In thinking that if you won't go out alone at night because you've got a vagina, you are actually a bit pathetic?

[solidgoldbrass]

Because, statistically, if you have a vagina, you are far more at risk of being murdered if you stay at home If your home has a man in it. Yet time and time again there's this 'Waa, waa, I need an armed escort or a male owner to protect me if I'm ever going to set a foot out of doors after dark. It's so unreasonable to expect me to use public transport or walk anywhere...'

the first sentence in my last post was a quote from another post but I forgot the bold.. apologies there if it causes confusion.

But it is the culture of 'Women, stay indoors and accept male ownership' that I object to more than individual choices. It is a big tool of the patriarchy, connected to the idea that women must accept the ownership of one man as the price of being protected from all the others.

Just say No.

Common sense, surely?

Men get attacked/injured/murdered too btw!

I didn't comment as a judgement. I was not saying "I don't care so no one should." I was actually expressing my own embarrassment at not having considered it before.

I literally don't think.

That maybe would change if myself or someone I was close to was harmed while walking alone at night, but I can't be so sure. Because I literally don't think about it.
I don't associate "night" with the reason that people get attacked and so I don't know that I would connect those dots.

But I would also not judge a woman who chose to do things differently to me as a safety precaution. I think that if it makes you feel better by taking a taxi home or not walking alone at night, then by all means do that. You shouldn't have to live life scared.

As I never said anything about stuff not happening to me, I am going to assume the rest of your post was not directed at me.

I really think you misunderstand statistics.

My personal risk of being assaulted or raped in my own home by my male partner is very low. I know this as for the last ten years (since I have known my male partner), he has not done any of these things. So, on the balance of probability, my risk of harm is really very low and unlikely to change, although I cannot rule out the very remote possibility that he might suddenly have a personality transplant. But my feelings of safety aren't due to calculated risk-taking but experience.

Conversely, having lived for over ten years in a large city, walking around at night which I did a lot (but with my keys in hand, walking briskly and only if necessary), I know that my personal risk of being called names, followed, flashed at and other such harm is quite high. I know this as these all occured in this ten year period and if I continued to walk around for another ten years, I'm sure they would happen again.

If I was at home with a partner who had hit me yesterday and the day before, the chances of being assaulted, and indeed raped, are very high indeed.

I don't think looking at what happens 'on average' really helps individual women make good risk assessments about their own personal circumstances and likelihood of harm, and I wouldn't advise anyone to make themselves feel unsafe to prove otherwise.

But it's not necessarily about having a vagina and needing someone with a penis to protect you is it? I would feel safe out late at night with my 5'10" black-belt female friend, she would do.

If you were a spider monkey out for a stroll away from your other tiny monkey friends in an area where their maybe chimps then you would want your good friend gorilla to take a stroll with you. see?

Yes the rest of the post was just general.

I am not having a go at you. Its really easy I think not to have given the dangers much thought when you have had no direct or indirect but close experience of it. I would also say that personally as a teenager and in my early twenties I was like that, and took many risks that now I really wouldnt do.

"But it is the culture of 'Women, stay indoors and accept male ownership' that I object to..."

Well, that's not what you said is it? Besides, is this a made up culture because I've never come across it.

I agree with you hardgoing. It is not just the risk of being murdered. People are not generally mugged in their own homes, or beaten up just for the hell of it by a gang because they were looking for someone to pick on.

Rape and sexual assault on a woman may be less likely to be from a stranger, but that does not mean it happens. There is the very distinct possibility that if more women were to go out on there own, those figures would increase, and the reason that they are so low is because women know the risks and many women do try to minimise that risk, thus keeping the statistics lower.

To say that every woman is more at risk at home than outside is so moronic, I don't even know where to start.

I agree that women having to be fearful of violence is a terrible aspect of our male-dominated world, but the answer to that is not to have women disregard their personal safety in order to prove a point. The answer is to start taking sexual violence seriously and locking up rapists and women-beaters for life.

Hear, hear dreaminingbohemian

bemybebe

I don't like the dark, inside the house or out.
It has nothing to do with having a vagina.
YABU
I am not at more risk in my own home. What a strange world you live in. Glad I don't live in it too.

YABU

bemybebe

Jesus Christ solidgoldbrass what does it take to get you to stfu.

But it is the culture of 'Women, stay indoors and accept male ownership'.

Do you know who was happy for me to walk the streets, get taxis and find my own way home????

Oh that would be the drunken abuser I lived with.

If you think the fact my lovely husband is prepares to get out of bed and pick me up at whatever time he likes makes him part of the patriarchy and is symbolic of how he owns me - as opposed to the abuser who didn't do those things for me because he didn't give a shit - then I think you views are insane.

And as one of those "statistics" I find you views fucking appalling.

so by combatting the culture of 'Women, stay indoors and accept male ownership' we tell women that they are pathetic to accept this

just like those that enforce it on them, we undermine them great jsut what some women need good on you sgb you have behaved in excatly the same way as so many men do in order to keep control

A mugger is not mugging women because they are women though, he/she is mugging them because they are easier targets. If it was an old man walking along with a handbag on his shoulder that would make him just as much a potential mugging victim as many women.

Self defence knowledge is a great thing. But anyone trying to advise people how to minimise their risks get derided and mocked by the feminist brigade. I have seen this happen countless times on these type of threads, where the feminist rant is that the victim is never to blame, which I completely agree with, they arent, but it is possible to minimise your potential risk of being a victim by using common sense.

For example, any person, man or woman, who can run faster in high heels than a person wearing trainers, feel free to correct me. Walking alone in heels tells a lurking mugger/attacker/rapist one thing. You are a woman, you are alone, you are possibly drunk (if the footsteps are stumbling.. and I have heard plenty of women clattering down our road late at night, and even without looking out of the window you can guess they are not steady on their feet). At nightime when there is little traffic and few passersby, the sound of the heels is amplified. During the day there are cars, people, witnesses, the potential victim is less likely to have had a drink which would slow down their reactions..

It is bloody common sense to stay with your mates and not go home alone IF you can help it.

Applause for FreudianSlipper

YABU I used to go out/return home alone at all times, I travelled alone, hitchhiked etc when I was young (stupid) & carefree. Then I was followed home from a train one night. Fortunately, nothing physical actually happened to me as I managed to get help but I can honestly say that since that night I have never again travelled alone at night.

Has anything like that ever happened to you OP? Hopefully it never will but I do think your post is very insensitive & a bit naive.

In an ideal world people should beable to go out anywhere, anytime, any place without fearing attack, but it is not an ideal world, being aware of that face makes me a realist not a fantasist.

*fact