this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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me_irl
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I'm a woman who has wandered around alone in society at all hours of day and night since I was 13, am 50 now, and nobody has ever bothered me. People need to stop watching the stupid news & horror movies. It's designed to make people think the world outside their house is all hostile, paralyzing weak-minded people scared to go out. Turn off your damn TVs & go outside.
I'm happy for you, really, but really that is only one experience of course. Data from surveys etcetera show us that a very large majority of women and people perceived as women do experience harassment, abuse and sexual abuse at least once in their lives and data also shows this often is common to women. This often leads women to change their behaviors which they say they wouldn't have changed if not for those experiences and their awareness of the experiences of other women like female friends and family. I think with the majority of women consistently reporting bad experiences and pretty much every larger scale survey coming back with similar results, we would be wrong to attribute this perceived reality to a media diet. Misunderstanding this issue has the risk of underestimating it or even dismissing it and risks dehumanizing victims. It also actively does not contribute to any solutions.
I am also currently pooping btw just fyi
Tbf data also shows that most often women are familiar with their attackers, and most of the abusers are a small number of repeat offending men, and all violent crime (incl when women are the victims) has been falling steadily since 1993 and is actually at a low despite common perception (I blame media's hunger for ratings, the fucking ghouls they are, despite your dismissal of ClearChannel Communications role in shaping society's perceptions at large). Far from "be afraid to leave your house" levels.
Also worth noting, that quote covers everything from glancing at a woman's breasts when she doesn't like you, to wolf whistling, to Epstein throwing a murder victim down The Hatch. Yeah, I bet every woman has heard *wolf whistle* before, maybe even a full catcall or even lewd comment, and that is WRONG for sure but also isn't quite violently kidnapping them. It also covers domestic abuse and spousal rape, which are by far the most common (after the whistles and catcalls), but far from "every man outside will kidnap you ala Buffalo Bill."
And it also covers things like (real story): one time my (now)ex (at the time GF of ~1yr) came home drunk, woke me up, and started begging for sex (we'd been having issues in that department because she regularly refused to shower, and while that is her perogative, I then refused to have sex with her when/because she smelled so bad it took me out of the mood, but this time I relented, it had been a while and she wouldn't stop). The next morning, just trying to be nice I guess, I said "last night was great, have fun at the bar?" Well, idfk if she did to this day, because instead of answering she asked "what do you mean by that" incredulously, and when I told her "I mean the sex" she insisted that I had raped her and I'm a terrible person. Now, tbh, if you ask me (or anyone else were the genders reversed but in my state women can't legally be charged with it), her begging like that until I reluctantly gave in (despite me eventually consenting unenthusiastically) would have been considered the rape, but if you ask her I just committed one of the worst things a person could do for *checks notes* not continuing to refuse her smelly advances for hours while I just wanted to go back to sleep. If the Data™ you reference is self reported and they called my ex, guess which version they think is accurate.
*before you losers call me an incel, I hooked up with my clean FWB two days ago. I'm not an incel for not wanting to fuck a woman who verifiably hasn't showered in two weeks.
The point isn't that nonviolent harassment is ok, but simply that the vast majority of those often self reported numbers are going to be low-level non-violent harassment, not the violence so many seem to think lurks around every corner.
Also however, that said, women are the fastest growing group of gun owners in this country and (in a stand your ground state) you have the right to defend against the violent (not the nonviolent) attacks with deadly force as rape falls under "great bodily injury" and the size differential will be an extenuating circumstance as to why you needed to respond with deadly force. "We shouldn't have to" and neither should I to stop that guy who pulled a knife on me in 2020, but we do have to protect ourselves sometimes and it helps to be able to. If you're that worried about it do what men have done for years and women are doing in record numbers, learn your local laws on use of force and carry yourself some protection. Even mace is better than "please."
most sexual abuse is calling from inside the house
Your own stats explain why it's not helpful to stay inside. Yes lots of women are victimized at some point in their life - the most common scenario is by someone close to you. Becoming a shut-in is not rational and isn't helping you or anyone else.
I think we need societal change and I don't think blanket prescribing women what to do or not do like this is necessarily the way to go about it. It's more structural but also, women get told what to do all the time and this is how the patriarchal systems keep being perpetuated.
Also while it is true that by far the most violence and sexual violence occur within the direct social circles of victims (such as family or work), there is also an element of harassment and abuse that is normalized outside those circles. This is not necessarily immediately violent but it reinforces the same patriarchal structures. Things like making lewd comments, inappropriate touching, threatening violence are still experienced far too often to dismiss them. And as I said, this does not always turn to violence but it very well could and does far too often. This instills a safety culture in women who need to learn to adapt and to endure this harassment and the real danger it brings.
So yeah. Women sending their husbands so they don't get killed. They have a point there, I'm sorry but they do and pretending they don't and 'they should just go outside more' is reductive and dismissive of the realities women unfortunately face every day.
My intent is not to dismiss the fact that women do face non-violent harassment, and it's not a given that it must be so. I'm from Sweden - I have a female friend from the Netherlands who now lives in Sweden, and constantly talks about how she's still getting used to feeling safe walking the street alone at night, because she's accustomed to being catcalled and leered at in the Netherlands. So it is possible to have safe streets, and it's not about law enforcement, it's about culture - which is something we all affect and therefore can fix.
I just want to say, I'm also from Sweden, grown up outside of a smaller town, I do not feel safe if I'm not in central central Stockholm, Copenhagen or Göteborg. If there isn't 100s of people around I won't feel safe, because If I scream where I grew up, no-one will notice it.
No judgement, but I do not believe this to be normal for Swedish women, especially in smaller towns.
Maybe not, shared my experience as a Swedish woman though ☺️
Yeah and thank you for doing so, it's a nice thing about the internet that it can help you get out of your own bubble a bit.
You know, you could've just hit "Reply" a bit earlier.
Your experiences aren't everyone's.
This is peak boomer, “well I did this and I’m okay” energy.
Your experiences do not erase the statistics of women’s issues.
https://www.ctdatacollaborative.org/story/abducted-victims-0#no-back
That doesn't tell much, the important stat is how big of a risk is there that a given person will be abducted at all. Obviously 73% sounds horrifying but 73% of what percentage of the population? Who's doing the abducting? Are there other factors that increase your risk bf being abducted?
73% of abductions are females. Therefore 27% of abductions are male.
100 % of lightning victims are people.
And 50% of my phalanges are on my left side.
Okay, but how big of a risk is there for actually being abducted. How many people total out of a given population are victims? Are there other factors like primarily family members, or location based or things like that? Just knowing that most abductees are women doesn't really tell you how concerned women need to be about this. Not arguing for or against the idea, I don't have the data. Just saying the stat you're using by itself isn't valuable.
Okay. Murder victims are predominantly male (~3/4) aged 30 or younger.
So if what you both say is true, women are more likely to be abducted, men are more likely to be murdered.
Yeah, exactly. The difference is that men don't let it control whether or not they go outside.
I'm willing to bet those male murder statistics are just related to gang activity. That's not a huge part of the general population. 99.999999% of men are probably pretty safe to walk around outside alone and not get bothered or noticed at all.
US bias? :)
It's roughly the same everywhere in the West. Similar to sexual assault that targets women, the victim and perpetrator almost always know each other.
But yeah, while many men have been harassed at some point, very few have been violently robbed, beaten or murdered.
*Results may vary based on where on live
I can walk around all hours of the night in my state, but I take one trip to DC and I have a guy trying to lure me into his hotel room at 9AM in the morning.
9am? AM? That's like the worst time. For anything.
What did he want from you? I've wandered around Washington DC too all by myself and, again, no one ever bothered me there either. Except once some old black homeless man kept trying to get me to respond to his unnecessary banter but I just ignored him.
I don't know, because I wasn't going to go near his room to find out because he looked skeevy as hell. It was just outside DC, technically Virginia but within driving distance. It was a very sketchy hotel. The carpets were wet the entire time I was there.
😱 I know Virginia can be very humid certain months of the year, hopefully that was the only contributing factor to wet carpets for days but ugh!