Safety-splaining

I just heard something very odd. Apparently, in the news right now is circulating this idea: that telling a woman, any woman, that traveling alone is unsafe, is somehow sexist, or otherwise misogynistic.

I was raised as a boy, though I’m not male. But, being raised as a boy myself, I was taught a few things:

1. That men, being stronger than women, had a duty to protect women from things that they were not physically equipped to deal with.
2. That, due to this inequity in physical strength, the first duty was necessary, because the strong must protect the weak, no matter what.
3. That, due to how bad the world was in general, that some men would take advantage of this physical inequity, and use it to abuse women.

Part of the reason why domestic abuse is so prevalent against women is that men are stronger than women. Taking account for bad upbringings and just general assholish men, if men weren’t stronger than women, women would be on more of an equal footing physically, and would be able to fight back more successfully. But, as it is, men seem to be several orders of magnitude stronger than women, especially if the men work at it.

I’m not saying that I think women are weak little things: I’m married to a woman who can rip a door off its hinges by accident. What I’m saying is, this is the unfortunate reality of the world: men are akin to gorillas when it comes to strength when compared to women, so when a woman has to fight off a man, it’s like a man trying to fight off a gorilla. The match is not even and it is not fair, so there need to be precautions taken.

When I tell a woman — or anyone, really — to not travel alone, this is due in no small part to the fact that traveling alone in a strange place leaves you open to things like being kidnapped, but also that there is great safety in numbers.

Think about the advent of the cell phone. Ten or perhaps twenty years ago, cell phones were not at all as prevalent as they were today. People went out; people went to work; people disappeared for hours or a day at a time, and we did not really worry.

Now, we can’t leave the house without one, without our loved ones worrying that we’ll be lost forever because we don’t have a cell phone. Even if we do carry a cell phone, not answering it is grounds to make people who love you start thinking about how to inform the police about a missing person.

When it comes to safety, the cell phone has attempted to replace the concept of ‘safety in numbers’. However, a cell phone is not as useful as another human being in protecting you: while it’s fairly easy to get kidnapped if you’re alone, it is several orders of magnitude more difficult to be kidnapped if you have even one friend with you, and nearly impossible to be abducted if, say, you have your own posse with you.

If you feel at all offended by what I’m saying, that’s not my intent. My intent is merely to say: Please, for the love of God, don’t travel alone. Even if you feel like it’s patronizing, the world is a fairly terrible place, and when someone tells a woman not to travel alone, you know what they’re thinking?

They’re thinking that, due to how terrible the world is, somebody’s going to prey on a lone woman. They’re thinking about rape. And while you might say, “Don’t tell women not to get raped; tell rapists not to rape”, I don’t think that’s going to stop rapes. I think overwhelming numbers and physical superiority in general is going to be a lot more effective in preventing rape than any sort of rhetoric.