Nov
1
The Right to Go Out
Filed Under Feminism
I’m Marching Because… These streets are mine too! taken by Anna Overseas – you can find more of her amazing Take Back the Night photos, as well as other activist marches on Flickr!!
Echidne of the Snakes has an amazing post up right now about the limitations women face in terms of going out:
Why am I doing this? Because I have learned that those very basics have become so obscured that many men and women no longer see them at all, no longer regard sexism a problem and no longer think that misogyny is a serious matter. I learned this during many recent discussions about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, about sexism and racism in politics and about the post-feminist era we supposedly now inhabit.
In one of those discussions this was said:
Which is why, if I had to choose simply on this basis and no other, I’d rather see a black man in the White House than a woman.
Women don’t get stopped in their cars by cops just because they are women.
The reference here is to racial profiling, and it is a serious problem. So is religious profiling of Muslims or those who are suspected of being Muslims or Arabs. It’s not my intention to downplay the particular problems of racial, religious or even gender-based (read: male) police profiling. But I was dumbstruck by this comment, just dumbstruck, because my first reaction was that women would be a lot less likely to be out driving their cars in the first place, especially alone or late at night. My second reaction was the realization that people mostly don’t see that female fear of the outside as a civil rights issue or a human rights issue. It’s just How Things Are.
Yet the difference in our ability to go out, alone and fairly safely, is highly dependent on whether we are men or women. In some societies women are not allowed to go out alone at all, but only in the company of a male relative. In other societies women may be allowed to go the stores and such on their own but cannot travel abroad without their husband’s permission. In many societies women who go out alone are regarded as prostitutes or fair game for any sexual molester. In most societies women who go out alone at night are at greater risk than men who go out alone, because women have to deal not only with the risk of getting mugged but also with the risk of getting raped. They are seen as prey. So women adjust to this, accommodate themselves to this, stay at home and agree to live lesser lives because of their sex.
In response, Melissa at Shakesville asks readers what precautions they take when they go out. Still making my way through 400 comments and counting. Many of them include some pretty harrowing experiences of harassment.
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