The general experiences she describes -- especially around going from very unattractive to very attractive to deliberately less attractive -- struck painfully close. I haven't had as many 'must run away now' fear experiences she has, but I attribute that largely to Wellesley's environment, in which I was -- or at least felt -- perhaps disproportionately safe considering the number of times I went back and forth between my dorm and the Science Center in the wee small hours of the morning. There were definitely a couple times in Wisconsin that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up (there are not enough swear words in the English language to describe my thoughts on drunken frat boys), and one so far in LA -- Burbank, actually, ha.
But it's definitely an odd feeling to realize you are likely to be safer if you pacify and behave agreeably toward a very insistent man, even as this encourages him to make another young woman feel awkward and threatened in the future, than to risk angering him by loudly insisting that he leave you alone. Yet I feel this way more often than not, and I don't know -- and don't like -- how much I might be contributing to the problem by letting it continue because of my lack of confidence in my ability to defend myself physically.
(And with that all said -- I still feel very safe. There are places that I don't walk around, by myself or with others, after dark, but there are places that I do. I expect I would feel much less safe if I had ever been assaulted or directly threatened with physical harm, wherever I lived at the time.)
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Date: 2009-11-23 11:23 pm (UTC)But it's definitely an odd feeling to realize you are likely to be safer if you pacify and behave agreeably toward a very insistent man, even as this encourages him to make another young woman feel awkward and threatened in the future, than to risk angering him by loudly insisting that he leave you alone. Yet I feel this way more often than not, and I don't know -- and don't like -- how much I might be contributing to the problem by letting it continue because of my lack of confidence in my ability to defend myself physically.
(And with that all said -- I still feel very safe. There are places that I don't walk around, by myself or with others, after dark, but there are places that I do. I expect I would feel much less safe if I had ever been assaulted or directly threatened with physical harm, wherever I lived at the time.)