The presidential sanction authorizing the sale of pepper spray for self-defense was met with celebration, including from me. Any non-lethal resource that helps a woman defend herself is welcome. But it is worth being clear that handing someone a canister and wishing them good luck is not public policy; it is a certificate of State failure, if it is not accompanied by other measures that reduce violence.
Reports from the US Department of Justice confirm that pepper spray is highly effective in public spaces and against strangers. It can be used to fend off harassment on a bus or subway, or to buy precious seconds to flee during a street attack. But those same studies show no impact on reducing intimate partner homicides, for a structural reason. Around 80% of serious assaults and femicides occur at home, in moments of cohabitation, where pepper spray in a purse is utterly useless.
In this sense, the sale of sprays falls into the same trap as the gun-carrying agenda championed by the right: arm women and decree that their survival depends on their individual capacity to fight back. As if gender-based violence were a Wild West duel, ignoring the fact that, in a domestic environment, the presence of a weapon only increases the likelihood of the woman ending up dead.
Pepper spray or a gun on the hip, the problem is the same: the outsourcing of protection. In both cases, it is the logic of every man for himself, a convenient band-aid measure, the privatization of security.
It makes for great campaign rhetoric, but it skirts the root causes of violence, which continue to go unaddressed.
There is another issue. The law comes without the basics: information. Before signing the bill into law, the government and public security agencies should have prepared campaigns with guidance on how and when to use the product safely.
Discharging the spray into the wind, in an enclosed space, or without proper handling can incapacitate the victim and make the situation worse. Even when it comes to learning how to defend herself with the newly authorized device, a woman will have to figure it out on her own.
