The undermining of self, of a woman’s sense of her right to occupy space and walk freely in the world, is deeply relevant to education. The capacity to think independently, to take intellectual risks, to assert ourselves mentally, is inseparable from our physical way of being in the world, our feelings of personal integrity. If it is dangerous for me to walk home late an evening from the library, because I am a woman and can be raped, how self-possessed, how exuberant can I feel as I sit working in that library? How much of my working energy is drained by the subliminal knowledge that, as a woman, I test my physical right to exist each time I go out alone? Of this knowledge, Susan Griffin has written: … more than rape itself, the fear of rape permeates our lives. And what dies one do from day to day, with this experience, which says, without words and directly to the heart, your existence, your experience, may end at any moment. Your experience may end, and the best defense against this is not to be, to deny being in the body, as a self, to avert your gaze, make yourself, as a presence in the world, less felt.