Will Women Never Know Peace?
We want peace, not safety
Walking down the street as a woman can sometimes be a perilous task. Honestly, most of the time, I’m chill. I’m listening to music or a podcast, I’m pretending I’m in a music video or fantasizing about being in a dope action sequence, just normal, walking-down-the-street thoughts.
But then something will happen. A man will call for my attention. Someone will yell at me through their open car window. I notice that I am about to walk through a crowd of men and brace myself for the comments that may or may not come. It sucks. It’s uncomfortable and I wish that I, and all women, didn’t have to go through that.
But what does that even mean? Do we want someone to step in and stop that from happening? Do we want the knowledge that men will face repercussions for making us uncomfortable for simply existing? Because I know what I want. I want a world where it doesn’t even occur to a man to make a woman uncomfortable for simply existing. I don’t want men to suppress their urges. I want them to not have those urges.
In 2018, I read Jessa Crispin’s Why I am Not a Feminist. Because I was reading it for my capstone, I skimmed through most of it, but one of her chapters has still stood out to me, even to this day. It’s the second to last chapter in the book, and it’s called “Why Safety is a…
