Don’t Go Out Alone
Well all right, if you can’t imprison and confine and repress women by putting them in purdah, or making them wear bags whenever they go outside, or slicing their genitals off, or smashing their feet, or whipping them with car antennas if they show a bit of hair or wrist – well hell, just get serious and stab them to death. That’ll teach them! I mean they’ve got a hell of a nerve thinking they get to go outside on their own, haven’t they. Who do they think they are? Adults? Responsible human beings like other people? Of course they’re not! They should be safely inside their houses, preferably in their kitchens, doing what women are supposed to be doing.
Oh, I know, that’s a bit unfair and intemperate. This sort of thing could happen to anyone, really, at least to anyone smaller and weaker and more knifeless than the assailant. But so often it is women it happens to, and then out come the warnings.
Detectives last night warned women not to go jogging on their own after a 39-year-old was left fighting for her life following a knife attack by a man believed to be responsible for murdering another female runner…’While we do not wish to be alarmist, we would ask that women who are jogging in parks or exercising their dogs try to be in the company of a friend,’ he added. ‘There are a large number of similarities between the two attacks. Both involved women of small stature, jogging alone through parks.
Try to be in the company of a friend. But what if walking alone is an activity you happen to enjoy and value? And what if the ability to walk alone is an ability you value even more? What if the idea of deciding to stop walking alone in parks makes you feel like a damn prisoner? What then?
You ignore the warning, that’s what, and go on walking alone whenever and wherever you feel like it, just as you always have. And in truth the warning is slightly absurd. Statistically, what are the odds of getting stabbed to death (or stabbed at all) in the local park, even if you are alone, even if you’re a tiny woman and it’s three in the morning? Not all that likely, surely. It’s not as if every park is stuffed with knife-carrying would-be murderers, just waiting for some fool of a woman to come toddling along, is it. No. There appears to be one out there, who has killed one woman and nearly killed another. That’s horrible and disgusting, obviously, but is it really reason to stop going into parks alone? Surely not. A great many more people are killed in car crashes every day, more people on foot are killed by cars every day, but people don’t stop either driving or crossing the street.
But the mere suggestion makes me indignant – as you may have noticed. Well I don’t like having murderers tell me how I get to live my life, even by implication. I’m nowhere near Clissold Park, or London, but that’s beside the point. This kind of thing is a meme, it spreads, it has to be resisted. I used to do a lot of hitch-hiking in my youth – all the way through my twenties, in fact. Alone. Of course I was warned against it, often by people who gave me lifts, and of course I already knew it was dangerous. But I did it anyway. I would have regretted that decision if anything horrible had happened, and I was aware of that when I did it, but I did it anyway. I did not want to be confined by fears. I wanted the adventure, I wanted the adventure that other people got to have, people called men; I didn’t want to accept limitations. So out I went, on roads and highways in the UK and Ireland and California. Defiantly. I had a good time, too. I had my adventure.
I couldn’t agree more. What an irritating thing to say: ‘We don’t wish to be alarmist, but women shouldn’t walk alone in parks’. I am a woman and Clissold Park happens to be my local park. But it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to be the slightest bit worried, and I’m certainly not going to change my habits because of a freak incident. For crying out loud, I’ve got real problems to worry about, and, as you say, life is full of risks.
Maybe the police were just talking about the local parks? The chances of being attacked while jogging are pretty small, but greatly increased when there’s someone in the local area that has already attacked two other people.
Y’know, there might be some things that people with puny or fragile bodies can do to protect themselves…I have twice saved my bacon by voice power alone [I am a midrange.] Now, in case of a deaf attacker, anyone want to chime in with some suggestions for all of us? I think I know what the 1st one will be–to get insured by Smith and Wesson. Didn’t someone say that a while back? I haven’t taken that step yet, but there’s others…all sorts of things we can do on every level, from when we put our shoes on to the actual moment of crisis…
Wait a minute, here’s a book, Trail Safe by Michael Bane [Wilderness press].
Emphasis on the backcountry, but as I recall useful for town too [need to study it some more…] Others doubtless await.
But you are so right, that they should be telling us how to protect ourselves anywhere, not how to cower at home.
This reminds me of an anecdote(possibly apocryphal) I heard years ago from an Israeli friend. At some point there was a series of attacks upon women and the local council wanted to impose a curfew upon them for their own safety. Golda Meir was present and suggested to the rest of the council that since the one thing they knew about the assailant was that he was a man, they ought to impose the curfew upon men. Surely there was no value in imprisoning an entire group of people who couldn’t be the criminal.
The council dropped the curfew and beefed up police patrols.
Well exactly. It’s the same thing with the chador – as plenty of Muslim feminists like to point out. Never mind bagging up women, just blindfold men! It’s their problem, let them deal with it.
I happen to be a short, dark haired woman living less than half a mile from Clissold Park in London and had exactly the same reaction. I don’t jog but I do walk in local parks every day with my little doggie. I absolutely refuse to allow this sort of ridiculous police advice to intimidate me, and round here you stand a far greater risk of being killed by speeding police car than this teenager. But I did succumbe to buying a screechy “personal alarm” key ring for myself and my two teenage daughters. Funny really, because we can scream pretty loud ourselves so why buy a gadget to do it for you?
Oh well, why not double one’s screeching power, after all?
Anyway, hurrah: Women of Clissold Park Area unite and resist! If we have two just on this site, there must be masses of them out there, all trudging defiantly around the parks. Well done.