I really have zero patience with the whole "man vs. bear" / "you're alone in an elevator with three adult men BUT you feel completely safe. Who are they" / "male night joggers are the natural predator of female night joggers" thing. Like, it's jokes, but it's also sincere, and it reinforces the idea that it's normal and good for women to be afraid all the time, especially of men.
It is not good for women to be afraid all the time, and we should not encourage it! When you consume a media diet of mostly true crime, buy a surveillance device for your house, and commiserate with the girlies online about how scary it is to see a man in a public place, you are basically cultivating an anxiety disorder. This will make your life more unpleasant, because you have trained yourself to be scared all the time, and it will not benefit you, because your fears are based on memes, not reality. You're not protecting yourself from anything; you're just giving yourself an extra flinch response.
And it plays right into the hands of conservatives! The right wing would love it if all women, especially all white and/or wealthy women, were terrified to leave their houses alone because they might see a strange man. They want you to be on a quest for One Good Man who will protect you from all other men and to be too scared to go anywhere without him. They want you to be on a hair trigger, ready to call the cops on anyone who makes you uncomfortable, because that is your function within their hierarchy.
If you are a woman, especially a white woman, then your fear is used to justify violence against poor people and people of color, especially men. From the perspective of conservatives, this is what your fear is for. And your fear is, in large part, what you are for.
Don't let them use you. Don't cultivate your fear.
I see what you’re saying, but posts like this really bother me. Women have good reasons to be frightened of men at night, while alone in the woods, while going on dates, etc. If you haven’t had a sit-down with your aunts and heard every single one of them tell you some horrifying story of attempted kidnapping, rape, or harassment on the street by strangers… well, lucky you, I guess.
Nobody’s saying it’s normal and good for women to be afraid all the time. But let’s address what causes that fear
Yes, often white/upper class women’s fear is used as a tool of oppression. However, the problem is the racism/classism it’s involved in, not the fear of sexist violence itself. Framing this fear as something women need to “get over”, rather than a symptom of systemic patriarchal violence, fundamentally misunderstands the problem
Saying that women are somehow enabling patriarchy at the times when patriarchal ideology preys upon their fear of sexist violence is, frankly, nonsensical. Let’s not equate the conservative, xenophobic hypervigilance that motivates people to buy home security systems to women’s well-grounded fear of sexist violence.
My favorite consideration to add to this has been from "invisible women" by Caroline criado perez, about how data bias affects women. In it, she addresses how an apartment complex designed specifically to be comfortable (and feel safe) for women had lots of lighting and was designed around communal spaces so you didn't get that "I'm alone in a dark alley" feeling. Parking solutions that didn't make them feel as vulnerable. There are more solutions available to us than just scolding women for being scared or scolding men (the perpetrators won't listen anyway). And at the end of the day, all the women and men in the complex benefited from those changes. We cant control everyone's actions, but we can build a more hospitable world slowly, one brick at a time.
Just finished counseling yet another friend through an attempted rape that she was lucky to escape and frankly fuck this post.
Our fears don’t come from podcasts, stupid TikTok thought exercises or fucking internet memes (?!?!?!?!? Still so insulting, thanks!) or whatever other bullshit excuse you think they come from. It’s real and there’s a reason we all - all - have multiple stories about it.
Should we live in fear? Fuck no, I don’t think so. Should we let our fears hurt marginalized folks? Of fucking course not. But if anyone who has survived this finds themselves feeling afraid, they are VALID. And I’m tired of this being constantly placed second behind the feelings of people who clearly do NOT live it on the daily.
We are not stupid for a millennia of fear existing in our fucking bones. It’s there to keep us alive.
There's not a single woman I know with whom the subject has come up, self included, who hasn't had at least one close call or worse just...existing outside. Literally just walking home from work, going for a jog, getting into a cab/uber/lyft, stepping outside the door to her building, waiting for the bus, riding the bus or subway, etc.. Stop calling women paranoid and address men's ubiquitous violence against us.
I've been followed home by men in the night on at least three separate occasions, I've been sexually harassed in public spaces multiple times and I've been experiencing literally countless instances of cat calling since I was like 10. Literally every single woman I know has those same experiences and many have experienced much worse. But sure it's memes and true crime podcasts that make women afraid and not men en masse terrorizing women. Like fuck you OP
OP seems to forget that these memes are inspired by real like. Man vs Bear wasn't just a joke, it was a very real issue women brought forward. Multiple women pointed out how bear attacks are far more rare than attacks from male humans. Being stuck in an elevator with a strange man, that IS scary! Because you are basically stuck in a can with a man who could easily hurt you. Women have been complaining about male gym goers and joggers harassing them for years now! These jokes didn't just spawn up, they came from very real issues women experience BECAUSE of very real male violence.
I've been a victim of sexual assault, so have most of my female friends. I've been followed by strange men. Once while I was in a group of three, with two other girl friends, and we had been out to the club, and once while walking home from work. All of my female friends have had similar experiences.
Women literally create PPE to protect themselves from male violence. Drink covers, concealed self defense tools, hand signals to alert friends nearby that they're in trouble, using their keys as weapons, etc. Women have been scared for so long because of real male violence. Women literally invented DV shelters because men were beating, raping, and killing women at such a rate that they were needed in the first place!!
OP is a fool if they think women are "creating an anxiety disorder" because they're scared of men. A fool and willfully ignorant. You have to INTENTIONALLY ignore all the women telling you their stories to think women are being unreasonable by being scared of men.
