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    Most girls and young women do not feel completely safe in public spaces – survey
    United Kingdom

    Most girls and young women do not feel completely safe in public spaces – survey


    Most girls and young women do not feel completely safe in public spaces – survey

    https://guernseypress.com/news/uk-news/2024/07/17/most-girls-and-young-women-do-not-feel-completely-safe-in-public-spaces–survey/

    Posted by 1DarkStarryNight

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    21 Comments

    1. AnselaJonla on

      Because you cannot, for the most part, tell the Good Men from the Bad Men just by looking at them. Until they do or say something to set themselves apart, they’re indistinguishable from one another.

      Actually, I should say _don’t do_ anything as well. Because sorry gents, if you hear or see one of your fellow men making a woman uncomfortable and you just stand there idly or scurry away in silence, you’re _not_ a Good Man. Your silence makes you complicit, it emboldens the Bad Men to act the way they do, because they’re only going to change their behaviour if other men challenge them on it. They only back off if another man is there to make them.

    2. _Red11_ on

      No one is completely safe in public spaces, and men suffer more violence from strangers, so this is unsurprising.

    6. Uncle_Nurgs on

      What kind of utopian alien society do the other people live in? I don’t feel safe in public at all and I don’t have a coochie

    7. hitanthrope on

      I feel as though stating the obvious here is going to be unpopular, but I don’t think we can ignore the fact that immigration from places where attitudes to women are very different and more aggressive is going to have this effect.

      This is definitely *not* to say that… for want of a much better word, “native” British men cannot be absolute Neanderthal dickheads, or that all, or even a majority or immigrant men are a problem but there is an will be some conflicting cultural aspects.

      I lived for a time in New Delhi, India and my friend’s young (white) sisters visited for two weeks. I loved India but while we were there we had to essentially act as bodyguards for them. They were harassed, groped, had young men trying to take photos up their skirts, the works… all brazenly, in public, with absolutely no notion of shame or the feeling that there might be negative consequences.

      Cities like Cairo are famously tricky for lone women. As are many other places.

      I feel like we have worked pretty hard to address the more inappropriate aspects of British culture. The stereotypes of builders catcalling from the scaffold seems to be a rarer thing now. I’m sure it still happens but from everything I understand progress has been made, but we do have more and more men coming from places that have not gone through some of this adjustment and will bring their attitudes and behaviour with them. We need a strategy for this.

    8. StatisticianOwn9953 on

      Given that men are more likely to fall victim to random acts of violence, I’d bet many of them feel the same way. Better make random acts of violence illegal so that people are aware it isn’t acceptable!

    9. Wonderful_Discount59 on

      Probably in no small part because of the media constantly telling them that that they’re not safe in public.

    10. HPBChild1 on

      Fucking hell these comments are depressing.

      If you came into this thread to say ‘what about men’ or ‘men are more at risk’ or ‘everyone feels like this, why does it matter that they have a vagina’ – you are part of the problem. You are contributing to a culture that normalises violence against women. You are contributing to a society where casual misogyny is accepted, and where it’s seen as the natural order of things that women don’t feel safe in public.

      Women are vulnerable to types of violence that men are generally not at risk of. The vast majority of men will never know what it’s like to be cat called, and the discomfort and anxiety this causes. The vast majority of men feel able to go out without taking the precautions that many women do. The vast majority of men feel able to walk alone at night without worrying about being abducted or raped or murdered or all three.

      Try listening. When an article like this gets posted, read it and think about the contents instead of just jumping straight to ‘but what about me’. When women talk about feeling unsafe, listen to them instead of talking over them and making it about yourself.

    12. _abstrusus on

      I wonder how much of this is down to hyperbolic, clickbait journalism which, if (like most) you’re not inclined to look at the statistics, would have the consumer believe that the UK is totally lawless and that women are at a similar risk of violence here as they are in a country like Mali.

      There’s plenty wrong with the police but it seems abundantly clear that the manner in which Sarah Everard’s murder was covered has has an unduly negative impact upon the way many women view law enforcement which, of course, ultimately just makes the country less safe for women.

    13. Its_A_Sloth_Life on

      It’s shit like this that persuades people to feel unsafe in public places. We are doing this to ourselves here.

    14. DrStupid87 on

      Question for actual UK women in this sub. What’s your day to day like in public spaces? Does it generally feel unsafe or is it more so in built up areas or quieter areas? A lot of the top level comments are barking about “well men too…” and I’d like to hear women’s opinions on this

    15. phioegracne on

      The world isn’t safe if women or men feel completely safe when they are out in public then they are being complacent

    16. mittfh on

      Personal actions aside, what can councils / the government meaningfully do to increase women’s sense of safety during the daytime without a massive injection of cash (which is unlikely to happen, so redesigning the built environment, having meaningful arrest and charge rates for most crimes or even having more “bobbies on the beat” is likely not going to happen for many years or even decades)?

    17. kazuwacky on

      As many have pointed out, women seem to feel very unsafe whereas men don’t seem to, despite being far more likely to be the victim of violence.

      Part of this could be lived experience, many women have terrible stories that involve harassment from strangers and that might make them more fearful in general.

      Also media, I say to friends that if you see a woman alone at night in a show or movie, is anything good about to happen to her? Women internalise that and can get a disproportionate fear of being attacked.

      Might also be the nature of the fears, with men worrying about a random attack or.mugging and women generally fearing being raped. Those are different crimes.

      It’s a complicated situation with no simple answers.

    18. Banana_pajama93 on

      And before people jump on the trans hate this also applies to trans women.

      I still remember my very first rude awakening to what the outside world is like to women when I was waiting for the bus home one night after visiting my boyfriend. I was stood at the bus stop when two very drunk men started hitting on me and putting their hands on my shoulder asking me where I was going, what my name was and telling me im really pretty. I told them to stop and his mate went “You’re making her uncomfortable” and the other replied “Nah im not im just beign nice” I was backed into the corner of that bus stop terrified until another woman came over to me and pretended to know me and we walked away together. It was then I realised just how much more unsafe I was in public on my own.

      This was years ago and I’ve had many similar encounters since then but this was my first real experience. But I just wanted to stress, trans or cis we face the very same things.

    19. ElliottFlynn on

      Men (and I’m one) just don’t, and can’t, understand how unsafe it feels to be at risk of physical domination by virtually every male over the age of 14

      Any man who has trained martial arts and sparred and grappled with women understands this

      My wife was a Police Officer for 19 years and you might think she feels safer because of her experience, but it’s the opposite. She knows how vulnerable women are after dealing with aggressive men for years and being literally saved by male colleagues on a number of occasions

    20. strawbebbymilkshake on

      This sub was foaming at the mouth over Kyle Clifford and was enraged when it came out that Holly Willoughby’s attempted kidnap/rapist had previous attempts he’d gotten away with. Every time a singular case of a woman being failed by the system and being killed by a man turns up, this sub’s users are rightly angry.

      But any time we try to discuss the wider social issues that allow men to get away with domestic violence and leaves women vulnerable to this violence, it’s tantrum city. We are never going to solve any issues if we can’t talk about the wider causes without turning into whataboutism and taking it personally.

    21. fascinesta on

      Christ. ITT: Not all men, but if it is men it’s immigrants, but what about mens safety?

      Couple years ago this sub would’ve had a robust discussion where at least 70/80% of the comments would’ve been talking about the subject of the article. Now, we’ve got these red-pill-Andrew-Tate-sounding fucks who brigade any and every article. So bring on the downvotes all you like, but if you’re coming in here with any whataboutisms, or a “not all men” attitude, you can fuck right off. You are everything wrong with the world because you excuse it.

      When women and girls are telling us they don’t feel safe, our first reaction as men should be disgust, not defence.