Guardian article on street running in the dark

I do wish both sides could be a little more nuanced in this.

Obviously "women! modify your behaviour" is wrong.

But on the other hand, for women to do what they want safely, the options really are -

(1) Ensuring every single dangerous male is in prison for life, including those who have never been convicted of a crime.

or

(2) Ensuring that all police officers are absolutely amazing, and there are one hundred times as many of them, and they are out every night enforcing a curfew which keeps all men indoors overnight so that women can exercise their rights to walk safely at night.

Women have a moral right to be able to walk the streets safely at night, just like someone with extremely serious asthma has a moral right to live anywhere in the country without being harmed by exhaust fumes. Women and people with asthma are perfectly at liberty to exercise their moral right, and society should do as much as possible in order to ensure that moral right becomes a practical right that can be safely exercised. But in the absence of an incredibly difficult, expensive and long time to implement fix there is an argument that modifying one's behaviour in the short to medium term makes sense.

I am someone who thinks too things are both appalling. The idea that a woman in a short skirt was asking for it is absolutely appalling, but encouraging young women to look at and interact with the world as it should be not how it is, is almost as bad.

Guardian comments have always been awful for any posts about street harassment of women and girls. Lots of left wing misogynistic men like Ally Fogg and right wing misogynistic men who go there to argue with them.

Reading the comments, it is still very much "women! Modify your behaviour!" Rather than "let's stop men attacking other people".

And the argument of "well men get attacked too" being wheeled out as though the entire population just has to put up with the fact that some men like to violently attack others, some men like to flash women, some men like to be verbally abusive. Like it's a hobby or personality trait.

ffs