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...'

Look hully if you don't like the fact that I'm interested in the fact that SGB provided a spectacular opportunity for the usual axe grinders, that's your choice.

I'm interested in it. I'm going to continue to bore on about it.

However, I do have a very slow internet connection atm so I was actually responding to Northern Lurker's bit about that aspect, so apologies, I realise it does look a bit mad and returning to something everyone's done now. It's a busy thread.

I will answer you Basil, with no malice.

Its because posters are so sick of being called anti feminist, mysognist, rape apologist (and I dont mean by you personally honestly), its becoming an automatic reaction.

If some of these terms were saved for when they are really really really and not (in what is clearly just my opinion) over used then they have more meaning.

I am not anti feminist, you would be surprised if you knew more about me.

I do think some of the feminist viewpoints do more harm than good (which I why I dont think I am a feminist either), but I do have failry strong views on gender and equality and I live my life by them.

That is just my personal opinion but I do know it is shared by large numbers of other posters .

But I promise I won't bore on about it any more unless someone else does first.

I am throwing the brandy around in mean fashion now and you call all ahte me because it is bloody awful, it really is i still managed to sink half the bottle in the wee hours of this morning dont be too greedy now.

The point is Basil, that there are loads of women on this thread who know nothing of axe-grinders and past spats and nit-picking and they will all be driven away. If you really want to engage with all that crap, why not start a thread about it? (as dear Thunder would say).

if you've ever been piss yourself scared by being jumped in a lonely place thinking you are going to die and having to fight to get away you are changed in your world view.It's not what you should or shouldn't be able to do but what you can or can't.You never forget fear like that.

Hully - the thread was here.

The axe grinders were here.

It wasn't necessary to go and start a thread about a thread about them.

It's not that interesting tbh.

Seriously, it has ended up as a place where people are talking about experiences and why they feel as they do or act a s they do, and what we might do to change things. It is not the place for "in your post of 20:05 etc"

Love will get us much further.

Hurrah! someone agrees with me!

Then stop talking about it Hully.

I'm happy to let it go if everyone else is.

UNbelievable

Hugs hully, kisses sparkles, waves at everyone else and walks away in shaking head in dismay and disgust

*are

Um, I don't think it's arrogant OldBear.

Men don't attack women because they admire them.

Women aren't suffering those delusions if they don't want to go out after dark.

OK I think you are probably best ignored.

I thought i could and would walk where i wanted when i wanted.When you are really scared you can freeze like a frightened rabbit.You can go to scream and no noise will come.I still can walk where I want when I want.No one has taken that right away.But sometimes I choose not to.Not pathetic.A survivor.

Ventures back in feeling brave.
I was attacked in my own home, by someone I knew who worked with my Husband (and that I had also worked with) who had been to my child's Christening and Birthdays party and who came to my home in the middle of the day to collect something for work.
My sister was raped walking home (8 doors away from the house) at 10.30 at night by a stranger (who had raped other women and was caught while attacking someone after my sister and sent to prison for 11 years).

On that basis no one is safe anywhere. There are sick people out there but you can not spend your life living in fear every time you go out and not every husband/partner is a wife beating sexual deviant

Sorry that happened to you Rabid.

Hope you are OK now.

I am slightly confused as to the assertion that its only male violence we need to be concerned about? As I stated earlier in this thread the last time I was attacked it was by a large group of girls/young women. I honestly thought they were going to kill me. My crime according to them was that my coat was unfashionable. That attack put me in hospital for over a week btw.

We are not just at risk from men, but its easy to blame it all on one gender than face the truth that there are violent people out there who will randomly hurt or kill someone. I am aware that the majority of attacks are by men but by no means all of them.

I haven't seen an assertion that it's only male violence we need to be concerned about.

I think the reason this thread focuses on male violence, is because that's the type people are warning women not to go out because of.

No one is really thinking of girl gangs, even though we know they exist.

I was mugged by girls (in New Cross as it happens, another poster mentioned there too) but I still don't avoid gangs of girls if I see them on a dark street. Whereas I would avoid a man. I suspect most people would do the same. I guess it's because I haven't been systematically, continually urged to avoid girls on a dark street, in the same way that I have been, to avoid men. So even though I've had an actual experience of being subjected to violent assault from girls I didn't know and been raped by men I did know (at least passingly), it's not the girls I'd be wary of. I'm not saying that's a good thing, just realised that that's a bit odd I suppose, given that it conflicts with my actual lived experience.

That's awful KoPo - I'm so sorry that happened to you.

• The intolerance is shocking too

None of it is simple.

We all need to support each other and work together to improve things.

Big love to all who have suffered.

Actually something else has occurred to me. I didn't bother to report it when I was raped, because I knew there was no point. But I did report the mugging and the police were very sympathetic and very kind and not once did they suggest that I shouldn't have been out by myself at that time on that road (two years earlier a friend of mine had been stranger-raped in Greenwich at roughly the same time and they'd basically told her it was her own fault for being there alone. This was about 30 years ago, they wouldn't say that now - i hope).

And maybe that's another reason we're told not to go places specifically because of male violence. Because deep down, people know that if gangs of girls or mixed gangs or individuals of either sex attack us and beat us up, at least we will be believed and not be blamed. But as soon as sexual violence is added into the mix, apart from wiht gang rapes, we are blamed. Perhaps that's why people warn us off with male sexual violence in mind, rather than any other sort - because there's the double whammy of first the attack and then the complete lack of justice and the psychological damage of being blamed for the violence against us? Maybe at a gut level, people are aware of that and that's why they're so vociferous about warning us about that particular violence, when there are so many other forms of violence we could be worrying about?