Walking While Female
On a recent evening, I decided to take my Australian shepherd, Jack, for a walk in the neighborhood. The sun was setting already, but there was enough light left for at least part of the walk, and our route goes through a familiar neighborhood where residents often wave to us from front porches and call a friendly “How you doin’?” as we go by. No one was outside on this evening, though, because it was past dinnertime. But we live in a small, quiet town and I had my dog, so I wasn’t worried.
A Walk in the Dark
As we were walking along, I noticed an SUV behind us that slowed down and then stopped in the middle of the road. I waited for someone to roll down a window and ask for directions, but no one did. So we walked on and the SUV drove on. But in a few minutes, it was back, turning slowly down the road we had just turned on and once again stopping in the middle of the street behind us for no apparent reason. Its windows were too dark for me to make out the passenger(s). This is when I started getting that uneasy feeling that’s familiar to all women. That feeling that makes you look over your shoulder for the nearest exit or the closest group of people. It happens when we find ourselves alone — not that I was really alone, thanks to Jack — on a dark street or in a deserted parking lot. It’s a feeling men (white men, specifically) don’t know anything about, having always had the freedom to walk where they want, when they want, without the knowledge in the back of their minds that they’re a potential target.
Jack and I kept on walking and the SUV drove off but kept coming back. I was uneasy, but not nearly as much as I would have been without Jack by my side. Eventually, we reached the end of one street and turned onto an isolated stretch of road with trees and dense bushes along one side and no streetlights. I thought the SUV had finally left, but then I spotted it coming toward us yet again. And that’s when I started to run. I ran as fast as I could, Jack sprinting along next to me. Even though the stretch of uphill road along the bushes was dark, I knew it was only a short distance to a busy intersection with bright lights and dense traffic, and I wanted to reach those bright lights and people as fast as I could.
Once we reached the sidewalk of the intersection, we slowed back to a walk and turned for home, both of us panting from our uphill jog. Cars whizzed past us, streetlights glowed, and the baseball fields of the county park were brightly lit for an evening game. Everything felt normal and safe again. But as we walked home, I started feeling angry. Angry because I remembered the survey someone did asking women what they would do if men weren’t allowed out after dark and the most common answer was, “I would finally go for a walk without feeling afraid.” Angry because this is such a normal part of everyday life for women. Angry because if anything had happened, it would automatically have been my fault: “Why were you walking that late? You should have known better.”
Every woman I know has had this experience while walking. Many of my friends have broken into a run at one time or another because they felt uneasy on a city street. Some of them mention an inner “creepo-meter” that goes off in certain situations. Others accept the restrictions and just don’t go out alone, especially after dark. And then there are those who get so fed up that they take self-defense classes and learn to shoot and acquire concealed carry permits. I’m in that last group and I almost pulled a gun on a man once while walking, many years ago.
It was on a nighttime stroll on the beach with a friend. After we had walked a short distance, we noticed a man making his way through the dunes toward us. We kept walking and the man followed a short distance behind us, gradually getting closer and closer even though we started walking faster. Eventually, I reached for the handgun I’d tucked into the holster under my jacket, wondering if I would actually need to use it. I was ready to turn around and confront the man and order him to stop. Fortunately, about that time a group of people showed up walking in the opposite direction, and my friend and I turned around and joined them. The man disappeared back into the dunes.
Stand Your Ground?
I can hear the criticisms now from men reading this, about my paranoia, about jumping to conclusions, about assuming all men are dangerous. This is when you hear the inevitable “Not all men.” (Just FYI: We know not all men. The problem is our male-supremacist rape culture, not individual people.) But the interesting thing is that when white men jump to conclusions while they’re out walking, it becomes “stand your ground” instead of paranoia, even though their actions are based solely on bias (in most cases racism), not a lifetime of lived experience. According to our justice system, it’s OK for George Zimmerman to assume a dark-skinned man in a hoody is up to no good. It’s also totally OK for men to make assumptions about women when they’re assaulted. Either we must have asked for it because of what we were wearing or how much we drank, or we’re just plain lying about what happened. And God help us if we decide to fight back. It turns out “stand your ground” does not apply to us. Just ask Marissa Alexander, fellow resident of George Zimmerman’s Florida, who shot a bullet into a wall to try to get her abusive husband — who was threatening to kill her — to back off. For that, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. When her sentence was appealed as overly harsh, the prosecutor tried to get it increased from 20 years to 60.
Just imagine for a moment what the reaction would have been if I’d shot at the man on the beach. Would anyone have been sympathetic? Would I have been able to claim the “I felt threatened” defense? Would people have blamed the man and said, “What did he expect, following two women that late at night? He should have known what would happen. It’s too bad, but he asked for it”? Yeah, right.
Leave My Dog Alone!
Stand your ground also doesn’t apply to Jack. Like women, dogs in our culture don’t have the right to say no or get angry. They are supposed to be friendly so that people can pet them whenever they feel like it. Because of this, I used to feel ashamed when Jack growled at strangers. Periodically, someone (usually a man) feels compelled to lecture me with, “Your dog is too aggressive!” (Women usually say something along the lines of “Good boy, protecting your mama!”) Not that I’m making excuses for dangerous or disruptive dogs — those do need to be removed from public places. But saying, “I’m so sorry my dog doesn’t like you” to a stranger who ignored my polite request to stay away is something I stopped doing. Jack doesn’t owe strangers anything, and he has the right to be left alone if he doesn’t want to interact.
One time a landscaping guy who was working in the neighbor’s yard wanted to give Jack a treat. I asked him not to approach, saying, “My dog does not like strangers” (really, what part of that is so hard to understand?), but he did it anyway and was met with a growl and a show of teeth. “Hey, I wouldn’t do that to a guy who has two loaded guns in the truck,” the man told Jack. “Just see where that gets you.” Incredibly, he felt the need to threaten to shoot my dog because he wouldn’t take a treat from him. It was a familiar encounter, watching the bully get angry because someone stood up to him. We women have heard versions of this way too often and in way too many situations. The last four years, we’ve even had to listen to it from our so-called president on a daily basis, and we’re beyond sick of it.
Yes, it’s entirely possible, maybe even likely, that the person in the SUV was looking for a house for sale in that neighborhood or was just lost. It’s possible the man on the beach was out walking and happened to go in the same direction we were going. But we never know for sure, do we? We can’t go out and walk or jog without the knowledge in the back of our minds that we might be a target. And the time is gone forever that we agree to stay silent and just accept it so that men can maintain their comfortable illusion that the world is fair and nothing needs to change.
