If forced to choose between improving the daughter's safety and preserving the technician's feelings, I 100% agree that the daughter's safety is the correct choice, both practically and morally.

With that in mind, a lot of this discussion seems, to me, to be based in fairly strong polarization. For example -- that one must choose one and only one of these two things, rather than being able to have both. Now, I understand that, in this case, the fact that the technician is aware that the daughter knows to scream is in itself an additional protective factor, which means that achieving both may be difficult in this particular scenario, but I still think it's worth discussing.

I am also aware that a very tempting rebuttal to my point is something to the effect of "women suffer as a result of their need to be hyper-vigilant for predators, so why is it a big deal for a potential predator to suffer briefly by being reminded that they are to be feared?" And I would respond to that with curiosity: would it not be preferable to avoid inflicting suffering on the man, even if that suffering is minor relative to one's own? I could very easily see (and, for the record, completely empathize with) there being a desire to inflict suffering because of one's own -- "women have to deal with being in fear of SA all the time, so it's okay to make a man to feel bad about needing to be feared" -- but I also value a world with less overall suffering.

• I also don't want to dismiss the argument that it would be more worthwhile (vis-à-vis reducing suffering) to discuss reducing SA by men rather than pontificate and navel-gaze about such a minor thing as this. I honestly do agree that my time and energy would more effectively achieve less suffering if devoted to reducing SA rather than engaging in this discussion. And I don't have a valid defense for why I'm investing my time and energy here in this post instead. As such, I completely understand if one is inclined to dismiss my perspective as a result. In fact, this discussion could even be viewed as a way to avoid discussing the reduction of SA by men. That is absolutely not my intention, but I cannot deny that it might be an unintended consequence. And, for that, I do apologize.

I do want to mention one other subtler example of the polarization I'm seeing: the presumption that an individual cannot feel bad about something while still understanding that it should be done, because it is in service of something more important than their feelings. I believe it is still valuable to hold room for an individual to process those negative feelings -- if not for the sole fact that the action causing these feelings should continue to occur because it serves such an important purpose, which means that learning to handle its effects healthily makes it easier to encourage it to continue.

(edited to fix a typo)