Just turned around and walked out of friends house. May have over reacted!

[SafeMouse]

Me (5'0 female) has a good friend (6'2 male). Every few weeks I go to his house for a few drinks and a catch up. This has been going on since 2019. We bubbled together during lockdown as we are both in single households.

Every summer I walk down to his. Its across the otherside of town about a 25 min walk. Part of the way is through a bit of a badly lit seedy area. When it starts to get dark I get an uber. Have for 5 years.
EVERY single bloody year when I start getting ubers I get 'lazy' jokes and teasing. I have patiently explained why I'm not comfortable walking in the dark. I have explained it in the context of Sarah Everard. I have made light of it. I have got annoyed. I've snapped. I've even had the uber drop me off a street away so he doesn't see.

Got to his tonight and get the 'haha, I saw the uber, feeling lazy today are we'?
I put my coat back on and walked out.
I'm now sitting in the pub at the end of his road wondering whether
A) go back and explain again for the 50th time why I don't walk in dodgy areas in the dark
B) order an uber and go back home.

I'm a little bit thinking I've overreacted but it's been the same joke for 5 sodding years with obviously no attempt to understand.

Wow, the Stretch Armstrong levels of reaching in this post! Are you a bit mentally challenged? Or just being wilfully obtuse?

@Sheri99 unfortunately statistics disagree with your personal experience. Men are 80% of all violent crimes. So yes violence is mainly linked to men.

In the U.K., women cannot rape as rape can only be done with a penis. Other countries have different definition of rape.
However, men also represent the vast majority of sexual offenders (aka rape + sexual assault). So yes sexual violence is also mainly committed by men.

Get rid of him.

but women want protection from men and often they get it,

@Sheri99 please can you give examples of how men protect women?
Because when a woman is being assaulted or raped in pub
ic transport, men don’t intervene. Actually when a guy comes in between a man and a woman, just standing, they’re hailed as the most amazing person ever. So how does it fit with ‘men protect women’?
Seriously what do men do to protect women?

@Problemzapper He obviously thinks it is a funny joke which you both share,

Not obvious at all. He could be deliberately trying to needle and annoy the OP because he gets a kick out of belittling women. He'd want to be very stupid indeed to think it's a joke after being corrrected on it numerous times.

I was taking into account their long, apparently otherwise harmonious friendship - thinking he just saw this as 'banter' between two friends, because I doubt he wants to alienate OP after all this time, just rather naive attempt at 'humour' on his part.

Your friend is a moron. Unless you are exceptionally short of friendships, you can afford to let this one drop.

YNBU, what kind of friend is he!

Exactly or take you home.
Why do you want to bother to visit someone like that.

The next time you see him - if you see him again! - make him watch that clip of Soairse Ronan on the Graham Norton Show from a few weeks ago, where she said "Girls have to do that all the time' in response to an anecdote that Eddie Redmayne had told about using a mobile phone as a weapon when he was filming The Day of the Jackal. It effectively silenced Norton, Redmayne, Paul Mescal and Denzil Washington and all of the women in the audience shouted their agreement with her. I really don't think that until that moment any of the men had ever given a moment's thought to the fact that women have to carry out an almost continuous risk assessment to keep themselves safe. Also tell him about the columnist Polly Vernon, who recently wrote how she narrowly avoided an attack during the middle of the day in a leafy north London street, thanks to the quick thinking of a female taxi driver. Polly wrote about it in The Times and in Grazia.
The Saoirse Ronan clip can be found here:

The Soairse Ronan/ Graham Norton clip is the 'cancel the cheque' of this thread...

OP it sounds like your misunderstanding is his attempt to play it all down. I hope this has given him some perspective and he stops with the jokes in the future

I have studied men and women, social and familial relationships, behaviors, done hormonal research as well as studied biology of male and female sxual traits, characteristics; the correlation of differences in society makeup and beliefs.

Really? and yet you can post 'why not leave'?

The sum total of your posts reads like yet another incel. Do consider moving to Afghanistan, eh?

Sorry you experienced that. I’m 65 and have had nearly a lifetime now of dealing with threats from malicious men. I won’t get in a lift with a lone man, or a group of men who are obviously together. I have been know to get out as fast as I got in and wait for the next one!

I guess he doesn't understand that it doesn't have to be late, just dark. I was mugged by three men at around 4.30pm in Dec 2008, on an unfortunately quiet street. It still comes back to me, I've started a new job in the summer and have to walk through that street for the first time since then. At this time of year I've arranged for a male colleague to walk that way with me after work. My male friends do understand that it's just as dangerous in the dark as it is late at night.

Don't be so bloody silly, and stop being a woman-hater.

He seems exceptionally insensitive - and thick.

Text him: Dear XXXX, for about 5 years you have noticed and commented wittily on my strange practice of taking a taxi home. You have also noticed, I hope, that I am a woman. Nobody wants to rape or attack you, but here are 5 recent cases where women decided not to take a taxi

He sounds like a keeper...not. I'd cut my losses and chalk him down to "teachable moments".

It's astounding how unaware most men are about women's safety until it's explained to them. My dh and I went to get groceries after dark last night and I was packing them into bags at the checkout and he remarked "I just put them back into the trolley and pack them back at th car so I can put them straight into bags in the boot". I said "you're a man, so you have that option. I'd rather take my time in a well lit store with witnesses, and be quick smart in th dark carpark". He was silent. He's usually very good and not a knob, but he'd never thought about the dangers of night time groceries before (because he didn't have to)

This was exactly the point that Saoirse Ronan made on the Graham Norton Show recently. Men can so often be totally oblivious of the way women are sadly forced to feel about their safety. Your friend really does need a good talking to about the crippling effect that violence against women has.

He sounds like a complete pain in the arse.
I would have stopped bothering with him ages ago. A good male friend would come and pick you up or walk you.
Tell him to get stuffed.

@Bunny44 Those figures include gang and drug crime murders (almost always male on male) and also alcohol-fuelled pub fights which get out of hand. If you removed those attacks from the stats, so you are comparing like with like, how would they stack up?

Also, as can be seen from this thread, very many women avoid walking alone at night through dodgy areas, whereas more men will risk it. So the fact that a man is more likely to put himself in harm's way than a women is likely to further skew the figures.

YANBU I would never walk anywhere after dark! No uber here either ,so just have to drive or get a taxi! Men just dont seem to "get it" .Hopefully he will get the message loud and clear now

Where I used to work, there was a short cut through a park to the train station. In the years that I worked there, two male colleagues were mugged walking through that park after dark at around 5.30pm. It doesn't have to be late at night.

Does this indicate that men are more at risk than women? No, because every female colleague would walk the long way round on the main road, unless in a group. Only men walked through the park alone.

That's what's known as the last straw. The final little weight that drops on you - and that's it.

Too many men do not listen to women, and either cannot or will not understand what it's like.

His 'little joke' is actually an insult. Lazy is an insult.

You have explained and explained and explained and still - he's not listened, not heard, not empathised.

Write it all out and send it to him. Including the links to relevant articles about why it's not safe.

I'd call this a friendship changing or breaking moment. He listens, apologises and changes, or that's it.

He doesn't come over to your place often, so he does not know what the path is like for a short woman [I am not insulting you, just statin facts] as opposed to for a tall man. You did the right thing, walking out, because he's been told umpteen times why you take an Uber [which, presumably, he has never offered to pay for because he pays for the refreshments].