If i’m getting a vibe a woman is worried about me, say she’s approaching and its clear we are going to pass in a tight point or say its late at night and she’s looked behind her and we happen to be going to same way…I’ll slow down and try and …do the best i can…to assume a non-threatening posture, look at my phone and such.
On the flip side, a couple of times when my GF and i were walking back from Fenway to our BNB, I specifically told her to walk side by side with me, and spread our shoulders and gait. I called it ‘walking big’. “Walk big!! Look like a less easy mark! Damnit woman look more threatening! it’s nearly midnight!”
Well, as I told my nephew before he went off to college at the (even bigger) big city;
Always be aware of your surroundings. Don’t be just looking at your feet, the windows you pass by, etc. Pick your eyes up. Be aware of who and what is happening at least a block away if not more. Behind as well as in front. If there’s trouble that way, don’t go that way. If there are not a lot of people around and someone up ahead of you is acting odd or looking at you too much, don’t fucking walk past them, because they’re waiting for you to come to them.
If there’s suspicious or outright criminal shit happening near you, don’t assume you’ll be ignored, get out of there.
I remember an incident when I was in college. I was crossing from one end of the campus to my (school owned) apartment on the other end of the campus (a walk that would take several minutes.) On a sidewalk explicitly for foot traffic of the students at that college. In broad daylight. I was walking at a normal pace, and there were a couple of girls around 100 feet or so ahead of me. They kept glancing back in my direction, then finally broke into a dead run like they expected immediate death. I thought that they were both complete and utter fucking morons.
About the article (which I wasn’t able to google up) it wasn’t so much that the guy mentioned doing that himself, but that in the article and in the comments section he was implying that it was more or less common courtesy, and that anyone that doesn’t do it is an insensitive jerk (which, frankly, you seem to be doing with the sentence “Okay, you won’t cross the street to make a woman feel safer.”) And to that, I say is it common courtesy for black males to cross the road to make people comfortable who might think a black man could be a robber? Is it common courtesy for people of an indeterminate shade between black and lily white to cross the road to make people comfortable who might think that they have a suicide vest strapped beneath their clothes? And can you twist your logic to say that these aren’t the very exact same fucking situation?
I’ve done the street crossing thing too - generally when it’s dark and the direction I’m walking results in me walking behind a lone woman for more than a minute or two. The inconvenience to me is minor, and I don’t want to freak her out. That said, if I’m walking alone in the dark and someone is walking a short distance behind me for more than a brief period, it starts to freak me out too.
What legitimate fear do you have for black people? Have you been attacked before? Lots and lots of women have been attacked, groped, assaulted, or harassed in some way by a man. Most of the women I’ve ever spoken to about this, in fact.
Very, very few of the non-black people I know and have spoken to have been attacked, assaulted, or harassed by a black person.
Finally found the article I was thinking of. I had thought it was by Ed Braton, (who abandoned FTB of his own free will) but it was actually by Greg Laden, who was kicked off FTB for being a cyberstalker creep (including to a female blogger, who he went so far as to trying to get her in trouble with her graduate studies) and making physical threats to another blogger. Here is the article, and this is the point I was specifically mentioning:
*All men. ALL men who have given sufficient consideration to women’s position in our society do this walking trick in the right context (for some that will be common, for others, rare). If you are a man and you do not know about this trick then there is a problem with you.
*
I see. So if I HAVE been robbed by a black person, then I would be alright with asking all other black people to cross the street instead of walking by me and scaring me? :rolleyes:
I’m curious how my crossing the street impinges on you at all. Because that’s what you’re criticizing me for: not for demanding that you do the same - which you will note I’m not doing - but for doing it myself.
Does it make you feel bad somehow that I do this? Do you need to go to a safe space while I talk about it?
It doesn’t impinge on me at all. What does impinge on me is the fact that as a man, I am expected to cross the street instead of scaring a woman. In fact, if I don’t cross the street, then apparently I have no empathy or something.
I see. So it’s cool with you if I fear all black people from now on, and expect them the cross the street instead of scaring me? If I have a purse, should I hold it a little tighter around black people? Or instead, maybe you might want to think about what you are saying, and that woman should not group ALL men into ones who they should be scared of. I’m assuming there is some sort of term that can be used when one judges individuals of a group based on the actions of some of the entire group.
What you don’t appear to have is reading comprehension skills. Where did I say I expected you to cross the street? I did expect you to be less of a dick over something as trivial as my crossing the street, but apparently I set my expectations too high.
