe as we embark on meeting potential new sex and life partners. We talk about expectation- and boundary-setting before the first date and early in a budding relationship, and how we present ourselves in our dating profiles and in early conversations. We also discuss principles of managing the different kinds of safety and security we need to be aware of when we get started with new people in our lives, both for ourselves and for making our dates comfortable, not to mention the various ways in which we might need to defend ourselves when we’re part of the dating scene.
The study Lee mentions about sexual assault numbers being approximately equal for men as for women is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4062022/.
The Tik Tok video we discuss can be found (with a description) at https://www.buzzfeed.com/shelbyheinrich/woman-tinder-date-shame-tiktok.
Next Monday, we’ll be back to explore how to stay safe as we allow relationships to become a bigger and more serious part of our lives. We look forward to having you back!
