The Yell Finger of Self Defense Part 1: Boundary Setting

I decided to split the Yell "Finger" into three separate entries.  I start with boundary-setting because this is the issue that comes up the most in conversations I've had with female travelers in South Asia and with women from South Asian. The next two forthcoming entries will deal with de-escalation and intervention respectively, following Thousand Waves' model for teaching the Five Fingers of Self Defense.  

Yell or Fight?

So I want to start with the premise of the Yell Finger. Why should we use our voice? Why not just hit the guy who is harassing us? Well, it depends on what your goal is. If you want retribution, then fighting seems commensurate. But I’m not writing to teach people how to retaliate against your attacker/aggressor. I’m writing to help people better understand the tools and choices we all have to increase our safety and feel empowered as we travel, whether traveling in a foreign country or in public within our own native country. 

When people learn I’m a karate student, many ask me: "Why don't you hit the guy?" It seems to be popular suggestion, especially for women traveling alone in India. I'll admit that at times it's a very tempting thought. The premise is that if I were to hit the offender--especially if I hit him hard--he would be so embarrassed that  he would never engage in such aggressive and insulting behavior again (or at least not with me). 

I wish that were true. The sad fact however is that while the thought of smacking someone who is making rude comments and catcalls as you pass may seem pleasurable and it might be safe to do so, it is not always the case. Sometimes--and you can never be sure when that time will be--aggressive responses will actually escalate the situation, leaving you less safe than when you started. 

When I assisted for a Self-Defense class in South Delhi in March 2013, the instructor--Pooja Agarwal of Seido Karate Noida--shared with us a story that directly contradicts the assumption that aggression is best. 

Pooja told us of one woman who was at a restaurant with her female friend. She overheard a man from the next table loudly talking about her in harassing manner, commenting on her body, her clothing, and so forth. The man was with at least one other friend. Angry, the woman stood up, walked over and slapped the harasser in his face.

The harasser picked up the beer bottle sitting on his table and hit the woman in the side of the head with it. The woman was very fortunate. She was severely injured, but she did survive the attack. 

Using physical force can be dangerous. If you engage in physical force (the Fight Finger) this is a serious choice with real consequences. Any act of aggression--whether physical or verbal--has the potential to escalate a situation. I fully believe everyone has the right to use physical force to defend themselves and others from harm. But I also firmly believe it is best and safest to use the least-violent approach possible first. This is why at Thousand Waves, we teach the "Fingers" in a specific order: Think, Yell, Run, FIGHT, Tell. We think it's best and safest to first use our other tools, including using our voice, first. I'll talk more about options and tools for fighting in a later post; however, here I want to focus on the Yell Finger. 

The Three Levels of Boundary-Setting

Words and body-language communicate more than we realize. If we are scared, that is often communicated through passive body-language: maybe we stand with our arms crossed, balanced on one leg, looking down towards the ground. One reason why this is important is because appearing passive increases our chances of being chosen as a target. Attackers go through a selection process to choose their targets. Most attackers don't want a fight, so they look for "easy" targets, people who appear (even mistakenly!) passive, weak, uncomfortable. If we are looking down towards the ground, it is much more difficult to see an attacker approaching us; we appear more vulnerable. However appearing aggressive or hostile isn't necessarily the safest approach either. While aggressiveness may scare some attackers away (making it safer than passivity), in some cases it may escalate the situation and encourage the attacker to respond in order to 'punish' the target. 

So how do we strike a balance between passivity and aggression in our verbal responses and body-language? It starts with assertive body-language. The exact details may differ for each person, but the basic idea is standing up straight, with your eyes, shoulders and hips forward, showing all five major points of the body towards the harasser (head, both shoulders, both hips). If someone approaches us threateningly, at Thousand Waves we teach our students to take a strong "defender’s stance" (one leg steps back at a 45-degree angle) with a loud 'Yell'. This Yell is not a scream, but rather a shout, loudly voicing a word or phrase such as “No,” “Back off!”  or "Leave me alone!" What does this do for us? It clearly communicates to the harasser and to others that this is unwanted attention, it gets the attention of passersby (who might intervene for us), it potentially embarrasses the harasser, and it also energizes us. At Thousand Waves, we call this a Level-3 response. 

The vast majority of boundary-setting experiences, may not require a Level-3 response. In Chicago we tend to teach a Level-1  response  (a polite, but simple "No") for more commonplace boundary-setting situations  --such as responding to manipulative family members, pushy co-workers, etc. When teaching Level-2 (a stronger, more firm "No!" without moving into defender's stance), we tend to describe more uncomfortable situations, such as when a stranger approaches you in public, asking questions or engaging in behavior that makes you feel uncomfortable and you want them to leave you alone; or when someone (possibly a friend) grabs your hand or shoulder in play and you want them to stop. Generally Level-2 is where I start and remain during street harassment experiences in the US.  I might use the same phrases as in Level-3 ("Go away!" "Leave me alone!") but I say them with less intensity and I maintain assertive (but not defensive) body language. In the US, I have found this works for me virtually 99% of the time. 

When I first tried to apply these techniques to harassment in India, however, my words and body language appeared to have virtually no effect. For months I suffered through daily street harassment, not understanding why these tools and techniques weren't working. I continued to feel vulnerable, threatened, and dis-empowered to an extent that my work started to suffer. In desperate need of a break from harassment, I chose to leave my first research site early. After finding ways to adapt the techniques I had been taught, I did return two months later, somewhat refreshed, and fortunately was able to finish my work before leaving India. So what happened? Why didn't the techniques work?  

Boundary-setting in a South Asian Context

What I hadn't yet discovered is that boundary setting and de-escalation become more difficult in a foreign culture. No matter how much you have studied about a foreign culture, there will be things you don't know. The norms for gender roles, and the way passivity, aggression, and assertiveness are expressed by different genders in that culture will be different from the ones you are accustomed to. Harassment may be more or less subtle, or appear in ways different than you expect, and thus harder to detect at first. For those who study a local language and want to use that language to communicate while traveling, there is the additional complication of the difficulty of expressing emotion and boundary-setting in another language. Additionally, the spectrum of passive, assertive, and aggressive itself may differ, making it more difficult to determine what will be interpreted as assertive.  

In my experience, Indian harassers often appear less aggressive in their body language than harassers in the US. If you are used to assessing aggression by US standards of body language, you will often misread aggression as passivity. Unfortunately this means that the red flags you would notice in the US won't go off until much later.  This is in part governed by gender norms in India. In the US, it is not uncommon for a man to strike up conversation with a woman in public or vice versa, depending on the social context. In many parts of India, it is less common for men in India to converse with women of their age who are not related to them (by blood or by marriage). This kind of public interaction between male and female strangers is thus often interpreted as flirtation. Even conversations that start out innocent ("Oh, what do you study?" "Have you been to India before?" "Oh, how do you know Hindi?") can escalate to more uncomfortable personal questions ("Do you have a boyfriend?" "Are you married?" "Would you consider dating an Indian man?") or to flat-out harassment, such as questions about your sex life or physical acts of intimidation such as stalking, following someone to their room, etc.

In fact, very few Indian men actually behave this way. The vast majority of Indian men I have met will politely avoid making eye contact or will simply observe you with curiosity in their eyes, not aggression. Or they may be genuinely interested in talking with you and learning more about life in [insert your country here]. The point I am making is that harassment can be subtle. Cultural differences make identifying harassment in a foreign country more challenging. This is why the Think Finger is so important.  The best tool we have at our disposal to assess whether or not a conversation is going to turn to harassment is our instincts. 

So what do we do when the conversation turns to harassment? Or when we notice someone openly staring and making catcalls or obscene gestures? This is where verbal boundary-setting comes into play.

For months, while facing daily harassment in Sarnath I applied what I thought was a Level-2 response, to no avail. After observing women in public displaying more aggressive responses to men in other situations, I decided to turn up the volume on my Level-2, using something closer to 2.5 (or possibly 3, depending on your definition). My experiences and training in the US had taught me that if you are verbally aggressive, saying things like "What are you looking at?" you are likely to attract more negative attention from the harasser. In India, however this level of response almost seemed to be the expected minimum level of response to indicate disapproval or disinterest. 

Phrases such as Kyaa dekh rahee ho?!  (What are you looking at!?), or sometimes in my feistier moments: Mujh se kyaa chahiye? (What do you want from me?), or Main aap ki dost/patni naheen hum! (I'm not your friend/wife!), became my mantra as I walked through the streets in Varanasi and later Jaipur and Delhi. I felt uncomfortable at first, fearing I was being aggressive. But when I saw the impact, I realized I had finally discovered what "assertive" for women appears to be in at least some parts of India. Using this approach, roughly 95% of the time, harassers would turn away, embarrassed. A few even apologized.  It seems my calibration had been off. What I had perceived to be aggressive--or at least as bordering on aggressive--was interpreted as though it were assertive. 

This observation was confirmed for me months later, when I was assisting Pooja with her Self Defense class. When she asked women to demonstrate "assertive" I was shocked to see most of these women standing with their hips cocked to one side, with one hand on one hip and the other wagging a finger as if reprimanding a child. But that's aggressive!, I thought to myself, mystified. And then it clicked. Assertiveness and aggression are expressed differently in India than in the US. And therein lies the problem for foreign travelers. Many, if not most Indian women experience harassment from virtually day-one of their lives. They learn how to interpret aggressive behavior and they learn how to express assertiveness appropriate to the spectrum in their culture, just as foreigners do in their own respective cultures. We all instinctively know what passive, assertive, and aggressive looks like in our own culture. But identifying it elsewhere is not so simple. For a foreigner traveling in India, the expressions are different, and that makes handling harassment that much more difficult for foreign women, many of whom might not have previously experienced such regular or intense harassment before. 

Why Learn to Boundary-Set?

Because identifying harassment and ways of responding to harassment that are appropriate to a given situation is more difficult in a foreign culture, it is easy to feel frustrated and powerless in the process.  If you spend your time in South Asia passively ignoring the harassment you struggle to even accurately detect, the experience can tear you down emotionally. And if you spend your time yelling and screaming at harassers, it is easy to feel powerless, vulnerable, and irrationally angry towards the people in the country you are visiting. 

Boundary-setting is both a valuable tool for safety and a valuable tool for empowerment for travelers. Sometimes just feeling as though you did something is enough to enable you to feel strong and confident in the face of harassment. For me, as a female scholar who travels in South Asia, this is the goal I strive for. There is no magic phrase or tool that will work against harassment 100% of the time. Harassment or even assault is not always avoidable. And if it does happen, it is not the fault of the victim for some perceived 'failure' to do everything to prevent it. The goal is to learn to use the tools we already possess to increase our safety so we can enjoy our travels, learning more about the culture and cultivating meaningful relationships along the way. The goal is to feel empowered as we travel, rather than terrified or angry. In my experience, boundary-setting is an important part of this. Further, boundary-setting  can increase our safety, reducing the risk of harassment escalating to other forms of violence such as sexual assault.

Applying boundary-setting in our own culture can be challenging; applying it in a foreign culture while traveling can feel like a daunting prospect, but it can be done. It takes patience and the openness to explore different ways of expressing yourself. 

But I guarantee it's worth the effort. Travel. Try it out. And come back and share with us here what you've experienced. 

My experiential knowledge of expressions of passivity, assertiveness, and aggression in India are of course limited, and mostly learned through trial-and-error in harassment situations in various parts of urban North India (Delhi, Varanasi, Jaipur). As a white foreigner my experiences with boundary-setting in India may be very different from that of an Indian woman. If anyone--Indian or foreign--has any similar experiences from travel around in South Asia, or any counter-examples that could elucidate this, please feel free to share them in the comments section. I suspect that what language you use to boundary-set (your native language verses some local South Asian language) has very little impact. I have heard success stories from Indian and foreign women who have used English and I have heard success stories from foreigners who have used an Indian language, but I am very much interested to hear what phrases others have found helpful. I invite anyone who has used a boundary-setting technique while in South Asia to share their experience. What phrases and techniques have worked for you?  What language did you respond in?   

The Think Finger of Self Defense

One day I was on the Delhi metro with my luggage.  I was standing next to a pole near the entrance to the train, guarding my belongings. I fully expected stares and leering, since (a) I was a white foreigner wearing local clothing traveling alone and (b) I had luggage with me—not exactly a common sight on the Delhi metro at the time. I had discovered through my own empirical testing over the past few months that if I turned towards my harasser and, with not a small amount of attitude, clearly said  in Hindi “Kyaa dekh rahe ho?!” (What are you looking at?!) roughly 90% of the time, the harasser would appear very embarrassed and would turn away, sometimes even mumbling back in Hindi something like  "Kuch naheen!" (Nothing!)  or "Naheen dekh raha..." (I wasn't looking!..) Inwardly I would always smile at this exchange. It felt like a mini-victory to me.  I bet you weren't expecting the gori (white girl) to know Hindi, were you? I would think to myself. When you are tired from daily harassment, you cherish these moments.

I decided to apply this strategy one-by-one to each and every man who stared during this metro ride. Most on the train turned away, apparently losing interest in staring at me the moment I turned towards them. Others waited until I spoke and then turned away without a word, visibly embarrassed. I used this phrase 5-6 times over the course of my 35-minute train ride. After almost every stop, there would be a new person who entered the train and began staring, so I kept applying this method. Until the last person. He was tall, hovering almost a foot above my 5’3” stature. And he stared, looking at my luggage and me, eyes following me up and down, taking in my Salwar top, scarf, and khakis. I waited, counting off 30 full seconds in my head before I turned toward him, met his gaze and firmly replied “Kyaa dekh rahe ho?!”

But this man was different. Unlike the others, my speech did not embarrass him—rather it seemed to make him more interested. He took a step towards me and leaned in, moving closer into my space. He stared through me with even more intensity and replied in English with a heavy accent “Oh, were you speaking Hindi? How do you know Hindi?...” The words were innocuous, but the intent behind them was anything but. Everything in my gut told me: This man is dangerous. My gut also told me something else: Don't respond to his questions. It's not safe. I made a choice then to actively change strategies. I stopped speaking to him and did not reply to any further attempts at conversation. I consciously and intentionally turned my head away from him to convey disinterest in conversation, but angled my body so that I could actively monitor him through my peripheral vision. The train car had started to empty out a bit, but I knew I was safe so long as I was on the train—still too many people around. My fear at that moment was that he would follow me to my stop, the more isolated Vidhan Sabha stop and exit with me. For what felt like an hour, but in reality was probably about 10 minutes, I watched him out of the corner of my left eye. I was out of his range—I knew he would have to take at least a step to grab my arm or make any other sort of threatening move. He continued to try to evince a verbal response out of me using aggressively coaxing tones, but he remained standing where he was out of range, and did not move any closer, so I continued to stand firmly and confidently without saying a word. I kept my muscles loose but tense, prepared to react with both my body and my voice if he came any closer. I alternated between forming a fist and a knife-hand weapon with my right hand—not because it is a practical self-defense move (it isn't!)—but because it made me feel strong and reminded me to breathe and focus. I held my belongings, but was prepared to drop them. Although he eventually quit trying to make conversation, this man never quit looking me up and down until he finally exited, just a few stops before my stop. As he left I breathed a sigh of relief, but did not let my guard down until after I reached the "safety" of outside. Needless to say I was quite shaken by this incident.

Intuition and the "Gift of Fear"
So what is the point of this story? I share this story to illustrate two important aspects I want to highlight from the Think "Finger" of Self-Defense. One is to trust your intuition. This man’s words were not threatening in content. He was not making lewd comments or actively threatening me. But my instincts and my intuition told me he was unstable in some way; he was unsafe. In self-defense scenarios, we often doubt our intuition. We think we are being irrational. We notice someone following behind us at night, but are afraid to turn around and face them for fear that they are innocent. We don’t want to be perceived as paranoid. We tell ourselves that logically everything appears safe, therefore we’re just paranoid; we’re over-reacting. But irrational fear is different from intuition. Intuition is an informed emotional reaction (a fear response) to a perceived threat; it is neither illogical nor paranoid. On a more subtle level a similar thing happens when people close to us use words to manipulate us. We may intuitively know we are being manipulated. But then our good friend Logic comes to our attacker's rescue and convinces us that there is no "rational" basis to what our intuition is telling us.

Let’s re-examine this scenario. I had discovered a verbal strategy that so far had been overwhelmingly successful for me in Hindi-speaking North India (Varanasi, Jaipur, and Delhi areas). And in fact I had successfully employed it several times in a row on that very same train. But in this once instance, it had the opposite of the desired effect. Rather than embarrass and discourage the harasser from leering, it encouraged and emboldened this man. Logically his words conveyed:  I am friendly. Talk to me. I am safe. Yet my intuition saw through the manipulation and correctly assessed otherwise: Something is different about him. He reacts differently (red flag!). Further if we examine his particular reactions, we see even more disturbing behavior. This man's body language changed, indicating interest. He turned towards me, took a step and leaned in, taking up some of my space (red flag!). He used seemingly friendly words but the affect was off. He was a little too interested in the fact that I had spoken in Hindi. My ears detected the intensity in his vocal tones that his careful choice of words tried to hide, and my eyes took in the intensity of his stare and his body language (red flag!). Based on these indicators—most of which were too subtle or too transient for me to form immediate rational judgments—my intuition then informed me that something was not right about this man and that my words had actually increased his interest in me. Intuition is a powerful tool we all have at our  disposal. If you want to learn more about how to use intuition  and "fear signals" as tools in Self Defense, I highly recommend Gavin de Becker's book The Gift of Fear.

You Can Always Change Strategies
The second aspect of Think I want to highlight from this story is that you can always change strategies. My intuition told me that my typical strategy had not worked on this man—on the contrary it encouraged him further! So I made the decision then to change strategies. I strategically chose active silence as my tool. I chose to stand firmly and confidently (not passively!) allowing his further queries to pass without response, waiting to see what he would do next. After a minute or so of  receiving no verbal response from me, he stopped speaking, apparently content to simply leer for the remainder of his ride.

This is a success story. This man was testing me, to see if I was a "good victim." He wanted to hook me into a conversation to observe me, seeing how I responded. I was targeted. Maybe he wanted to mug me. Maybe he wanted to convince me to come to his cousin-brother's shop to buy something (unlikely). Or maybe he wanted something much worse. My intuition told me not to comply, even to his demands to converse. After attempting to intimidate me both with his body language and tone, I responded with body language that clearly conveyed I was not a passive target and I would fight back. While it wasn't my intention at the time, the fact that I was forming a fist/knife-hand with my right hand probably helped communicate that as well. While in most instances I have found using your voice to set boundaries and clearly state what you want ("Leave me alone! Go away!") to be a very effective strategy in India, in this case, sensing that further verbal communication might actually escalate the situation, I changed strategies (**see disclaimer below!). I chose to wait to use my voice, deciding that if he crossed a physical boundary I would respond then both physically and verbally. I failed his "good-victim" test and he left me alone.

The Think Finger of Self Defense
Self Defense starts long before you raise a fist (or palm heel). It starts long before you are even in the situation. The First "Finger" in the Five Fingers of Self Defense is Think. On the surface level it is about 'thinking', about being aware of your surroundings: Where can I go nearby where there are more people around? Where is the closest policeman or police station (if that is a symbol of safety for you)? How can I increase the distance between me and the apparently drunk group of teenage boys leering at me from down the street? Is the man walking behind me meandering—as is more typical for Indian men—or is he speeding up to follow me more closely?  But there is also a deeper level of application. When traveling Think may involve taking steps to educate yourself about what behaviors are typical in that culture and what aren't so that you can notice anomalies like a local person might. If we actively inform our intuition by educating ourselves then our intuition will be based on rational assessments of our surroundings and of people's behavior and not based on blind fear. Think may involve learning a variety of tools and strategies that can be used and deciding ahead of time where your personal boundaries are, and when you would feel comfortable using a given strategy. Think might also consist of being aware of your emotional reaction while in uncomfortable situation (am I nervous or scared?—yep!) and choosing an active strategy to deal with your emotions (counting to 10, deep breathing, etc.). Think might start with the choice to use a particular strategy but then require the flexibility to change your mind about what strategy to use. The uncomfortable truth is that there is no one magical tool that will work for every situation. The good news is we all have many tools and strategies at our disposal, and we always have a choice to decide which one(s) to try in a given situation.

I shared an abbreviated version of the Delhi metro story with a group of women in a Self-Defense seminar in Delhi. I was assisting Pooja Agarwal with a 4-hour seminar for female employees of  Nucleus Software in Noida. I had trained with Pooja and her husband Rahul who is a fourth degree black belt (Yondan) and head of the the Noida branch of Seido karate (the same style I study in Chicago). Up until the point when I shared this story, I wasn't certain that these women took me seriously. After all, what can a white foreign woman understand of their daily experiences of harassment? Of being afraid to travel alone on overnight buses? Of being afraid to travel alone by rickshaw at night?  But there was one woman in the class, who had earlier shared with us a personal story she had experienced where she had tried on three separate occasions to report an attempted assault to the police (once by phone and twice in person) and had been thwarted by police incompetency and/or disinterest on all three occasions. She exclaimed to the class that women needed to take action into their own hands and that the only way to respond to harassment is basically to beat the snot out of every harasser. I watched to see how Pooja handled the situation. Pooja was supportive in her response to this woman, but followed up with a particularly powerful story offered to demonstrate how physically violent responses to harassment can escalate the situation and do not necessarily increase your safety. The story ended with the woman getting hit in the head with a beer bottle swung by the man she had just slapped for making lewd comments from a nearby table in a restaurant.

In the wake of their shocked silence following that story, I jumped in with the above story, hoping to also illustrate that not only is the most aggressive response not necessarily the safest response to harassment but also that sometimes you might need to change strategies along the way. My previous attempts to offer "success stories" from the US had landed flat with this crowd, so I decided to offer a personal story from my travels in India. As I began to tell this story I was shocked to realize these women were listening, apparently riveted. After I finished, I was met with applause. A disorienting experience to say the least. Now, I don't for a moment think that the applause was because I am a good story teller or because my success story was so compelling. But rather, in that moment because of sharing this highly personal experience and sharing how I used these tools that we had been talking about in the past two hours of class, I made a connection with these women. I was no longer just a foreigner assisting Pooja with the Self Defense class. I was also one of them, a fellow woman living with harassment who had successfully used the tools we were describing to keep herself safe.  All from the power of sharing this one experience—one of the most common experiences shared by Delhi women—namely, harassment on public transportation. But that's jumping to the Fifth Finger of Self Defense (the Tell finger), which I'll address more in a later post.

**Disclaimer: In this instance, I chose to avoid using my voice to interact with this harasser, but this may be a fairly rare case, even in South Asia. In every other situation I've (so far) encountered in India, I have found that using my voice to state clearly what I want ("Leave me alone! Go away!" or even "I'm not your girlfriend. Don't talk to me that way!")—especially if I raise my voice a little and insert a bit of Indian Auntie attitude—works much better. I would not generally recommend remaining silent as a strategy. It can be misinterpreted as passive, especially if your body language tells them you are feeling uncomfortable. I'll be discussing strategies for how to use your voice in a South Asian context in my next post on the Yell Finger.**

In the meantime, let's focus on the Think finger and how these principles might be applied to travel to South Asia. What are your thoughts? Anyone have a success story they want to share? 

Openness to travel and trusting our instincts

Given the emphasis on issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault while traveling, I want to take some time to clarify the difference between caution and fear and discuss some general approaches to preparing for travel to countries such as India which are known for sexual harassment problems.

It is important that women traveling to India (or anywhere else) be educated about potential risks and about cultural differences. It is also important to approach travelling to these places without constantly fearing or otherwise anticipating harassment and greet people with an open mind. The first week I was in Sarnath, Varanasi was probably the hardest. Sarnath attracts many tourists, especially tourists interested in Buddhism (Sarnath is the location of where the historical Buddha gave his first teaching). There are also many pilgrim-tourists that come, mostly in large groups to the main temple and stupa area and then leave. Lay Buddhist associations and groups from Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Burma frequent the area, but always stay in their groups in the vicinity of the stupa for special programs that have been set up for them. The domestic (Indian) and other foreign tourists for the most part arrive in Sarnath sometime between Friday and Sunday and only stay in Sarnath for a day (if that long).  Many tourists will stop by Sarnath while visiting Varanasi proper (after visiting the Ghats and various temples and shopping near the main Ghat), but only Buddhist pilgrims come to Varanasi only to see Sarnath. On a weekday, a lone white female sticks out. Wearing local clothing has its advantages and disadvantages. It shows respect for the culture (as numerous Indians themselves have told me) and demonstrates modesty. But upon occasion, wearing a full salwar-kamize outfit (let alone a saari!) can attract attention as well. It’s kind of a lose-lose situation. The locals in Sarnath did not yet “know” me by sight yet, so I was undoubtedly the most interesting thing they had seen in several days. As a result I was ‘greeted’ with stares from every Indian on the street as I walked the mile to the University library and back daily. Most of the stares were harmless, stemming out of genuine curiosity. More than a few however constituted leers, and some were accompanied by comments or lewd gestures. Fortunately the latter two on that list were always fleeting experiences since  the only Varanasi men bold enough to be that rude in broad daylight were generally young men on cycles or motorbikes who would pass by and be gone in a few seconds. While this may sound extremely uncomfortable, I should point out that this experience was quite mild compared to other’s. A female colleague-friend of mine who is currently in Kerala, reported that since she had arrived (in a two-three week period), she was followed home twice by creepy men, one of whom found her window and continued to watch her through her window until she discovered him. Sarnath by comparison (though perhaps not Varanasi) seems rather tame by comparison. Since my hair and face are quite fair, I had covered my hair with a scarf to minimize attention to myself, but short of wearing a full burka (not appropriate for a non-Muslim in a Hindu area), you can’t hide pale skin. They see you coming a mile away and are (mostly) curious.  So among all the countless stares, how do you determine which ones are ‘worth’ dealing with?

From the typical definition (in the U.S.), sexual harassment is any attention of a sexual manner that is unwanted and/or makes the recipient feel uncomfortable. This is where it becomes complicated in India. Because most Westerners (especially Americans) will not feel comfortable when stared at, whether it is sexual or not. Similarly, many Americans even in the U.S. feel uncomfortable setting boundaries by telling the questioner that their question is too personal or that they don’t feel comfortable answering it. We fear appearing “rude” or “impolite.” This problem is further compounded in places like India where the female traveler unknowingly thinks that this is simply a “cultural exchange” and therefore extremely personal questions might be “appropriate” in India. In my previous post on travel guides I addressed this issue and discussed what topics of conversation are generally considered appropriate for what gender from a typically Indian cultural perspective.  But I want to take a moment to clarify something. As a traveler, you have absolutely no obligation to be polite or “friendly” if you feel uncomfortable in any way. Information regarding cultural norms and what conversations are typical is meant to be informative. However, sacrificing one’s own feeling of personal security to answer questions you consider too personal whether or not they are ‘appropriate’ in the country you are visiting is not a requirement.

But where do we draw the line with discomfort? When traveling, there are any number of new experiences and sensations. The food is different, the smells are different. We may be jet-lagged or otherwise exhausted from travel. The people are different—they speak different languages, wear different clothing, walk differently. With our minds abuzz with all this extra information how can we discern between the discomfort that comes from being in a new place and the discomfort that comes from boundary-crossing conversations?  To address this, I want to talk about instincts and using ‘fear’ as a guide while traveling. 

A year ago, the Director of Violence Prevention for Thousand Waves,  recommended I read Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone, whether you are a world-traveler or happily living travel-free. I learn something new from this book every time I pick it up.  Among the many topics discussed, de Becker argues that our intuition is more reliable than we think. He cites numerous cases where people simply “knew” seemingly without a reason that something was wrong and their assessment turned out to be correct. De Becker nuances that there are in fact reasons behind these intuitions or fears but we may not be consciously aware of them in the moment. Other times those reasons are more conscious but we may second-guess our intuition, assuming it to be paranoia-induced fear. We then convince ourselves that we are “over-reacting.”  What de Becker in part is arguing is that (1) we can and in fact should trust our 'fears'. But he additionally argues that  (2) we need to feed our intuition correct factual information so that our fears or intuitive reactions are realistic.

For example, “fear” or “instinct” wrongly applied can be (and is) used to justify various social wrongs such as racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and other harmful forms of discrimination. Simply feeling uncomfortable because of being out of your comfort zone is not sufficient. This is where self-education comes in. We need to be informed regarding culturally relevant information and with accurate statistics on sexual harassment, assault, and other crime in order for our ‘fear’ or intuition to be accordingly accurate. In Thousand Waves’s Violence Prevention program, we teach that you should always look at what a person is doing, not what they look like. Judge them by their behavior, not by their race, clothing, and so forth. In this way we advocate questioning our impulse to judge based solely on our preconceived notions of how a “safe” person dresses or appears (which too often leads to racial profiling) and instead judge based on what the person is doing in that moment. Body language and verbal cues will tell you what you need to know if you are educated in what to look for.  Not every Indian male will harass you no matter their socio-economic status, clothing, occupation, whatever. But be aware of what they are doing. Are they following  a bit too close? Is there a group of boys eyeing you and moving towards you? Is the rickshaw driver being inappropriately chatty or  is he trying to convince you to move to a more private location? Is the tout following you trying to sell you something or trying to flirt? Only you can best assess the intentions of the person in question. Trust your instincts.

Several weeks ago, (see previous post here) my instincts told me that the inappropriately chatty rickshaw driver in Varanasi (see previous post) was basically harmless . My instincts told me the best way to handle the situation was simply to tell him to change the conversation and occasionally reprimand him for his lewd conversation topics. Demanding he stop the rickshaw seemed a bit too much of a reaction. I was traveling with two other female passengers at the time and felt empowered by the strength in numbers. As a result I did not feel threatened in any way. We arrived safely, though a little shaken. But if I had been traveling alone, I probably would have reacted quite differently.  I might have yelled and demand he stop taking in that way or stop the vehicle. I probably would have threatened to not give him the full fare. If I had been alone, my instincts, my ‘fear’, would have told me to act differently.  If your instinct tells you to run, then get out of there quickly by whatever means necessary. But if your instinct (and not just some unconditional fear) tells you that while you are uncomfortable, you are essentially safe, then choose your reaction accordingly. There is a world of gray areas. Sometimes discomfort (for white females) is simply the experience of feeling like a minority for the first time. Sometimes discomfort arises from being in a new place with new people and feeling a bit uncertain. But if someone or something is a threat, be confident that with proper education regarding cultural norms in the target country, you can accurately assess whether or not there is a threat and act as you see fit.

Fear is a useful tool, but only when used in moderation. As de Becker argues, constantly fearing or anticipating attack is actually counterproductive. Gavin de Becker cites an example of a client who admitted to constantly fearing attack on a daily basis. As de Becker argues, when we experience fear on a daily basis, we are constantly being bombarded from fear-based survival signals. Our adrenaline masks our perceptions. Simply put, in order to experience these valuable survival signals clearly, we need contrast. If we never comfortably walk the streets then we will not be able to notice the sharp contrast of a legitimate survival signal if and when it arises.  Thus if we fear every passing Indian male or anticipate sexual harassment every time we walk down the street, then our threshold is so high we won’t notice the legitimate fear signals telling us when there is a real danger.

In order to rely on our fear signals while traveling, we first you need to be re-calibrated, so to speak, so that our fears accurately reflect potential threats in the new country. This is true whether one’s concern is sexual harassment or any other potential threat. The first step is for each traveler to be accurately informed about Indian culture and the current conditions in the region of India to which we are traveling. It is no more true to say that every Indian male is out to sexually harass foreign women than it is to say that leering, groping, indecent exposure and lewd gestures are all deemed appropriate behavior in Indian culture and society. Education regarding cultural norms such as: what are typical styles of modest dress and behavior for each gender and what are culturally appropriate ways of responding to sexual harassment is important. Talking with other female travelers who have been to that region (as I recommended in my previous post) is useful. The second step is to make educated decisions about how to dress, converse, and behave while in India. This is not to say that it is best for all foreigners to dress local and conform to rigidly conservative Indian standards of behavior.  Rather each person has the right to decide for themselves what is the best way for them to dress, converse, and behave while traveling and likewise the right to decide how to best handle issues of sexual harassment. Decisions regarding what to wear and how to behave may change throughout throughout one’s travels depending on region of India (or other countries), or they may change depending on if we are traveling alone or with a group or partner. I certainly modify my behaviors and dress throughout my travels. The important thing is that it should always be a conscious choice made with understanding of how our dress, behaviors, etc. might be perceived by others.  And finally, the third step is to trust our instincts. We can and should trust that if our instincts tell us to run, we should run (or escape). If our instincts tell us it is best to intervene and reprimand the offender for their remark, stare, lewd gesture, or conversation, then we should intervene. If our instincts tell us that the person staring (male or female) is simply curious or (appropriately) friendly, why not smile or wave in return? Approach traveling with an open heart. Be open to being out of your comfort zone. Only then will genuine survival signals be distinguishable from the ambient noise.