Listen, we need to teach cis men to be more afraid. It sounds bad but listen.
Every time a woman talks about being afraid when walking alone some guy or pickmegirl will eventually say “Actually, more men get murdered and kidnapped every day” and I can’t help but think “And yet you learn nothing from it?”
I love listening to people tell their survival stories and the genre is filled with men doing absolutely insane shit like getting into a stranger’s car late at night just because they offered them a ride, or going on a hike with a friend of a friend and getting blackout drunk with them in the middle of nowhere. No wonder more men get murdered even without counting stuff like gang shootings and war, and the stories always end with “I was young and stupid. I know better now”
The author of The Gift of Fear talks about this too. Women in general have a way better sense of danger and he used to get a lot of cases where, for example, something happens outside a couple’s car, the woman gets nervous and tells the man to stay in the car but he’s more curious than afraid, goes outside and gets killed.
Shit like this is the reason why men supposedly have shorter lifespans. It’s not because their biological clocks end sooner, it’s because so many die young while doing insane things, including ignoring safety at work or driving too fast.
And when it comes to being murdered it’s because so many of them think they can protect themselves just because they are men. But often times a lone criminal doesn’t care about your gender if they’re armed. How many times have we heard about women being attacked but is saved by another woman who happened to walk by. All most criminals care about in a situation like that is whether they’re outnumbered or have witnesses.
This is not me saying women are wrong to be afraid, or that all cis men act like this (my brother would never in a million years walk alone in the city after dark) just that cis men in general need to learn that they aren’t safe either just because they are men and their complete lack of fear isn’t doing them any good.
Because I’ve seen plenty of videos from hikers meeting either bears or weird men in the woods and I can tell you for a fact they’d choose the bear too.
To the people who interpreted this as saying it’s a biological difference between men and women I hear you but the whole point of this post is that it isn’t biological but taught/learned. Otherwise I would have said cis men and trans women.
Most cis women, trans women and trans men got the talk at some point while cis men rarely do. Our dad allowed my brother to be out late but made me stay home so my brother had to learn on his own to be careful because he got into some pretty dangerous situations because he was taught not to be afraid even as a weak teenage boy. Now he’s more afraid to go out at night than I am. I broke my dad’s rules all the time but managed to stay out of trouble because I at least got the talk.
The author of The Gift of Fear also made an updated version of the book where he makes it more clear that he isn’t talking about biological differences but learned behaviors.
The post was brought on because I realized I’ve often been more afraid on vacations with cis men than anyone else. Not because I was afraid of them but because they’d drag me into dangerous situations completely oblivious to the danger or because they assumed they’d be able to fight off a gang of robbers or something.
That’s also why I said “weird men” and not just “men” in the woods. I hike a lot and often walk my dogs at 1 AM so I’m not the type to automatically be afraid of any man I see. So to be fair, it should probably be “choose the bear over a weird acting person” though I’d admittedly be slightly more worried about a weird acting man than a weird acting woman.
