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...'

NL - I agree, but this wasn't it.

YABU and rude, a friend of mine was rapped walking to the shop that was in from her home so yes that has put me off walking in the dark. How pathetic of me

the thread I started is here

It is everybody's (women and men) own prerogative to do what they please.

If a person chooses not to go out alone in the dark then it is up to them, same if they choose to go out.
It is as simple as that and no one else's bloody business what other people do - have no idea why anyone would care.

I choose to not walk the streets late at night or in the dark and I would not like my dd's/mother/sister etc to do so either, my reasons are my own and why on earth should anyone be bothered to try and tell me my reasons are not valid.

OP you can walk where and when you like for your own reasons but don't belittle others for making choices that aren't yours.

Fantastically put verystressedmum

There was no need for this thread.

There may have been a need for a thread that presented statistics and information in an effort to help people and raise awareness, give advice on what to look out for and assess each situation on its own merits.

But that hasn't happened here.

Instead SGB launched right in with an attack of her own and flung a few insults and sarcastic imitations about and then vanished, leaving the thread to the inevitable bunfight and relying on other people to try and explain things for her.

She has made it clear that she does feel women are pathetic for not doing as she does and she has alienated a lot of people who might otherwise have been interested in the points that others have brought up, points she left out of her OP.

So instead of a thread that might reassure someone who feels nervous when they are out and about alone, or a thread that might help someone suffering domestic violence to realise that they do have a right to feel safe in their own home, we have a thread where everyone is shouting at cross purposes.

Where people who have been attacked outside their homes feel they have to justify their feelings and where people who have suffered domestic violence at home are feeling like their personal experiences are being used by SGB to prove a point in quite a nasty way and insult people who don't deserve it.

Many people have shared their own personal experiences stating why they feel safer at home than out on the streets, from situations like mine where I have been married for over ten years to a man who has never raised a hand to me, to people who have suffered terrible attacks while out and about.

And yet there seems to be an implication that those with stories like mine are wrong to say we are safer at home because we haven't been hurt by our partners...yet.

That unspoken 'yet' is hanging over this thread and to me, personally, it is as wrong as the 'need' for a male escort to walk her down the street is to SGB.

I am safer in my home than I am out of it. That doesn't stop me going out if I want to or need to, nor does it mean I am complacent about my situation at home. And it doesn't mean I think that is the same for every other woman.

Fanjo made a very good point upthread. "Women are not at risk of being raped if they walk alone at night, they are at risk of being raped if there's a rapist waiting to rape them." Saying with confidence that if this ever happens to me (God forbid) then it won't be by my husband in my home does not mean I am denying the truth about my safety or anyone else's.

SGB may have made a valid point, but if she did she made it badly and buried it amongst a lot of insults and rantings, and there was no need for that. If she hoped to achieve a lot of hurt feelings and angry replies while people argued amongst themselves then she got what she wanted. But if she wanted to make a good point that people would listen to and perhaps feel better from, she has failed badly.

There was a need for this thread, just as there's a need for any thread anyone wants to start. One of the many frustrating aspects of feminism is how almost any feminist point raised brings accusations of 'My life is not like that so you are wrong/how very dare you?' and 'You haven't apologised for daring to question an aspect of society that a lot of other people were fairly comfy with until you mentioned it/you haven't mentioned loudly enough that some men are nice/you've not fannied around being sensitive to the feelings of everyone else in the world however daft/how very dare you?'

I agree. The saddest thing about this thread is the number of people that have used their traumatic experiences to justify why they feel the way they do. No-one should be made to feel that way, especially not to counter the ill thought-out remarks of the school bully.

Wrong wrong wrong.

life is not like that so you are wrong/how very dare you?

fucking ignored me then have you, because MY LIFE IS LIKE THAT and I am saying how dare you.

How dare you use suffering like mine to call other women pathetic.

And indeed how dare you call women just like me, who are trying to hang on to some semblence of feeling safe pathetic.

Cross post. I do not agree with you SGB. On any level it would seem.

I don't think anyone minds that you're questioning an aspect of society that is troubling to many of us. It bothers me too that some women are scared to go out after dark when there is often no/little threat. I do think that you could have phrased it a lot better - all your title did is alienate a whole heap of women who will equate feminism with calling women pathetic.

artex I have not implied anything like that - I've just rejected the idea that any man can turn into some violent wifebeater without warning just because his partner fell pregnant when he has never shown any sign of being domineering before. It sounds unlikely to me so I asked whether these stats have been adjusted for length of relationship.

Victimblaming is wrong, so is putting all men under general suspicion of becoming violent thugs just because they happen to have a y chromosome.

Insulting people who dont feel safe walking alone after dark has bugger all to do with feminism and everything to do with feeling smug, being sarcastic, being inconsiderate of others feelings, phobias and experiences, and being nasty.

Quite how you consider calling other women pathetic when they dont feel comfortable doing something you are happy to do, a feminist issue is beyond me!

But you didn't just "raise a feminist point", you labelled every woman who considers it risky going out alone in the dark as "pathetic" . You went onto insist that such women were weakly adhering to some kind of curfew and accepting male ownership.

Bollocks

I, for one do not feminism with women being pathetic, only the OP does that.

*equate

How is calling women pathetic a feminist point?

People haven't argued with the statistics as a whole, they have applied them to their own lives and decided for themselves, giving their own experiences, which is frankly far more than your title and opening post deserved.

Nobody expects you to apologise for questioning the idea that many women feel more comfortable at home than on the streets alone when statistics show otherwise. But the way you did it was kack-handed, alienating and wrong and it's nothing to do with being a feminist and everything to do with being rude, aggressive and out to cause a fight.

You would perhaps feel less frustrated if you bore that in mind, because if you actually made a considered point without sticking "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..." on the end of it and then went on to explain what you meant in a more mature and reasoned way then maybe more people would listen to you.

I am completey on the fence SGB. Can see both sides of a sensible argument on this one. (sorry to be boring.)

Once again SGB your arrogance astounds me.

OK, drawing attention to stats on acquaintance rape being much more common than stranger rape - reasonable.

Calling women who are afraid to go out alone after dark pathetic - totally unreasonable.

Incidentally, the incident that drove me to go on my first "women reclaim the night march" back in the 80s was some pissed up blokes trying to pull me off my bike at pub closing time. It didn't scare me, it made me bloody angry (not least because a close friend had been raped in a dark alley a month earlier and never mind being scared to go out, she was still having nightmares in her own bedroom with such frequency I was sleeping on her floor every night). And that's where I focussed my anger - on violent, agressive male arseholes (whether on the street or in people's homes) - not on the women they'd terrified.

Ironically, it's because I agree on the stats that I have always gone out/ been happy to walk home on my own (and the scariest encounters I have ever had have been with acquaintances who offered to walk me home then tried to assault me when we got back - fortunately unsuccessfully in both cases). But that doesn't mean I would ever question the right of another woman to feel differently about her own personal safety.

There's a place for aggressive language in consciousness-raising exercises ("Men: don't drink if you think you might go on to rape" type satires, for instance), but this particular attempt to do this has backfired spectacularly in my opinion.

See there may have been a need for this sort of thread, although I dont think making women feel unsafe wherever they are has a great need.

However any salient points about domestic abuse and stats about safety, were lost, in the OP.

So if this thread has done anything at all, it is to close peoples minds to the message it is trying to convey.

I still don't get how saying that MY OWN risk of rape FROM MY OWN HUSBAND who I have known for 10 years is SO LOW AS TO BE NON-EXISTANT is denying anything. Yes, partners rape women. My partner does not and never will (unless he had some awful brain disorder that gave him a personality transplant). Likewise, my children's and husband's risk of - I don't know, murder, from me, is non-existant. That's not denying awful experiences like MJs for example, it's not denying many women have partners who do these awful things. It is saying that to apply those general statistics about risk TO ME, and say that they mean more than my own knowledge of my situation is nonsense.

Remember that old stat people use to bat about - you are more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than a shark attack? Now, that might be true if you take everyone in the whole world. I would postulate, however, that if you are a surfer in Australia the shark is a greater risk. If you are a coconut farmer, the coconut is. And if you live in England and never swim in the sea? Your risk of either is nil. So if you confidently state 'I will not be killed by a coconut!' you are not in denial about the risks of coconuts, and you do not ignore the suffereing of the coconut farmers, and you might want to campaighn for coconut safety. But you're not wrong to say the risk as t applies to you is nil.

I think it's a bit rich for a poster who delights in sneering at hetero-monogamous relationships to say that others are thinking "My life is not like that so you are wrong/how very dare you?"

I thought it was we Yanks who weren't supposed to get irony.

I used to feel like this OP and then my Goddaughter was gang raped at a festival . It has totally changed the way I and many others veiw the world. In particular in terms of being around drunken groups of men.