The Cost of Fear

A self-defense expert helps women and other targets of gender-based violence discern fact from fiction, improve their personal safety, and support social change

Personal safety shouldn’t mean avoiding danger or living in fear

There are two kinds of safety choices: those that disrupt power structures and those that leave them unquestioned. Gender-based violence is a social and political problem, but it’s often enacted in the most intimate spheres of our lives. 

In this book, nationally recognized leader in abuse prevention Meg Stone debunks baseless advice we get about personal safety. Tips like “don’t go shopping alone” and “don’t wear a ponytail” are not based on any evidence, but that doesn’t stop police officers and other men in authority from telling women to restrict our lives.

Sharing stories from a Black transgender woman building a grassroots group to defend her community, to a would-be Taekwondo Olympian fighting back in the courts, to a pharmaceutical scientist fighting back in the lab, Stone argues there are two opposing philosophies of how to make people safer, one of which exacerbates victim-blame (safety through compliance) and the other challenges it (safety through resistance). 

Stone gives readers practical strategies for keeping themselves and their loved ones safer in ways that that affirm their right to be full participants in social, political and professional life.