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by pseudo0
1186 days ago
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Violent crime includes sexual assault and rape. And the GP post is a man discussing his experiences with aggressive panhandling, which can escalate into an assault or attempted mugging. My point is that perceptions of risk and societal willingness to acknowledge risk differs between men and women. Men are incentivized to play down risks to their personal safety to save face, while the dynamic is reversed for women. As to how this relates to the overall discussion, I'd suspect that men and women have similar safety concerns, but men are just more likely to lie about it on surveys. |
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Talk to more women, I'd say.
I have been scared in my life, and I have known many men I would describe as being generally-fearful people, but I have never met any man who spent as much of their life considering physical safety as one of their highest priorities every single day of their lives, and I have talked to many women who describe that feeling in different words.
I think it's good to acknowledge that men can be, and sometimes are, scared. But I think you do a disservice to both men and women when you look at "violent crime" stats (skewed heavily by gang activity most of us will never encounter regardless of gender) and believe that men and women are generally equally concerned about safety. That flies in the face of the experiences of nearly everyone, I think.
Put another way: there are some neighborhoods in which I would not like to walk alone at night, but I have never once worried about being attacked while walking for exercise in a tony suburb in the afternoon. Any time I've encountered a woman while doing so, they would cross the street, be holding keys in their hands, or both. I don't think I'm a scary-looking guy, but as an unknown man they encountered, even in a tony suburb in the afternoon, concern for their safety prompted them to take action.
You don't have to believe me, and I can't convince you. But if you ever listen to women, read women, or even believe the comments you see on this page from women, you might just understand life a little more.