Thoughts of a Woman Walking at Night

Way to be there for walking! TBtN is an important event, but I never feel as though the rhetoric sticks- if we all honestly walked places at night more often, there would be a change in the level of crime, and the proportion of crimes that end up reported. So go you!

Contre tout le monde, je me defendrai...je suis le dernier homme, je le resterai jusqu'au bout! Je ne capitule pas!
- Ionesco, Le Rhinoceros

Oddly, growing up in a often violent household I have often felt more comfortable walking alone in the middle of the night then I did walking around in day light...I still feel that eerie sense of security, walking around past midnight, when everything is dead silent. But I can definitely understand why after hearing about several rapes occurring in your area that you would start to question your safety, especially at alone night. Have you considered carrying around pepper-stray? Also, I wonder what your campus is doing about this rape problem? 52 rapes in 3 years seems like a lot.

...and for the most part, I have curtailed my walking at night because I'm simply not willing to take my chances. This was not at all the case in my early twenties--I walked all over DC and Krakow well after dark--but lately the risks have become a little more salient.

Oh yeah. Know that feeling, too. I try to avoid walking late at night, but when I am out with friends in the evening and taking the last bus home, I cannot avoid it. The night bus doesn't go all the way to my street and I am left with a 15 minute walk. Felt that same way, also, when I lived just outside of Milan and had to take the last train (12:30am) home after a night out. So terrifying.

But the strange thing about walking at night to me was that I always felt safer walking around NYC at night than in the suburb where we moved after leaving the city. As a woman in the city, I always felt like there were other people around, other women who felt powerful enough to do the same, so I could too, with little fear. But on campus, and in my hometown, it definitely does feel more dangerous. Too many shadows, too many men leering.

Charlotta! I know what you mean! I feel much safer walking around mid-sized and even large cities than I do towns like the one I'm in. For me, too, it just seems like in cities there are more eyes watching- in a good way- and here you really are totally alone on the street.

Contre tout le monde, je me defendrai...je suis le dernier homme, je le resterai jusqu'au bout! Je ne capitule pas!
- Ionesco, Le Rhinoceros

"Also, I wonder what your campus is doing about this rape problem? 52 rapes in 3 years seems like a lot."

On a college campus? 52 reported rapes in 3 years? Sadly, that's not unusual at all. And when you start looking at statistics for how many college-going men surveyed have anonymously admitted to rape, it begins to make sense.

But yeah, this is an AMAZINGLY well-written entry. I applaud, and I empathize completely. Those exact thoughts go through my head as well, walking alone at night. That horrible tension when you think a car might be slowing down as it passes you. (One actually did one time, and I thought, "Oh my god, I'm going to die, this is it", but the guy just offered me a ride and took off when I refused.) I try to walk as "non-sexy" as possible, always paranoid, "Do I look like I'm strutting right now?", trying to scrunch up my face and poke out my belly and look ugly when a car comes by. I jogged in the night for a while, because the temperature and sleep schedule suited me, but I had to stop because my heart spent more time racing over the breaking of small twigs than it did over the jogging. *SIGH* If only I could legally bear a concealed weapon...

~Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Actually for a campus of over 50,000 students, it is a pretty small statistic. However, the statistic only includes rapes *on campus,* and immediately around - which would include where I live. However, students live all over austin, and I'm sure that a rape, say, 2 miles from where I live isn't included in the statistic.

The thing about West Campus is that, yeah, it's next to a huge campus with lights and towers and dorms, but essentially it's like a really big neighborhood filled with college aged people. There aren't any businesses or lecture halls or anything like that around - it's kind of like having the perks and peaves of a neighborhood with the aura of a city. So yeah, like Dr. K and Charlotta are saying - I would definitely feel more safe if I were, for instance, walking on campus where I could run into a building with people if I needed to, but walking around a quiet neighborhood with only houses - a large number of them huge frat houses at that - does make it worse.

When I walk alone after dark, I visualize these scenarios where I'm telling the story to the cops or on the witness stand about the man who will inevitably grab me and rape me before I reach my destination. It's ridiculous, but I have this morbid preoccupation with knowing the exact times I'm out of my house and calling someone before I go out walking at night. I feel like one of those peple who plan their funerals so that their family will have everything ready once they actually die.

There are parts of my campus where and times when I feel more vulnerable, and I'm guilty of avoiding those too. I try to walk emptyhanded and with confidence. But sometimes I just feel, from the things peple say in the daylight, that it's only a matter of time before I'm a victim at night.

(Also pepper spray: can be a hazard if an agressor gets it from you, so be careful if you consider that.)

"A woman for a general, and the soldiers will be women."

Well if you carry a gun someone can take that away from you too. Also, everyone is talking about rapes alone in the dark night, but the reality is alot of rapes occur in victims homes or places they feel safe or with people they know. It's almost silly to be concerned about a rapist jumping out of the shadows, when a student's professors, friends or boyfriend could also be potential rapist. Even if rapes are common on college campuses, that doesn't mean that the college doesn't have some responsibility to talk about them occurring. They could for example bring it up during freshmen orientation, or adopt a zero tolerance policy towards rape and sexual harassment.

Colleges do have programs aimed at educating their young men and women about the potential dangers of partying and how to avoid touchy situations. On my campus (and I'm sure we're not the only ones), campus police also sponsors a free self-defense class.

Calling other people's fears silly doesn't change the fact that they're there. Statistically your facts may be correct, but they don't feel that way to the girl walking alone after dark. In a culture where male on female violence is practically a norm, it's not silly or funny that women are afraid at any time in their lives, much less in the run-of-the-mill dark scary scenario.

Not to be rude or short, but I'd really appreciate if we could keep the AGA an open and safe space. I know that fear of mine is ridiculous, but I felt comfortable sharing it here because I have come to expect support in addition to discussion and not belittling.

"A woman for a general, and the soldiers will be women."

...is that a lot of colleges have a REALLY nasty habit of covering up rapes, of trying to keep victims from reporting to outside authorities, of NOT increasing awareness because high rape rates on campus make them look bad per enrollment.

There's nothing ridiculous about your fears, Daniella. Women have a valid reason to fear stranger rape: women have a valid reason to fear rape at the hands of those known to them. We are raped, in droves, by both groups. And given how much our cuture makes rape about what WE can do to protect ourselves, or about how WE might incur the wrath of a rapist -- rarther than about what we can do as a culture to address the RAPIST, and understand that how we dress, where we walk, what we do often can do little to prevent rape -- having thoughts like you have is really a given.

And I wish I had a good answer to how to avoid that thinking. The sad truth is that, for myself, I think the only reason my mind often doesn't go there is beacuase as a survivor of more than one rape, I know all too well how arbitrary is it, and how little I can do to protect myself in many respects.

(But yes: it's really not okay here, at a women's space, to in any way belittle a woman's fears about her safety. Let's all please be sure to remember where we are and why we're here, okay?)

I said "almost silly". I'm not trying to be unsupportive, sorry if I came off that way. I'm just pointing out we as women have more to fear then the typical scenrio of a woman getting raped in a dark alley at night. I also didn't know if the college had any rape education programs, or if they were just ignoring the issue, which is why I asked.

Brooke, you're absolutely right that there's more to fear and that communities (like college campuses) should do more to address the issue. I've been lucky enough to live and go to a school that has a very strong support structure both on and off campus for sexual assault victims.

Not all women are this lucky, I know, and I think your concerns are good ones. College *administrations* have a tendency to downplay assaults, and that makes for some weird reporting and statistics; to a certain extent, they do just ignore the issue, which is something that definitely needs to be addressed. It's usually the smaller, dedicated groups that take on this cause and do a stand-up job of helping survivors through.

"A woman for a general, and the soldiers will be women."

I try to walk as "non-sexy" as possible, always paranoid, "Do I look like I'm strutting right now?", trying to scrunch up my face and poke out my belly and look ugly when a car comes by.

You do understand that none of these things, matter, though, right? Not sure if you're stating this as knowing those sorts of thoughts or approaches are meaningless, or based in rape-mythology, but in case NOT?

This stuff doesn't matter.

I can assure you that I was not "walking sexy" when gang-assaulted at 12. That my 76-year-old great-grandmother when raped and then murdered in her home had a scrunched-up face and a poochy belly. That women and children who are sexually assaulted every day don't fit plenty of people's ideas of what is "sexy."

To fit a rapists idea, all you've got to do is be there and look to them as if you are capable of being raped, capable of being assaulted, and that's about little but opportunity on their part. Do they want to rape someone? Is someone around who could be raped, whom they are capable of subduing or controlling? Those, and those alone, are the requirements for most rapists.

First, in response to the pepper spray comment I hear this a lot in regards to women carrying pepper spray/guns and it just seems a bit...misguided? If I'm on the verge of pepperspraying someone it's going to be for a good reason and if they somehow managed to get it from me and spray me that'd probably be the nicest thing they'd do to me.

I mean everyone needs to make their own decision about that one but just keep it in mind.

Secondly, I totally feel you on the walking alone at night thing. For the four years that I've been working I've only had a car and a day job for the past four months. Most of the time I was doing a bus/walk combo home at night alone. I don't remember ever being worried terribly before I was assaulted but afterwards every night I walked home I just played out all the scenarios in which I would be brutally raped and beaten and left for dead. And this is the first time I've ever told anyone that, which is kind of weird. Also weird because my rape happened indoors in a place I was familiar with with someone I knew. Not at all like the scenes I imagined.

Anyways, the solution I found is not the one we want to hear. We want to have a world where none of us have to think that way and ta-da! problemo solved. But that didn't happen so I bought a bike and it had all the affordability and eco-goodness and of walking (try craigslist.org if you're interested) without any of the hassles of driving.

... all of your discomfort. I understand your fear, Andrea. When I was thirteen, just a few years ago. I was raped taking a walk around my neighborhood. Scarred for life. I'm still afraid to walk around at dusk, let alone when the sun sets completely. If I'm walking home alone from work or something when it's late, I get so scared that I start shaking. All thoughts of defending myself get lost in the ocean of anxiety. Walking home from work last summer I was afraid to turn corners. I kept to the busiest streets I could find. Still do, daylight or not. I just wish that my high school, the college that I attend part-time, had thought to inform people of rape statistics, teach us what to do. If you know, but don't "know," what to do, it just becomes more and more difficult to defend yourself, because all you can think is how scared you are, and "why me?"