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Will always comply with this request, might make a great friend!There has been word of solo women feeling intimidated by certain large groups of men walking together on the last 100km to
SdC. If you are in a group of men and passing a lone woman, please be aware of your behaviour and make an extra effort to make her feel safe and unthreatened.
Or, just as importantly, if you see a group of men in any way harassing a woman on the Camino (or anywhere for that matter), please support her by offering to walk with her. She may feel fine and not bothered by the situation, but it can make the world of difference if she feels unsafe to know that she’s not alone.
Thanks for reading x
Good post, and whilst this would seem obvious and intuitive to 99.9% of us it is worth us considering our actions and how they might help the situation.There has been word of solo women feeling intimidated by certain large groups of men walking together on the last 100km to
SdC. If you are in a group of men and passing a lone woman, please be aware of your behaviour and make an extra effort to make her feel safe and unthreatened.
Or, just as importantly, if you see a group of men in any way harassing a woman on the Camino (or anywhere for that matter), please support her by offering to walk with her. She may feel fine and not bothered by the situation, but it can make the world of difference if she feels unsafe to know that she’s not alone.
Thanks for reading x
And therein lies the problem William, IMHO.With utmost respect to the op.
But its presumptuous to lump every man/men group walking together have illusory malintentions and to make special accomodations for every female peregrina
Seemingly casting shadows on every XY ...creating unreasonable fear, and suspicion where normal human instincts would allow sound judgement about situations.
Again, no offence intended
I think it’s a valuable that we assess our behaviours on a regular basis whether it physical or language to see how we can be better. Whether gender, ethnicity, sexuality and so on. I saw no issue with the OP and didn’t feel that any judgement was handed down from females to males! It’s a fact that the vast majority of women feel fear in certain situations (there has been some very powerful threads on social media including one about how many women would like to take summer late strolls but are scared too). Anything we can do to mitigate that is a great help.And therein lies the problem William, IMHO.
Forgive me for sticking to the old-fashioned ‘two genders’ paradigm; but it’s impossible for a male to truly and viscerally understand the situation in the same way as a female - especially a lone female. The best we can do, sadly, is try to show respect and behave as though we might be perceived as a threat until accepted as not.
That’s what Mrs Henrythedog tells me, anyway.
Does this mean that it would be wise for women not to walk alone and not to walk after dark/early in the morning?can discriminate bad situations and avoid them
William, what women are telling you here (as well as men who have listened to the women in their life) is “walk a mile in my shoes”. I hope you take a look at this from a woman’s perspective and are able to understand. Buen Camino!I took down the post because i wont argue semantics.
I stand by what i said in the post
You can live in fear and thats fine
You can live fearless and thats fine
Ime sure most reasonable sane sober moral prudent adults can discriminate bad situations and avoid them.
Putting a-the onus on men RE...XY's per OP... to walk in eggshells, avoid saying,doing,acting in any number of ways smacks of a unconcious bias.
I am very sure there are absolutely many men who have acted a way that would make women fear.
These persons absolutely need to be called out and avoided..
But all groups are not like those...and lumping any and all into groups is reprehensable.
We can all share the road
To think that fear is a choice is the essence of privilege.You can live in fear and thats fine
You can live fearless and thats fine
I thought long to reply here seeing my English might not be sufficient to explain myself correctly.
This article describes rather well what it means for a woman to walk alone.
Five women share their fears on walking alone at night
Five women speak about how they feel when finding themselves alone in public spaces after darkwww.theguardian.com
And yes even on a much safer Camino ( kindred spirits and all of that ) I encountered lots of situations that felt unsafe.
The creepy offer from a hotelowner to give me a massage and already touching me in an inappropiate way.
The retired French guy ( ex military btw ) whom I talked with during a certain coffeebreak and proclaimed later to his male friends that "I fancied him ". Little did he know that my French is better than he thought so I set him straight.
And I could give more examples...
The drunken guy vomiting from his upperbed on my backpack was just disgusting but that is another story...
On other threads I regularly talk about my gut feeling to get me out of akward and / or dangerous situations. It is a good guideline for me.
I am a cisgender female and of course my story is not unique and also M and X can be a victim. IMHO they even have it harder when they are the subject of harassment to tell about it.
I thought that we were beyond making broad assumptions and stereotypes about the opposite genderThere has been word of solo women feeling intimidated by certain large groups of men walking together on the last 100km to
SdC. If you are in a group of men and passing a lone woman, please be aware of your behaviour and make an extra effort to make her feel safe and unthreatened.
Or, just as importantly, if you see a group of men in any way harassing a woman on the Camino (or anywhere for that matter), please support her by offering to walk with her. She may feel fine and not bothered by the situation, but it can make the world of difference if she feels unsafe to know that she’s not alone.
Thanks for reading x
I thought that we were beyond making broad assumptions and stereotypes about the opposite gender
I listen to my own council.William, what women are telling you here (as well as men who have listened to the women in their life) is “walk a mile in my shoes”. I hope you take a look at this from a woman’s perspective and are able to understand. Buen Camino!
It is.To think that fear is a choice is the essence of privilege.
@Readey, thank you for posting. I happened to notice that your first posts got over 40 likes. It certainly has an audience here. You pointed out two aspects: first, certain large groups of men walking together on the last 100km to SdC and solo women feeling intimated in this context. I note that you wrote "solo women" which I take to mean some and not all. "Certain large groups of men" - one does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this does not mean "all men". You also tried to raise awareness about situations where "a group of men are in any way harassing a woman on the Camino".There has been word of solo women feeling intimidated by certain large groups of men walking together on the last 100km to SdC. If you are in a group of men and passing a lone woman, please be aware of your behaviour and make an extra effort to make her feel safe and unthreatened.
Or, just as importantly, if you see a group of men in any way harassing a woman on the Camino (or anywhere for that matter), please support her by offering to walk with her. She may feel fine and not bothered by the situation, but it can make the world of difference if she feels unsafe to know that she’s not alone
It sure did! I don't think there is any point in continuing.Well that escalated quickly.
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