My Feelings Exactly

I've been reading into a lot of feminist blogs lately, and this entry caught my attention:

Can I Walk You Home?

Last Saturday I walked home alone at 3am, after persuading one female and four male friends that 'I would be ok'. When I got in I received a text from one of the male friends saying he felt really guilty for 'letting' me walk home on my own and asking if I'd got back ok.

Although I appreciate their concern as a sign of their friendship, as usual I felt extremely irritated, not only because I think it's a crying shame that my male friends have to feel guilty and mean if they don't conform to the role of protector and walk me home, but because of the simple fact that they felt the need to ask if I needed escorting home in the first place. As I said to the friend who texted me, it wouldn't even cross his mind to ask if I would be 'ok' walking home alone during the daytime, yet he feels it is his duty to walk me home at night, when I am statistically in no more danger. In fact, although I of course didn't mention this, I am more at risk with him than on my own as most sexual assaults and rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. The idea that I am safe in his home and safe in my home but not safe on the street is also statistically ludicrous as most sexual assualts and rapes take place in the home.

Yet when do I worry about rape? When I'm walking home on my own after dark. It is ALL I think about - who is walking behind me? where is that car going? what would I do if it happened? where would I go? who would I tell? would anyone hear me shout? and eventually I take out my house keys and push them between my fingers so I blind my attacker when he lunges at me.

I, of all people, KNOW that I am not in any more danger than usual, yet I still cannot get these thoughts out of my head. And - guess what - before people started asking if I would be 'ok' walking home on my own, before I got that look of mingled astonishment, concern and scorn every time I say I'm going to walk home alone - 'alone?!?' - at night - 'at night?!?' - I didn't have these thoughts. After exposure to this social judgement, what used to feel like a normal, functional act now feels like an act of defiance and bravado; I will purposely tell people I am walking home alone just to prove that I can do it.

How ridiculous is that? I feel defiant and almost proud in the fact that I, a twentyone year old adult, am capable of walking to my front door without help.

I am living in a society in which the act of a person walking unescorted to their door after dark is seen as transgressional, out of the ordinary, the act of a foolish and pig-headed individual who causes unnecessary grief for both herself and others by refusing an escort. Of course, I say 'herself' because this only applies to female individuals; men are free to walk, or take the bus, or a taxi, or drive, or run, skip, hop, march, whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want without public disapproval, without feeling oppressed by their own paranoid thoughts, without feeling foolhardy, without making their friends feel guilty, and without running the risk of being able to defend themselves in court should they be raped on the way home.

I am living in a society in which public opinion gives men free reign to do as they please while forcing women to be constantly on guard, in which men must be either protectors or attackers and women either potential or actual victims, in which the right to freedom of movement is dependent on whether or not one has a penis.

I am living in a patriarchal society, and don't I fucking know it.

I am realizing that so many times other people are so better able to express my thoughts. You guys should read more of her blog. She has many many interesting/thought provocative entries. Her Blogspot!