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Tuesday, September 3, 2013

I haven't outgrown "STRANGER DANGER"


When we were little children, especially for girls, we always got the stern warning NOT to talk to strangers and to beware suspicious people. We were warned not to speak to anyone we did not know, especially men, and not to wander too far off from friends when without parents or an adult we know - usually family. We grow up and for the most part boys outgrow those warnings. Some of them become the strangers we are warned about, but for women, myself included, it seems I will NEVER outgrow stranger danger.

I recently (about 3 weeks ago) moved to the city in a part of town that is undergoing a steady pace of gentrification. I loved this part of town 2 years ago and quite like being here now, but I myself am VERY AWARE of the mixed bag that it is. Stranger danger, the later in the day it gets, becomes a lower hanging looming cloud that could burst into a full blown storm at the change of the wind. Don't get it confused and think that while I was out in the suburbs or out of the country this wasn't an issue, STRANGER DANGER is an EVER present force in the life of most women and it just varies in degrees and intensity. I would love to hear about a setting or environment where a woman did not feel it at all. For some of us the closest we get to feeling free of stranger danger is when we are comfortable and almost desensitized to it's presence because being on alert is tiring and something that can be forgotten...sometimes with detrimental effects :(

What some men think is friendliness or rather what they do not recognize as their own sense of entitlement [to violate and impede upon] to a woman's sense of safety, is EXTREMELY scary. Whether it is daytime or night-time around people or not, strangers talking to us is scary and whether or not we have actually been in a situation where a situation escalated, the potential of that escalation is scary enough. No matter how nice you may think you are, and whether or not you ACTUALLY are, we do not know you from Adam and in those situations that is all that matters. It's said that if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all. To this I might add, SOMETIMES even what one thinks is a nice thing to say, out of context and without knowing the person, shouldn't be said.

ANECDOTE:
This past Sunday, I was walking back home at about 3 pm in broad daylight after getting a pedicure about a block and a half away from home. I was, admittedly and I realize now it might have been a mistake, wearing a white mini dress [you know wearing my last whites before Labor day...]. As I crossed the last intersection before my building, on the same side of the street my building is on, 2 guys drinking [holding bottles] in a car started yelling at me to greet me. They turned the corner and were driving along as I walked shouting things that have to do with my being an African princess and things that they wanted to do to me that I would never, out of respect for myself and for readers, write.  I dialed 911, but didn't call it and already had my pepper spray in hand. Whether that would protect me from what potentially is a worst case scenario [reason number whatever I do NOT watch scary local news], I do not know, but in that moment that was my first line of defense. When I wasn't saying anything beyond the initial "I'm fine thank you", they kind of drove of laughing, but I thought to myself - whose children are these and WHY should I have to do this?!

Once in the secured building and in the apartment I feel completely safe and for the most part many of the things I love to do are within walking distance on the more obviously gentrified strip, but WHY? Why, aside from everything that comes with being in a city, must stranger danger be men? The old ladies say hi or I do it or we say nothing at all. Perhaps in solidarity and awareness that in public we have to maintain the safe spaces for each other, but guys are just another issue.



For now though I'll remind myself to "Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8) and have my phone and pepper spray in hand until I either become desensitized and oblivious or the threat removes itself. I'm talking to you guys.
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*@afropolitaine*


1 comment:

  1. While I lived in the UK, I had a stranger alarm, and almost bought mace. It can be so scary sometimes.

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