From: julie@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu (Julie Wright)
Subject: Re: Women's and men's safety
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Date: 21 Dec 92 23:35:35 GMT

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dwelch@devnull.mpd.tandem.COM (Dan Welch) writes:

>In article <1gkv73INNaqq@agate.berkeley.edu> vanhoek@bend.UCSD.EDU
>>(Karen van Hoek) writes:
>>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.

>Not true at all.  What *is* true is that men think they are safer in
>certain places.  The truth remains, however, that they are just as
>vulnerable to assault.

As I argued in my followup to Heiner Biesel's post, if it is true (as
he said, and as I've seen claimed before on the net) that men and
women are victims of assault at about the same rate, and if it is true
that women behave much more cautiously than men (I have no statistics
to back this up, but I'd be very surprised to hear anyone deny it), it
seems clear that the average woman is at greater risk than the average
man if she behaves the same way he would.

>Men often feel that they are not as much at risk, because (after all)
>they are rough and tough and able to handle themselves.  The fact is,
>though, if someone has a gun pointed at you, there isn't a whole lot
>you can do, no matter how rough and tough you are.

These are valid points, but I've lived in New York City for several
years and known quite a few mugging victims, and my impression is that
muggers attack women in situations when they'd never attack men.
Among the people I know, men and women have been mugged at about the
same rates, but the men were generally mugged past 2 a.m., when they
were alone, and when the mugger had a gun, and in fairly isolated
spots, while the women were mugged when the mugger was unarmed or had
a knife, in doorways to buildings, much earlier at night or even
during the day.  Also, small women seem to be at much higher risk,
especially (of course) for the cases where the mugger is unarmed.

I don't know much about other kinds of attacks around here; mugging is
far more common than rape committed outside, or than homicide.
(Actually, the area is busy and populated enough that I feel under
less threat of rape than I did when I lived in the suburbs.)

>Crime prevention is possible only through training in how to
>recognize and avoid dangerous situations, and self-defense in one --
>something equally available to men and women.

I totally agree that recognizing and avoiding dangerous situations is
an important part of preventing myself from becoming a victim of
assault.  That's why I don't walk around outside alone if it's late at
night.  My male friends who _do_ often walk around outside alone at
night think I'm being perfectly reasonable, and in fact would think I
was being irresponsibly careless if I did so on a regular basis.
That's partly why they often offer to walk me home, which shows a
great deal of sensitivity and thoughtfulness on their parts, in my
opinion (they know I'd be reluctant to _ask_ them at times, because
I'd feel too much like it was a demand, and yet they think about my
welfare and act considerately).

As for self-defense, it is a valuable tool, but I'd have to take a lot
of self-defense classes to make up for the size difference between me
and an average-sized man (and I'm larger and stronger than the average
woman).  Attackers know this, and also, I believe that many attackers
believe that women are at even more of a disadvantage than we actually
are, so they are more likely to pick us as victims.  In any case, if
_I_ were mugging someone, no matter how I was armed, I'd pick the
smallest person around too.

>But I think you are fooling yourself, too, if you let yourself be
>afraid to go anywhere where you have heard of another woman being
>attacked.  It is pretty much a matter of chance whether or not you
>are going to be attacked, and avoiding places probably isn't going to
>help you much.

but then you immediately add:

>Obviously, there are dangerous areas of any city that it is wise to
>not go into.

In most cities, these "dangerous areas" include almost everywhere when
it's late.  Karen's not being irrational or hysterical, she's acting
in a completely typical and normal manner, as far as I can tell.

It seems like you're taking your view of the world and how you feel
safe behaving, and then assuming that a rational woman should behave
the same way.  I'm saying she'd be deliberately putting herself in
danger, if you live anywhere like the places I've lived.  There are
times when I say, "&*^% it!  I'm not going to ask someone to walk me
home; I don't do this very often and probably nothing will happen.
I'm sick of feeling like a kid being walked to kindergarten," and I
walk around on my own even though I know I'm at high risk for being
mugged.  Sure enough, quite a few of those times, I'll see a guy
following me down a quiet street, and I'll have to turn around and go
back to the busy main street till I shake him.  This makes me feel
good for my crime-avoidance savvy, but it's a nuisance, and it doesn't
solve the problem of what to do if he's waiting for me in the doorway
to my building instead, or if he catches up to me in a place where I
_can't_ just walk away to a busier spot.  (In case you think I'm just
being paranoid, I really am quite sure these men follow me; sometimes
just turning around and staring at them makes them give up and turn
around to return to Broadway, the busy street I've turned off of.)

The same sort of arguments apply to the suburban places I've lived;
the risk of mugging seems to be much lower, of course, but I still
have felt unsafe in situations when a man would not, and I think I've
been quite rational in coming to that conclusion.

>However, if you feel like you have to avoid every place where you
>might possibly be assaulted, you will end up in a barred and
>shuttered room in your house.  And realistically, even that is not
>safe.

Oh, come on.  We're all balancing options and trying to evaluate risk
vs. lack of freedom.  I think it's quite reasonable for women to feel
that it's worth going home early, or waiting till morning to run that
errand, or coordinating their movements with friends, or whatever.
It's a royal pain, and it makes us resent feeling like we're under
some kind of curfew in our own communities, but it's not as bad as
being mugged or raped or even as bad as living a high-risk life and
feeling fearful for good reason.  I'm just grateful that living a
relatively low-risk life is an option for me; it isn't, for a lot of
people, no matter how cautious they are, if they can't escape very
high-crime neighborhoods.

>>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.

>Karen, I understand your feelings, but you have to understand that
>the "safety" men have is just an attitude, and one that may be wrong.

Men often do seem to me to overrate their own safety.  I think it must
add to the trauma when they are attacked.  But I really don't think
you _do_ understand Karen's feelings.  She feels like not only does
she have less freedom than the men she knows if she wants to live at
the same level of risk as they do, but they don't even realize it or
acknowledge it.  (At least, that's how I've read her posts.)  In this
way, I feel luckier than she does, because most of the men I know in
NYC _are_ aware of crime, and having put some thought into it, they
know that most of us women are more vulnerable than they are.  They're
not being patronizing or overprotective, they're being realistic, and
we all base our conclusions on the evidence available to us (what
dangers we've encountered when, local crime reports, etc.) and come to
roughly the same conclusions about who is how safe where at what time.

>I am willing to go walking at night, not because I think I am some
>great hero that can fend off attack, but because I know that, in
>reality, my chances of being attacked are pretty small.

Yes, exactly.  What makes you so sure you'd come to the same
conclusion if you had lived as a woman for xx years?

>I feel that the risk is worth the benefit of being able to go out at
>night.

(You say "the risk" as if it would be the same risk for anyone else.
I feel about the same as I would if I read, "I feel that a BMW was
worth the money I spent on it" in a thread about poverty.)

I feel like this till about 11:30 Sun.-Wed. nights, and till about
12:30 Thurs.-Sat. nights.  All the women I know who've been mugged
have been mugged earlier than this, incidentally, including me, but I
still feel that the chances are pretty slim, and if I stay in roughly
those guidelines, it won't happen very often.  (I'm talking about
times I'll walk home alone; often I'll arrange to have a female friend
stay over so we can walk back to my place together, or have a male
friend walk me home, or something.  (We're in Manhattan, none of us
have cars, and we all live near each other.))

>Have I ever been attacked?  No.  Will my attitude change if I am?  I
>would like to think not, but honestly I have admit that it probably
>will.

I was mugged a few years ago at 6 p.m. on a sunny summer day in a nice
and busy neighborhood.  I went downtown to my boyfriend's office, and
the building door was propped open because the intercom was broken.  I
walked down the hall to the elevator, which was right near a stairway
going down to a basement, which I couldn't see as I walked toward the
elevator.  When I entered the elevator, an average-sized man -- that
is, 4 inches taller than me and probably 25-30 pounds heavier, most of
it muscle -- came out of the hiding place and stood blocking the
doorway and demanded my money.  He said he had a gun and I didn't
believe him, but there was no one who could have heard me, and he
could have beaten me up very quickly, so it seemed a moot point to me
and I didn't demand to see it (if he had one, I'd rather he kept it
put away!).  I'm pretty sure he thought about raping me but was too
indecisive to try it (and if he had tried, he probably would have been
caught, but I'm glad he didn't try).  The whole experience was
frightening, degrading, expensive, and infuriating.  Did it change my
attitude about how to behave? a little bit -- I realized I could live
through being mugged, and I was more willing to deliberately risk it
than I was when I had never been mugged, because I figured I now knew
more about what I was risking.  (I still have kind of a thing about
elevators, though, and don't generally ride them alone late at night
if it's only 3 or 4 flights.)

An addendum: I feel I'm at higher risk of being mugged in New York
than other places, but mostly because I walk around so much.  I feel
much safer walking around at midnight in my neighborhood here than I
would in the suburban places I've lived, where I'm sure I'd be at
higher risk of being raped.  I don't mean this post to sound like New
York-bashing, because I feel relatively free and safe and unrestricted
here, despite its bad reputation, and I think New York has a much
worse reputation than it deserves for general quality of life.  I'm
just using this specific experience to talk about the differences in
risk for men and women.  In a place where rape was the more immediate
concern, rather than mugging, I expect the differences in rational
behavior for men and women would be even greater.

---Julie


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