Like @hebegebe I am the complete opposite as well. Every night I check the doors and windows. When I take the dog out around 11pm for the final time I also check all of our vehicle doors. Frequently my wife’s vehicle doors are open. It’s not that she forgot to lock them, she just puts more faith in the auto-lock feature than I do.
The only female in our house is my wife. I double checked our security even when my two sons were living in our home, despite the fact that they could give any intruder a run for their money. It also helps that we have a large dog that barks like Cujo at the window when strangers are in our yard(once the person is in the house she’s one big wagging tail).
Just wanted to mention for others in this thread that De Becker’s “Protecting The Gift” book (I haven’t read his “Gift of Fear” book), the situational awareness & such that I’m referring to is NOT one of “OMG I’m afraid of every guy I see the minute I walk out of my house/apartment!” The main message I got out of that book was:
listen to your gut
if something feels ‘off’ or not right, listen to that.
your gut is usually right
if somebody is making you uncomfortable, you are not obligated to be friendly or nice to them. And it’s ok to tell them to leave you alone. And it’s ok to do that assertively.
occasionally, your gut might be wrong, but better that you’re wrong on that and avoid the situation entirely than have traumatic or horrible consequences.
When my kids were young, I’d talk to them about what to do if they got accidentally separated from DH or I in a store…how can you tell that somebody might be a ‘helper’? My very young kids at the time said, “If they’re a mom or a dad.”
Great, how can you tell if somebody is a mom or dad? “Well, duh, Mama, they have their kids with them” (yeah, my kids gave me lip even back then. haha!).
There’s a certain Walmart that’s about 20 min from my house which I refuse to go shop at after dark. Why? The parking lot is too dark. Am I being paranoid? Maybe. But guess what? Women have been physical attacked in that Walmart parking lot after dark. So if I have to go to a Walmart in the evening, I’ll go to a different one instead. My kids don’t like going to that one after dark either for the same reason.
Does that make me sexist for being afraid of the dark Walmart parking lot? You could certainly make that argument. But on the other hand, I don’t really care if you (the proverbial ‘you’, not anyone here in particular) are upset that I don’t want to shop at that Walmart.
It’s about using your street smarts, refining your own inner common sense. LISTENING to your street smarts & common sense. LISTENING to what your instinct is telling you.
Do I and my kids live in a constant state of anxiety all the time from this? No.
But you know what? Listening to her instinct is what resulted in D24 scratching UNM off of her list of colleges she’d attend. Why? Campus itself was well lit, but everywhere AROUND campus was dark as heck and a fair amount of scruffy looking people at night where even if she was walking around there with friends, she’d be nervous & worried.
Avoiding high crime areas seems like basic common sense for everyone, particularly when you know that prior crimes have occurredthere.
Not really understanding how that translates into a preference for a random encounter with a carnivorous wild animal rather than a random male, but whatever.
I do as well, but I have OCD, so I check the door 3 times. I also click my car lock button 3 times. I don’t do it out of fear, but out of ritualistic need.
I don’t go about my day in fear; I go about my day aware, like my own Spidey sense.
My husband also doesn’t lock house or car doors, periodically (accidentally) leaves garage door open (with unlocked door to the house).
When we were first married he even used to get irritated when I’d lock the front door when we went out (a bit of the ‘I’ve provided us a home in a nice, safe neighborhood…’).
He’s also a six foot+ tall, white guy who has had the good fortune to live in safe neighborhoods - he hasn’t had the same concerns throughout life as others. I try to understand that perspective - while still locking doors myself!
or also having to watch out for this: Appears harmless at first glance, but the prey (mostly female, but predatory behavior happens against males, too) has to be on alert & paying attention to subtle cues that something is ‘off.’ Like, that guy is following you around the store a little too much. Or the weird older guy who sat super close to me & my young kids at Mcdonald’s that one time years ago and he clearly was listening in on our conversation and then started acting really weird & stalker-ish, started asking my daughters questions and all of our hackles went up. So we moved to a more populated part of the restaurant and waited until he finally left and drove away before we left to go home (we stayed w/the rest of the herd). Or the weird guy in a white van when I was in 3rd grade walking home from school who pulled up alongside me asking me to get in the van and show him where a particular street was, him claiming that he was new to the area and needed directions. Sure buddy, like you’re gonna ask some random 3rd grade little girl to get in your van and show you around. Nope. Screw that.
…whereas a bear in the woods is always going to look like a bear, smell like a bear, act like a bear. And the odds are pretty good that I can hear that bear coming from a ways off, making it easier to avoid instead of the tricksy wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Before he retired, H traveled frequently. On travel days he would go into the office for several hours, come home (we lived near a major airport) take the dog out and grab his bag. I always reminded him to leave a first floor light on , but he didn’t usually do that.
One winter day I arrived from work at my usual time 6:15 ish (already dark). Not only was there no light left on, but H had inadvertently left the kitchen door unlocked when he had walked the dog (elderly beagle). Our house backed up to a wooded area.
Once I realized it was safe, I called H. I pointed out that as a female, walking into a pitch black house with an unlocked door was terrifying.
It had never occurred to him.
After that he always left a light on and always checked the doors.
I occasionally think of Aubrey Sacco, a young woman who grew up hiking many of the same trails as my own daughters. A few of my coworkers even went to college with her.
Although her parents tried to dissuade her, Aubrey left Colorado for a solo trek through Nepal. She thought she would be safe teahouse trekking. She vanished in 2010.
The prevailing theory is she was raped and murdered. For an experienced hiker like Aubrey, I can’t help thinking her odds of survival would have been higher had she encountered a bear.
I hike alone several days each week and have seen both bears and a lot of men. The bears are scarier honestly. If I was afraid of seeing men, I would never get out of the house. It makes me wonder if these tik tok kids have ever been hiking
That said, I have been afraid of men at times, I’ve also been afraid of women and most of all, I’ve been afraid of dogs. I bring pepper spray, my husband and kids always have my location.
I also mostly stick to trails that are pretty well traveled, but I hike in the rain a lot so they’re often pretty deserted. It’s worth it to me, walking in the woods is my anti-depressant
This is a terrible tragedy. It’s my understanding that Audrey went missing for unclear reasons while hiking 15 years ago in Nepal. One possibility is she went missing after being raped and murdered as you mention. And another other possibility is that she went missing after being attacked by a bear. Statistically both of these possibilities are extremely unlikely, so I wouldn’t assume either to be the reason for going missing. I expect far more likely are things like she had an unexpected fall, unexpected medical issue, or got lost. In these latter circumstances, running in to a person (either male or female) may have positively changed outcome, while running in to a bear would be unlikely to positively change outcome.
For example. the most common reasons for female deaths in US national parks database are listed as:
Car Accident
Drowning
Suicide
Fall
Medical Issue Unrelated to Physical Activity
Medical Issue Related to Physical Activity
Non-car Motor Vehicle Accident
Environmental
…
Homicide – Less than 1 per year, usually acquaintance (boyfriend/husband)
Wildlife – Only 1 in past 15 years (a grizzly bear at Yellowstone)
I really think some posters are taking this question too literally. It’s not about statistical risks or how many people die from other causes. It’s about that visceral fear that women get when the find themselves alone with a man unexpectedly in a potentially dangerous situation. Many of us have life experiences that makes that fear rational. It is very dismissive and condescending to tell us we should be more afraid of the bear. It misses the point.
The point is the anecdotes of terrible things happening, whether to hikers in Nepal by person or animal, are not terribly relevant. There will always be an anecdote for everything, including getting kidnapped from your own slumber party at home, or killed by your own pet, or drowning in your own bathtub. Statistics help us understand which risks are substantial enough to warrant us altering our routine to accomodate, versus which are so remote as to not warrant such action by most people.
Many people choose to avoid risks which are statistically very unlikely, for example, by not flying. That is fine, and everyone chooses their own acceptance of risk level.
I didn’t use to be afraid of walking trails until a young girl and her dog were abducted and they found her months later in the forest dead. They did capture her killer but she was hiking a very frequented trail with her dog (but a friendly dog) and it just blows my mind that this happened in a familiar area. I would not hike alone…as a gal or a guy. I get the creeps now.
Obviously nobody can tell another person how to feel, that they are right/wrong for feeling a certain way, or that they should feel more/less threatened by a particular situation. However, this also doesn’t mean one should ignore stats and assume single anecdotes are a meaningful indication of risk, assume missing hikers were most likely sexually assaulted and murdered ,or ignore stats when using phrases like “odds of survival.”
I get it, I really do. I’ve had a couple unsettling experiences hiking alone, mostly with dogs, twice with people obviously on drugs. Once I was walking on a trail near my house and the police were removing a body from the lake, it was a suicide but obviously upsetting.
That said, I’m a statistics nerd and I know that humans are terrible at assessing risk. I know I am more likely to die in the car on the way to the trail than I am on the trail. And if I do die on the trail, it’s more likely to be from a fall than from a predator. I also know that I am always at some level of risk when I hike and I do what I can to minimize those risks the best that I can. I carry pepper spray, I try to stay in cell range, I let everyone know where I am, and I don’t do anything too difficult alone.
But I can’t give up my solo walks in the woods, they feed my soul and recenter me in a way that I think many people find in a church. Not to mention that my health is excellent
For a brief time I tried trail running. I’m a notoriously klutzy person but I did a short trail race series successfully so I thought I’d try to keep it up - running during the daylight hours! Well then once I ran on my lunch break at an out of town training session. I tripped and fell and my head almost hit a rock. I realized nobody knew where I was and what could have happened. That was the end of my trail running! No need to tempt fate. I trip walking down the street. I just tripped in target 20 min ago…
Sometime I do go hiking alone, especially at a park about 1:30 away. I love climbing mountains but H isn’t so keen
I don’t do it out of fear, but out of ritualistic need.
