dudes will get like shocked and upset when a women openly admits to being afraid of men.
what they dont know is that we’re all afraid of men – some of us are just more vocal about it than others. we all know the rules: watch the bartender pour your drink. don’t let it out of your sight (ever). stay in a group of friends. pretend to be on your phone as you walk to your car. hold your keys like claws between your knuckles. make sure nobody is in the backseat of your car. fight back. don’t stop fighting.
and we know the unspoken rules, too:
don’t talk about it.
pretend it doesn’t hurt.
pretend it doesn’t scare you.
here’s a newsflash, men: we don’t carry pepper spray around because we’re afraid of being attacked by other women. that’s for damn sure.
They know, and they like it because they benefit from it. What they don’t like is that we might collectively decide we’re sick of this shit and put an end to it, or at least make it a lot harder for them to get away with. Which is exactly what happens when we start talking about it with one another. We start effecting change. After all, marital rape was once legal (still is in some places), many forms of sexual assault were, and a woman couldn’t divorce her husband even to save her life (still the case in some places).
A woman afraid is far more likely to smile and nod and be pleasant and quiet, to give them our numbers, to peck their cheeks, to try and stay on that high pedestal they put us on. Men love for us to afraid of them. They just don’t want us self-aware and talking to one another about it.



















