Afraid to walk alone at night? Just don’t tell your male pals. They may laugh.
A recent conversation with a male acquaintance knocked me for six. Full on onslaught of mockery. Right to the face. Like a slap of a wet fish.
The topic? My desire to get a taxi a short distance home. Perhaps the alcoholic haze confused him. He may have thought of me as this lazy sloth too precious to walk the fifteen minutes to my abode. But when I reminded him that the roads were dark and isolated, he continued to mock me in a childish manner. Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to see my fears as real possibilities.
How could it be that this modern man was so oblivious to what women face late at night, when walking alone?
Despite my better judgement I ventured home on foot. I headed off, defiant and determined to prove nothing would happen. There was no boogeyman out there waiting to pounce. But prove to whom, you may ask? My acquaintance wasn’t offering to escort me or simply find me a taxi. I was the one who could be losing out here. Because if anything had happened, it would have been me experiencing it alone. Not him. When I reflected on it the next day, I realised I was embarrassed. By his response, yes, but also that as a grown woman I still needed protecting.
