A number of points are making me curious.
Statistically, men pose more of a risk to women than other women. Whilst it's true stranger abduction may be rare, it's by no means unprecedented. And even if a would-be assailant would stop short of going this far, the experience of being followed, stalked, threatened or intimidated is far from pleasant and is not something women should be forced to put up with habitually.
Statistics of male-on-female violence, particularly sexual violence, are horrifying. It's sadder still that most assailants will be someone we know.
These are irrefutable facts. And it's been pointed out numerous times on various threads here that potentially dangerous men don't run about wearing arrow-covered clothing or with 'P' for predator tattooed on their foreheads. We don't know which pose a threat, so it's actually sensible to be wary of them all. Women probably take stock of our surroundings on so habitual a basis, we may not even be conscious of when we're doing it.
Now here's where I get interested. The #MeToo backlash, and now a lesser backlash on this site, doesn't want women to talk about these experiences. #MeToo responses were that we were jumping on the bandwagon, why talk about it now after so many years, you must hate men, or simply 'shut up'.
Now it's arrived on Mumsnet; this isn't happening in isolation on the www. The undertow is the same. People - no small number of them other women - really do not want other women talking about their experiences with this. They will say or do anything to silence that conversation. Women who talk of abuse are 'man haters'. If we point out the glaringly obvious facts and statistics above, we are shrill harpies. People have held back from using the offensive phrase 'weaponising your trauma', but some posts of late (not necessarily on this thread; on the site as a whole) have come very close to that idea. Suggest that particular types of behaviour are unacceptable from men, or that we should not have to sacrifice our boundaries for their comfort, and we are 'misandrist'.
Questions I'd very much like to ask the people hellbent on silencing women who talk of their trauma and abuse at the hands of men are these:
What do you stand to gain from it?
Why is the idea of women talking about being attacked by men more taboo to you than the fact that these women have been attacked by men?
Why are you hellbent on silencing them? Especially when people must be aware that coming out and talking about this, given the social pressures (as illustrated on this thread) discouraging them to do so, is already hard?
Why would anyone suggest to a victim of DV that her husband 'may be depressed?'
Why should men never be questioned or challenged and their behaviour always accommodated?
Why is it assumed that wanting a safer society for women is tantamount to hating men?
Who, precisely, stands to gain from keeping the status quo precisely as it is?