Just a little rant bc I'm rlly fucking upset rn
Under the cut!!
For some context, I live in a regional town, one of the larger small towns in my area. I'm agender, but most of the time I'm fem-presenting or others perceived me as a woman. I had to go to a different town for a dnd campaign I have going with some friends who live there, and I was using trains as my mode of transport. My house, in relation to our train station, is about a 30 minute walk away and requires you to either walk past all our pubs, or through the shady part of town.
The story starts at 8:40pm, when there is an announcement that my train home was delayed. This lovely woman who had accidentally gotten on the wrong train (thank god she got off when she had) and I were chatting, sort of just passing the time whilst we waited. She told me that the train she'd been on had an incident at the previous stop where some 14-ish year olds had beaten up an older woman because of someplace she was heading to, and it turns out they'd walked onto the track, which in turn delayed our train. By an HOUR. It didn't pull into our station until about 9:50pm, which meant it has pulled into our stop at around 10:15. AT NIGHT. My mother isn't in town, and my brother doesn't have his license so I had to walk home from the station.
Which is fine, except for the fact that to get home, I have to choose which path is less likely to end with me being killed, raped, assaulted, you name it. Ended up choosing the sketchy part of town, because it was the quicker route and I knew everywhere that I could go to hide and wait it out. I kept my earphones out of my ears (which already made me uncomfortable as music helps with my anxiety a fair bit) and walked home with my key in my hand in case I was jumped so I had a weapon. That's right, I was so scared for my own safety that I felt I had to carry around a WEAPON.
I make it home alive, it's 10:45 at this point, school's tomorrow, and I tell my brother what happened. He has the GALL to tell me that I was overreacting and would've been fine if I'd gone along the pub route because it's a Sunday and there are less patrons. That's right everyone, a MAN was trying to tell me what was the best for me, when he's has zero experience with what I have to do to ensure my safety. I know for a fact that even on a Sunday I am more likely to run into a drunken rapist there than in even the sketchy part, and that's saying something.
It's so bullshit that as a society, fem-presenting people still are made to fear walking in the night, but even moreso that we are still being told that we are unreasonable, or don't know what's best for us by people who have never experienced, and likely never WILL experience, the discomfort and the catcalling and the following that comes with walking at night. There's something wrong with our culture if that's what we think and feel.
