The "Alone At Night" Argument

NullableThought · 2024-03-13T23:10:15+00:00

I am a trans man. I have lived over 30 years outwardly as female and only 2 years as male (how long I've been passing). I have lived in my current city for 6 years now.

I never felt unsafe as a woman walking home at night. I regularly walked home after midnight. I carried mace but never even thought about using it.

Now, as a tiny man, I am constantly worried for my safety while out walking. I no longer use headphones at night. I get nervous when someone is walking behind me. I get nervous when I'm behind someone and I'm walking faster than them. I constantly feel like a target and if anything did happen to me, no one would do anything to help me. I know statistically it's more dangerous for me to be a small man than to be a small woman on the streets.

Low_Rich_5436 · 2024-03-14T00:04:48+00:00

Privileged european speaking here. I'm amazed at this line of argument because it is used also here, were criminality is basically nonexistent. I don't know anyone who knows anyone who knows a woman who's been attacked in the streets, day or night. A few guys, usually by drunkards. That's it.

Yet that stupid argument is used anyway. It's expected of men and boys to escort women and girls home. Parents are scard for their daughters, not their sons.

This tells me one thing: that feeling is not rationnal. This debate is not about facts.

Women feel more vulnerable because they are more frail. Regardless of the actual risk. And they obsess over it. Watch true crime with a passion. I'm guessing it's biological. Evolution made them anxious about violence and strange men.

I don't know how we can overcome that.

GAMESnotVIOLENT · 2024-03-13T23:21:24+00:00

In the past year alone, I've been followed, stopped, watched, and approached by people while walking as a man at night. I've even been chased by a dog and a skunk. Not a single woman I've spoken to about it has had any of those things happen to them in their entire lives.

VeganSumo · 2024-03-14T02:16:21+00:00

"Men should stop thinking they have to be strong all the time and learn to be vulnerable."

"You’re not as entiltled to feeling vulnerable at night as women are!"

Feminists are often the ones promoting what they label themselves as toxic masculinity.

triple_skyfall · 2024-03-14T11:02:35+00:00

I mean if they could be bothered to look up actual statistics, men have a lot more to fear being alone at night. What percentage of murder victims in the US are men? Oh, 90%? Guess it really isn't so safe being a man is it?

A bit off topic, but this post reminded me of a post I read years ago about a woman who got raped when she was bar-hopping one night. In response, she got her concealed carry permit and now carries a firearm daily. I'm sure feminists must hate her for actually finding a solution to a problem and not just blaming all men for what one man did.

Skirt_Douglas · 2024-03-14T16:25:30+00:00

The biggest problem I think is that we live in a society where when women say what they THINK men’s experiences are, it holds more authority in the eyes of society than if men speak for themselves about their own experiences.

thereslcjg2000 · 2024-03-14T02:50:05+00:00

I honestly think a big part of this assumption stems from just how differently men and women are socialized to deal with fear. Women are largely taught to avoid potentially fearful situations, and to be extremely on guard when such situations are necessary. Men by contrast are largely taught to just suck it up and pretend not to be worried. I think that there are some women who notice that men rarely behave the way THEY would if they were afraid, and they incorrectly assume that men must therefore rarely be afraid.

YetAgain67 · 2024-03-14T17:26:39+00:00

This is a far too common shut-down tactic feminists use to invalidate and dismiss men's issues. It's often used purely as a deflection tactic.

For one thing; ANYONE who isn't a totally oblivious dummy is going to feel uneasy or afraid walking alone at night.

But feminists frame it a situation that only affections women, and that women are specifically targeted for random public crime.

Which, as well all know, just isn't the case. And these stats have been known for a long, long time. They aren't hidden or hard to come by.

It's quite literally conditioning perpetuated by ideology.

So what they're REALLY saying is "I FEEL unsafe walking alone at night because I've had this narrative drilled into my brain since birth that because of my gender, I will be a target of violent MEN any time I walk out my front door."

The funny thing is they never catch this. I've seen countless angry comments on reddit, YT, etc where the feminist in question literal uses the word "FEEL" to make this talking point and they never get it. Not "I AM unsafe walking alone at night." But "I FEEL unsafe walking alone at night."

They don't see how they're centralizing their FEELINGS over reality and demanding people bow to those feelings in the name of feminist allyship.

PurpleWoodWitch · 2024-03-14T21:29:00+00:00

Cis woman here.
I believe this is a product of the "traditional western values" that the red pill/'looking for a tradwife' community would like to keep in place. You do not have to look far in those forums to find people there declaring that second only to providing, a man's role is to protect. Specifically to protect women from all the big bad people in the world.
This idea is so ingrained that I had male coworkers telling me I shouldn't go out alone in the parking lot. Whenever I lived outside of NYC, where anyone would tell me to be careful because I lived in a bad neighborhood (which literally just meant I lived where minorities lived), and I shouldn't be out by myself at night.
One male friend even told me that I had "no sense of danger" because I frequently walked around alone at night.
Society keeps telling women they need to be afraid and therefore many women now feel afraid.

So this issue comes from many bad places: The misogyny that women are weak and frail and need a man for protection.
The misandry that men have an obligation to protect women as well as the notion that men are dangerous to women, and that the reverse doesnt exist. The racism that white women are in danger when they are where brown people are.

edo0410 · 2024-03-14T02:08:07+00:00

Yea I felt unsafe

BloomingBrains · 2024-03-17T07:58:15+00:00

"You don't have to be afraid when you're out by yourself at night"

I like to reply with "you're right, which is why you don't either."

We need to get past this bullshit defense where people act like "Gee, I'm really sorry, I would love to trust men but unfortunately I'm just forced not to by all the daily rapes that occur to 4/5 women in my apartment block."

No. No one is forcing you to be afraid because the statistics aren't that bad. This something you are choosing for yourself because it benefits you and you like having that power over men to label them as threats any time you want.

eli_ashe · 2024-03-16T02:00:16+00:00

I mean, I don't really like the whole paranoid vibe of this either way. We live in the safest societies the world has ever known. It has a ring of gated community to it.

But I do agree with the main point here. Statistically too women are actually safer than men, and not by a little bit either.

The only sort of push back I would give to it is that women are physically weaker, and do actually seem to be more hysterical than mean, er, I mean, fearful. There is a perceptual thing happening, that is, whereby a woman may feel more fearful because they are smaller, and hence too that that may manifest into hysterical hot takes on shite.

geodesic42 · 2024-03-27T15:15:06+00:00

Men are nearly three times (fig 1) more likely to be the victims of violent crime by a stranger. I bite my tongue every time a woman I know talks about the dangers of being their sex because I'd like to not fight with them about it, but it's so exhausting having to pretend and nod along when understanding why women are more scared than they should be is literally the subject of study in a subfield of sociology.

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