Extremely scary moment when driver blocked my car on a country lane.

[ginplease8383]

I was out driving on the Blackdown hills today with my 1 year old and 3 year old DD trying to find Wellington monument. I know its pretty easy to find being pretty large but I am a bit of an idiot with driving and thought i knew the way (being relatively local) and it turned out I didn't.

Anyway, I went into a country lane and did a U turn to correct myself as I didn't want to U turn on one of the larger roads and as I was coming out onto the more main road another car (a 4X4 with 2 men in it aged mid 50s) also was doing a u turn (or so i thought initially). The driver blocked my exit out of the junction (They could see me drive up to it) as I attempted to turn left and I assumed he was stopping to turn into my lane so I attempted to veer left and drive around him and he blocked me again. I did it again and he did it again.

I didn't want to stop and wind down my window it being the middle of the countryside and that I had 2 young children in the back but he trapped me. In the end i had to and he wound down his window and he said 'I was just going to ask you how to get to xx', I was upset and panicking by then and screamed at him 'How dare you block my path!! Get out of the way!'. My heart was racing and I called dh straight away and gave him a description of the car just in case and set off hime (I didn't go to Wellington monument in the end).

AIBU? I can kind of understand if there was an accident and they needed a first aider but surely i made it perfectly clear i didnt want to stop- I was shitting myself to be honest.

Suffering Jesus, the victim blaming on this thread beggars belief.

To the poster who thinks self defence is the solution to all ills: the very, very VERY first rule of self defence is: if the situation looks dodgy, and you feel uncomfortable FOR WHATEVER REASON, you remove yourself. Don't engage if you don't have to. That is not "being a victim" or "being weak" - that is a very good rule of thumb for everyone, but particularly for women.

The second rule is: don't comply with whatever the person who is making you uncomfortable wants you to do. If he says "don't scream" - you scream. If he says "don't move" - you run like fuck. If he blocks your car and signals for you to roll down your window- you absolutely do not do that.

In this situation, the OP listened to her instincts, which was completely correct. Then she refused to comply with what the person who was making her uncomfortable wanted her to do. Again, completely correct. Then she removed herself from the situation. Three perfect responses.

But heaven fucking forbid that she be rude, eh? Heaven fucking forbid she be frightened.

OP, what an extremely frightening experience for you, and given the response from the police, you were right to be frightened. Congratulations on listening to your gut and keeping yourself and your children safe.

Sorry, when I said of course, I meant I agree with doing all those things.

Bemusedandpuzzled Catch me dead going to Slutwalk. Its like you've never heard of Reclaim the Night or read any of the advice given to OP in this thread.
Self defense is the art of avoiding a fight in the first place. Which OP did very successfully.

Bemused, she rang her partner with information
I'd ring my sister or best mate with the information
What's wrong with that?
She didn't go screaming to a man for help.

Why are you misreading her posts?

Bemused, the first lesson of self defence is fucking get away.

I have a feeling you are annoyed with some other women and taking it out on the op.

And a cultural shift from blaming the people who perpetrate it instead of blaming the people who are victims of it.

This.

And what SophoclesTheFox said.

OP, what an extremely frightening experience for you, and given the response from the police, you were right to be frightened. Congratulations on listening to your gut and keeping yourself and your children safe.

I've gone from starting the thread with an eyeroll and thinking the OP over-reacted to fully agreeing with this.

This is the star of Kick Ass Chloe Grace Moretz on being fat shamed. At the tender age of 15 years old.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/chlo-grace-moretz-body-shamed-15-years-old-male-co-star-hollywood-sexism-a7883651.html

I'm OK with living in a world where women are encouraged to listen to their instincts and this results in innocent men sometimes remaining lost while safely in a car in broad daylight with a companion, and perhaps feeling slightly miffed about having a woman shout something at them. I don't imagine that their day was too horrible as a result.

Her day might have been significantly worse. And if they were genuinely innocent and honestly don't get why the interaction went the way it did, then they're part of the problem. As are all the victim blamers on this thread.

There's a moment in Alice Sebold's Lucky when she realises that she is not, as she thought, in the recovery stage but very much still in the trauma phase. I have a horrible feeling that Bemused may come to the same realisation.

Women can and do, do all those things. They can protest, and fight and demonstrate. But it remains the case that it is male violence that is the problem, not women's response to it.

Tie, can I ask why that is, it woukd be helpful to know why you thought as you did initially and then what changed your mind? Thanks.

Oh and the OP sorted it out for herself, other victims of male aggression and violence can't. That's not to blame those victims of males aggression. They simply felt too overwhelmed or their response was different.

The major point here is male aggression, which this clearly was, being excused and the blame put on the OP and her response (hysterical, not polite, bogeymen, reading cheap women's magazines)

I rang my husband to tell him where I was because he didn't know in case there was something going on. He's my partner, if I didn't ring him I'd have rung my mum. what the fucks wrong with that?

I've just been contacted by the Community police team who have had a number of similar reports about what appears to be the same two individuals and car. I'm going to speak to him in more detail this afternoon about it.

I'm going to log off of this one as I'm pretty confident I'm not being U now. Thank you everyone including those with erm somewhat distorted views!

*Of course. Women have been protesting male violence for centuries, and it hasn't changed.

The the way to tackle male violence is with conviction rates. And a cultural shift from blaming the people who perpetrate it instead of blaming the people who are victims of it.*

This, said by @Datun, all the way. Conviction rates and sentencing for perpetrators of violent offences towards women are a complete disgrace. It's as if the last 30 years didn't happen - no progress in the courts.

There is nothing that you did gin that you need to explain or defend any more just because some people have literally nothing better to do than come on your thread and play goady fuckers. You handled the danger brilliantly.

Good luck ginplease. If you can face this thread again to update after your chat, I hope you might consider it.

What would be really great now is if all the people who told you that you'd over-reacted and scolded you for your hysteria could come back and apologise, given that they were wrong and that these men were clearly up to no good. I won't hold my breath, though.

Just read the full thread. Am agog at the obtuseness of PP who seem to feel that by getting frightened at overtly strange and aggressive behaviour and displaying this (shouting and driving off), the OP has somehow 'let the side down'.

Sophoclesthefox "I'm OK with living in a world where women are encouraged to listen to their instincts and this results in innocent men sometimes remaining lost while safely in a car in broad daylight with a companion, and perhaps feeling slightly miffed about having a woman shout something at them. I don't imagine that their day was too horrible as a result.
Her day might have been significantly worse. And if they were genuinely innocent and honestly don't get why the interaction went the way it did, then they're part of the problem. As are all the victim blamers on this thread."

EXACTLY, that's the crux of it.

Tie, can I ask why that is, it woukd be helpful to know why you thought as you did initially and then what changed your mind? Thanks.

I think I started the thread with a 'fgs, not every man is out to hurt you' kind of attitude.

The OP confirming that it was a burgundy 4x4 that stopped her gave me chills though. Kind of brought home that while 'not every man' is out to hurt you, this isn't a situation that involves 'every man'. It involved two specific men that behaved in a weird, aggressive, and even sinister, manner.

I don't buy your explanation bemused. If you didn't like OP's description, you could have reframed it yourself- well done OP, you didn't let two strangers intimidate you, you assessed the risk and took action. I think you were probably overly risk averse, but hey- you were decisive.

You choose instead to use belittling language about her.

Two men drive aggressively and prevent a woman from going about her business. After some attempts to avoid them, she shouts at them. They have done similar elsewhere, and police are investigating. Still, you choose to judge the woman for her behaviour.

Bravo. What a fine upstanding, right on feminist you are.

I don't think it even matters that it was 2 men. I wouldn't have stopped for anybody. There are plenty of women who have been used as decoys and of course committed murders themselves - Joanna Dennehy is a good example.

I am a pretty kick ass female who did martial arts when I was younger and used them to get myself out of a bad situation on two occasions. I am the last person on earth not to stand my ground if necessary.

Key words being "if necessary".

In this situation OP did exactly the right thing and if you read her last post her instincts were spot on. Flight before fight every time in a situation where you are outnumbered etc.

The keyboard warriors on here should know the difference between a gut instinct in an unusual situation that tells you something is "off" and overreacting to a physically "harmless" piece of male entitlement.

Well done OP.

Sometimes women do not flight before fight and that is awful and due to conditioning such as don't be a harpy, stop shouting, you are being hysterical, can't you be more polite? The victims are not to blame for their reactions though. It's these aggressors who the blame should be directed towards. They are dangerous.

The thing about statistics, the thing about "most men won't hurt you" is that while they're true, they're also useless.

Women know this. That's why it's so frustrating when people like bemused barrel in and shout the odds about how if feminists had our way, we'd all be cowering at home and never speak to another man as long as we lived. We know that 99% of the time, we'll move about our daily lives and be just fine, because most men, most people are decent.

The question is what happens in the other 1%* of the time, with the other 1% of the men who aren't decent. If we tell ourselves that it's more harmful to risk rudeness to the 99% by just thinking that they might be the 1%, then we're vulnerable.

We're not surrounded by people who wish us harm, but they are out there, and you bet your arse the 1% know about and use the effects of social conditioning so helpfully outlined on this thread (Don't think the worst! Don't be rude! Don't cause a fuss! Don't over react! ). They know women are socialised to be polite, helpful, acommodating towards men. They will use that. Your best defense against that is your instinct, because the deepest part of your brain is a wonderful alarm system for detecting danger.

*a nominal number. Not factual or backed by research.

In these situations our subconscious mind whizzes through hundreds of tiny pieces of information in order to matching them against past experiences and assess possible outcomes. It works far quicker than rational analytical thought and can save lives.

That is why it's so hard to convey on a thread like this. There is not one thing that the OP experienced that cannot be rationally explained away, but together they build a picture. Things like the driver and passengers' body language and facial expressions, the window not being open, the absence of 'we're lost' type gestures, the location, the unwillingness to accept no for an answer. Our minds do the maths and calculate the best course of action to keep us safe.

8 years ago I listened to my instincts and went against my kind-helpful-polite programming and it turned out that it had saved me from, at the very least, a sexual assault. There was no one thing that couldn't be explained away then either.