Tuesday in class we were talking about feminism. (That topic was chosen because I lost my overheads and there were four articles in our book on the topic that we could use instead.)
We read about a woman who decided to carry a gun, even though she was a pacifist, because she no longer felt safe without one.
There were some grins from guys in the classroom, so I thought I would make the topic a bit less funny. I asked for a show of hands of the women in the class who have ever been threatened by a man, chased by one, followed in a car and been forced off the road, etc. Every woman in the class raised their hands. The guys weren’t grinning then. I then asked the men if they had ever been threatened by a group of men or harrassed or whatever. None of them raised their hands. (I don’t know if they would have. Perhaps it is not macho to admit to being threatened. I did try to include drunk idiot groups, etc. in their list.)
Today I went to read blogs and read two articles on this topic, but limited to the problem in India. They are interesting articles.
The earliest one is about possible reasons men harrass. The author suggests that segregated schools are the reason, since the boys aren’t around the girls enough to learn how they ought to behave. But that doesn’t explain the reason, which I think is just as persistent in the US, here. We don’t have segregated schools.
The second one is about his wife and her mother being followed home and an attempted attack. This is an example of the kind of thing that had the woman freelance author buying a gun in South Dakota in the article my class read on Tuesday.
Why aren’t women safe? Because men think it is okay, necessary, cool, fun, easy to harrass them.
Will women ever be safe? If you believe in a utopia, yeah. Otherwise, not till we get to heaven.
Other recent posts on the same or similar topics:
Epidemic of Muslims Raping Women
Int’l Woman’s Day in Iran
A bit off topic, but related within the article is Delivering the Conservative Line on the ‘Vagina Monologues’