From: biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Women's and men's safety
Date: 16 Dec 1992 17:56:55 GMT
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

vanhoek@bend.UCSD.EDU (Karen van Hoek) writes:

>Robert Brueckner pointed out that men often have need to fear assault,
>and asked also if it's true that there's nowhere a woman can feel safe
>being out alone (at night, presumably).  It's definitely true that
>men don't go wandering in a lot of areas late at night, but the
>number of areas where men _can_ go walking late at night is
>far greater than the number a woman can go to.  

Why do you think this is so? Because they do, and survive the experience,
or because they - and you - think they can?

>I live in Ann
>Arbor, a very nice town; my male friends all feel safe walking
>in many parts of it at almost all hours.  I don't.  In fact,
>given a recent rape in broad daylight in one of the woods, I'm
>afraid to go walking alone in the woods.  

Suppose it had been a murder of a woman instead? Would that make a difference
in how you feel? What if the victim had been male, or of unspecified age
and sex? 

>Recently I asked
>myself whether there was someplace within reasonable driving
>distance that I could go to to go for a nighttime walk.  A 
>man wouldn't have to drive anywhere to get to a safe place;
>not if he lived in Ann Arbor.  If he lived in a tougher area, he
>might be able to drive to a suburb like Ann Arbor and be safe
>(if he's not black and so likely to get hassled by the cops).
>But for me -- no.  I couldn't think of any really safe place.

>The one place I've felt completely safe walking is a 200-acre
>spiritual retreat in the middle of nowhere, an hour out from
>San Diego.  It's enough trouble to get to that creeps wouldn't
>likely go all the way out there just to hassle someone.  There
>I took lots of long walks, at all hours of the night, and 
>absolutely loved it.  So that's it -- if I fly 2,300 miles
>and then drive for an hour, I can have a lovely nighttime
>walk.  Male friends in my neighborhood can just step out
>their front doors.

It all boils down to the reason why you feel unsafe. Are your feelings
based upon a reasonable expectation of experiencing violence, or are
they conditioned by fear based upon an exaggerated sense of the dangers?
Given that you you say that the only place you've ever felt safe was way 
out in the emptiness I'd say your fears are probably exaggerated.

Consider: your male friends take a certain risk whenever they venture
outside. That risk is dependent upon their behavior, and the location.
The same conditions apply to you. The risks you take - the probability that
you will experience violence - can be estimated from the general incidence
of violence toward women in the area, something that is quantifiable. Again,
the same applies for men.

Now, suppose the risk as estimated by these statistics is the same for men
and women, and yet men feel more safe than women. Obviously, the feelings
of fear are then rooted in differences of perception and in the emotional
responses of the sexes rather than in the actual risk. I'm not familar with
Ann Arbor, or its crime statistics, but unless they're very different from
most "very nice towns", I'd expect that roughly comparable numbers of men
and women are the victims of violence there, and that hence women and men
should feel equally (in)secure.

If that is the case you should ask yourself why you still feel so
unsafe, and what you can do to overcome that feeling. Perhaps you're
swayed by the prevalence of reports of grisly rapes and such in the
media, which typically treat assaults upon men as uninteresting, but
give sensational coverage to sexual crimes of all sorts. Perhaps men
should feel the same degree of insecurity that you do. Perhaps, but
I don't think so.

OBfeminism: perhaps the sexes respond differently to perceived dangers.
If so, what - if anything - should be done about it?

Regards,
       H. Biesel



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