Like nearly every other woman on the planet, I have heard just about every rape prevention strategy out there. I’ve heard them everywhere, from everyone. Things that are aimed at reducing the probability that a woman will be the victim of a sexual assault. Frankly, I always thought they made perfect sense; the ideas suggested were, to me, things that every woman should do (or avoid doing) regardless. Don’t walk alone at night; keep your doors locked when you are home alone; take self-defense classes whenever possible. What’s wrong with any of those suggestions? To me, the answer was always: absolutely nothing.

Then I was grabbed in a parking lot, held captive for a week, and repeatedly sexually assaulted. None of the things I had ever done to try and protect myself from that very scenario were of any use to me at that time, in that moment, during those days. I had done everything I possibly could to prevent myself from becoming a victim – and nothing had worked. One would think that now, my faith in rape prevention tips would be destroyed.

Here’s the thing, though: if one thought that, one would be totally wrong.

Let me tell you a story. When I was in college, I lived in a co-ed dorm, but on an exclusively female floor. A friend of mine lived down the hall and had a habit of never locking her door when she went to bed. One night, she awoke in the middle of the night and was absolutely horrified to find a man standing over her bed. Luckily, her scream scared him off before he had the chance to do anything. (And god knows I don’t even want to imagine what he could have done if she hadn’t woken up.) But I will freely admit that after it happened, after I had made sure she was okay, the first thing I said to her was, “Now will you please keep your door locked at night from now on?!”

If something had happened to her that night (god forbid), it wouldn’t have been her fault (because after all, it is up to the potential attacker to control his own behaviour) but I couldn’t (and can’t) help believing that had she locked her door in the first place, she would have removed the possibility of him getting into her room in the first place.

I can understand where the backlash against victim-blaming comes from. When you have been sexually assaulted, the last thing you want to have planted in your mind is the idea that you are, somehow, responsible for what happened to you – or, at the very least, responsible for ensuring that it didn’t happen to you. I’ve been there. I’ve been in the position of being asked, over and over, “Well, did you fight back? Did you scream? Why didn’t you try to get away sooner?” And I didn’t fight back, and I didn’t scream, because I was trying to survive to get away. I didn’t try to get away sooner because I was biding my time and trying to ensure that when I did try to escape, I would succeed, instead of being caught and perhaps losing my life in the very act of trying to preserve it.

But even with what happened to me, I still believe that potentially preventative measures are important, because I honestly don’t see them as a form of victim-blaming. No, it is not, nor has it ever been, a woman’s responsibility to keep from getting raped. It is always the rapist’s responsibility, without exception. And in an ideal society, women would have no need for rape prevention tips, because men would never rape.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal society.

As nice as it would be for the concept of rape to be completely abolished from our worldview, that has not happened yet. And I fear that it would be rather unrealistic for us to expect it to ever do so. The world is an ugly place in some respects, and rape is one of the ugliest. Yes, the view of rape should most definitely move from “don’t get raped” to “don’t rape”, but as of right now – in the year 2011 – that doesn’t seem to be doing the job. At least, not to the extent we would like. So in my opinion, we as women owe it to ourselves to try and protect ourselves to the best of our abilities. At the very least, it can give us some sense of having control over our bodies. And if (again, god forbid) we do everything we can, and we still become the victims of rape, that in no way means that we are to blame for what has happened. Because that’s something I’ve learned in my own experience – you can do everything you think is possible to protect yourself and still fall victim, but that doesn’t mean you’ve failed in any way.

Learning rape prevention techniques helped me, first and foremost, to keep my head about me when I was in the most terrifying scenario of my life. It gave me the wherewithal to cope during the days when I doubted I would survive, and ultimately allowed me to gather up the courage and the nerve I needed to save myself. Maybe that sounds trite, but I swear it’s true. No, locking my door every night didn’t keep me from getting ambushed from behind in a dark parking lot, but I still do it, even a year later.

Because I might not be able to change my past, but I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to (try) and ensure my future. Aren’t you?