“Suddenly there are footsteps behind her. Heavy, rapid. A man’s footsteps… . She quickens her pace in time to the quickening of her pulse. She is afraid. He could be a rapist. He could be a soldier, a harasser, a robber, a killer. He could be none of these. He could be a man in a hurry. He could be a man merely walking at his normal pace. But she fears him. She fears him because he is a man…. She does not feel the same way—on city street or dirt road, in parking lot or field— if she hears a woman’s footsteps behind her. It is the footsteps of a man she fears. This moment she shares with every human being who is female. - Robin Morgan”
— “When we describe this experience in our Women’s Studies classes and explain that every woman has gone through it, the men in the class are incredulous. Invariably, one man will ask the women students, in a disbelieving tone, how many of them have really experienced this fear. The women, equally shocked that a man wouldn’t know they do experience it, respond with statements such as, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
This dialogue strikingly exposes the extent to which fear is ever present in women’s—but not men’s—lives. It dramatically exposes what it means to be male—as opposed to female—in patriarchal culture. It dramatically reveals the extent to which fear and lack of fear can be taken for granted.” - Dee L.R. Graham, Loving to survive
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