I am not always careful. I have frequented unfriendly neighbourhoods, left bars with strangers and slept on city streets. Naively, I always thought I was a good judge of these situations, that I would be able to sense if there was any real danger. Now, I think I have just been extremely lucky.
There are undeniable threats in the places where I spend my time. Hastings, with its cheap rent and cheap entertainment, is home to most of my friends. While only a few blocks truly represent the image of Hastings – the drug addicts, the homeless, the criminals and the mentally ill – there is no denying that the whole street bears the burden of that reputation. People who live in the West End, Richmond or Burnaby balk and ask if I really walk there alone at night.
Usually I want to throw back, “Of course I do,” but sometimes, I think about the lesbian couple who were attacked by a man who followed them off the 135 bus after witnessing them share a kiss. I think of all the people I know who take that bus regularly, including me, and I can’t help but think, “That could have been any of us.”
Unprovoked violence doesn’t change the fact that none of us can afford cars, though, and transit remains unavoidable. But what about nights out?
One of my favourite events is Man Up, a monthly drag king show hosted at The Cobalt. While the event itself is advertised as being held in a safe and inclusive space, promoters don’t have much control over what happens outside of the show. After a performer was sexually assaulted leaving the venue, host Paige “Ponyboy” Frewer introduced the Buddy System, a harm reduction plan that involves a team of sober volunteers who, among other duties, patrol the neighbourhood during intermissions.
While Frewer reacted with the sort of responsibility other Vancouver promoters could learn from, the thing is I never felt unsafe in those places before and I don’t feel unsafe now. In fact, the only times I have ever felt like I was in danger was in the neighbourhood where I grew up. It was in a “nice” part of town, close-knit and safe. It was there that a man threatened to rape me while I was walking home. It was there that a car pulled alongside my friends and me, spilling out teenagers whose attack left us bruised, with missing teeth and cellphones.
When they happened in my middle-class neighbourhood, those incidents were seen as shocking but isolated. When they happened on the Downtown Eastside, they were characteristic. Classism is clearly at play when acts of violence in seemingly safe neighbourhoods are seen as worse. Perhaps it is because it runs contrary to the idea that living in more affluent neighbourhoods can protect you from the negative representation of people of a certain class or stature. In suburbia, attackers are rowdy but are viewed as likely being “normal,” where on the DTES attackers are immediately assumed to be mentally unwell and dangerous by nature.
In either case, you have people who thought it was okay to assault someone.
What I’ve learnt is that safety is never guaranteed. You cannot control the actions of those around you. Maybe I haven’t always been careful, but I’ve realized that safety isn’t necessarily a function of where I choose to spend my time. It can’t be. Safety can’t be achieved by just writing off places and people as dangerous. There may be places that are inherently dangerous, but we should consider what ideas are at play when we single them out.
