I'm sitting in a Starbucks in a really well-heeled suburb of San Francisco. There are homeless people outside, some of them nuts. Occasionally I can hear someone screaming and yelling at mailboxes, or whatever. There are two or three people inside who have been parked there all day, and are obviously sort of off-kilter.

Here's what I don't understand. I'm 6'2". I weigh well over 200 pounds, lift or do cardio every day, and if I really have to, am capable of putting someone's head through a window or a wall. I'm not worried about my safety. But if you're a woman, and you've spent the last several years attacking the patriarchy, me, sexism and white men in general, in locations like this, which are increasingly common, are you just resigned to being scared all the time?

The guy behind the counter here is not going to protect you. The cops are going to take forever to get here. I've been declared a rapist and persona non grata, so the days of some man standing up for you are long gone. if you are a woman, some of these weirdos would be pretty scary. Doesn't that ever occur to any of them? In this brave new world they're describing, where they don't need us, where the police are the enemy and so on, what rushes to fill the vacuum are the real rapists. How do they square that? Or don't they?