“Text me when you get there”; the ultimate text everyone has gotten from a parent, or overly concerned loved one. However, “text me when you get home” is a whole new phenomena that is making its way into dating culture and encouraging women to be looking out for one another. USA Today College recently published an article concerning this issue, and how young women are more likely to receive precautionary messages than men.
The importance of “being careful” is stressed to young women each day, leaving females in what seems to be a constant state of worry. USA College Today author Dominique Servati says that a girl’s natural instinct is to be “concerned and protected”. Some may say everyone should be wary of their surroundings, regardless of female or non-female, however now more than ever young women are concerned with the status of their friends’ public safety, as well as their own. Servati goes on to explain that she “bets” that men do not hear advice on “being careful” from their professors. She believes that as women, it is our right to put an end to sexual assault and rape so that “they are no longer a cause of concern for women when they are just trying to walk home”.
The millennial generation has been an interesting one to grow up in, especially with the development of social media and smartphones change within the past 10-15 years. The difference between this issue now and this issue in the 1980s or earlier is the at-hand use of cellphones, that in most cases act as a security blanket for women walking home. The parental norms that have been created and destroyed during the millennial generation has stressed an emphasis on letting your parents know where you are, who you are with, and what you are doing. In the same sense on an impersonal level, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and other social networking sites encourage this sense of “knowingness”. In the area of walking home from parties, or boyfriends texting their girlfriends if they got home safely, the emphasis comes from the society that we grew up in. Parents in this era do still value their daughters enough to tell them to be careful, as would any professor, counselor, close friend, etc. I believe that the necessity for safety is one to be stressed, and the awareness of sexual assault is one to be encouraged on campuses, and everywhere that women seriously feel a danger to themselves and other women.
As far as texting young women and others with the reassurance of them getting home safely, I believe that measure is not going anywhere. The culture we were raised in emphasized the strong urgency to know where, what, and who, and it has to be taken in a positive light that someone is genuinely caring about you when they are confirming your safety. Yes, men might not necessarily receive precautionary advice as often as women do, yet the safety of anyone is to be taken very seriously and advancements in areas outside of a simple text must be made in order to stop sexual assault and the fear that women have of walking alone.
Sources:
Servati, D. (2016, October 27). ‘Text me when you get home’ Retrieved October 31, 2016, from http://hupso.pl/college.usatoday.com/2016/10/27/text-me-when-you-get-home/
