Personal Safety as Bedrock and Safeguard for Positive Embodiment

Abstract

Personal safety is a pillar of positive embodiment. Yet, women’s personal safety is continuously threatened within environments that promote or excuse the sexual objectification of women via prompting vigilant policing of women’s safety, which fragments their consciousness, restricts their movement, and limits their freedom. This chapter begins by discussing the safety threats of sexual objectification, whereby the omnipresent threat and perpetration of violence against women by men keep them in a state of fear and alert to their more vulnerable status. Next, the chapter considers how the disruptive, and terrorizing, nature of sexual objectification limits women’s positive embodiment (e.g., restricts voluntary movement, adds to psychological distress, creates a hyperawareness and anxiety about safety), and presents research that uphold these links. The chapter ends with considering ways of claiming space in the world and the imperative for cultivating women’s safety through social activism and embodied social change.