I RECENTLY rejected someone who used the comment section of an educational video to confess he was in love with me, wanted to be with me and, in his own words, had "warned you this was going to happen".

The man was over twice my age, had a wife, and children older than me, which is unfortunately not a rare occurrence. I firmly rejected his advances and went about my day, retreating safely into my offline shell. It wasn't till I checked back in a few hours that I saw lots of comments telling me I was “deliberately trying to hurt the man's pride” and I should've "considered his feelings'’.

One father said he instructs his daughters to graciously thank men who proposition them, emphasising that they are flattered. This irked me, so I did what every well-adjusted person does when feeling that familiar frisson of frustration, and I wrote a poem about it. I specifically wanted to address the well-meaning but misguided and often dangerous parental advice given to children expressing discomfort, and the way society tends to focus more on the reaction to harassment rather than the action itself.

At this point, I’ll acknowledge it’s not only women facing these issues, but I believe the ways in which society judges female victims more harshly must be viewed in the context of patriarchal structures in order to see their true damage. I used that father’s comment to open discussion, and one woman quickly responded that upon using the “thank you but I’m not interested” method in her youth, she had received a split lip and a boot to the head.

Surprisingly, the most common responses were parents who described teaching their daughters to respond to inappropriate propositions with violence of some kind, whether as a deterrent to physical interaction, or as a pre-emptive measure. While I empathise with their desire for their child to protect themselves, and to have a robust and steadfast set of personal boundaries, in practical terms aggression can exacerbate the situation.

In today’s society, it all too often seems that the way a rejection is given or received can mean the difference between getting home safely or becoming a headline. And how are victims and survivors treated? Every detail of their lives is scrutinised in the minutiae, combed through to find a justification for why they were hurt, raped, killed.

An art exhibit from Oregon State University titled "What were you wearing?" debunks the ludicrous myth that survivor's clothing plays a part in their assault. Clothes hang, accompanied by testimony from the survivors who wore them. Included in the exhibit were jeans and t-shirts, a sari, army fatigues, and a child's sundress.

Despite powerful responses such as this, the incessant questioning remains: surely there must've been something they did, wore, said, were, that made them a target? Surely there was at least one mistake that could've been avoided, some path which once strayed from, sealed their fate? Maybe they walked home in the dark, got a taxi to avoid walking home in the dark, got the bus to avoid getting a taxi alone, left the house at all. Whether done to self-soothe or absolve, this victim-blaming rhetoric, this hunt for the mythical "perfect victim" is dangerous and needs to stop.

Would that there were some tried and tested safe method of rejection, but unfortunately each method comes with potential risk. Ignoring the advance can escalate, responding can encourage, giving a fake name or number can enrage, telling them you have a partner can exacerbate, and even a simple "no" can be seen as a slight, or a challenge.

Survivors can internalise this victim-blaming narrative and judge themselves for their responses. Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are stress reactions, which can be helpful in understanding the responses people might have when they experience harassment, violence, or unwanted sexualisation.

The fawn response involves shifting the primary concern of the situation to the feelings of the aggressor, and after the fact can feel utterly humiliating. This is an act of self-preservation, and should not be looked at as anything other than a sign of strength and bravery.

To engage in a verbal sparring match or a swift and brutal act of physical retaliation might seem like the right move, and might be the options most frequently represented in the media, but can have deadly consequences in real life. Nobody wants to be the sassiest woman in the morgue.

Sometimes it feels as though the safest move is to laugh off your own sexualisation, however engaging in a way that can be construed as positive reinforcement might encourage inappropriate advances. Society forces women to pirouette through the minefield of their own oppression, which works, until it doesn't. One day an awkward smile, a misplaced word, a rejection without the perfect balance of assertiveness and grovelling can mean being followed home, harassed, stalked for years.

If you want a recent example, look at the woman at a gym in Florida earlier this year who opened a locked door for a man she had seen there before, only to have him attack her. The entire ordeal was caught on CCTV; she fought until he eventually relented and left the building, later targeting another woman. The comments of each article are full of those questioning not his decision to attack a woman, but her decision to open the door for him. If only she had anticipated someone she'd seen around the gym many times before would attempt to assault her, and been more suspicious of every man she met, commented people who, in a different context, would use their cries of "not all men'' to drown out the voices of survivors and those in mourning. We shouldn’t need to teach our daughters how to offer the perfect rejection, or punch, but teach our sons to accept rejection without complaint, and simply move on. No violence or insults, no stalking or petulance, but acceptance, maturity and grace.

Convoluted metaphors are all too often used to explain the ways women can reduce culpability for their own harassment, assault or murder. Women are cars with expensive items left visible inside, houses left unlocked, begging to be burgled. Society expects women to make themselves impenetrable bastions of moral purity in order to acknowledge the harm perpetrated against them, otherwise we are complicit in our own pain. There is no such thing as a perfect victim: we can, will and have all done things that could and would be used against us in the event of our death or disappearance, and we do not need to protect the feelings of those who ignore ours.