Each of those women whose method of self defense is to be tense and walk faster has made the conscious decision not to carry a weapon for her own safety “because she shouldn’t have to”.

Instead of them taking practical steps, they are asking you to reroute around them. To literally bend your day, every day, around their needs so that they don’t have to take any practical steps for their own safety.

You are not forcing those feelings on them. They are taking them on as a form of protest against the nature of reality itself. Women refusing to carry weapons and make themselves safe is like a prisoner on hunger strike against their conditions.

We all dream of a society where women don’t have to be afraid. But if you, a 100% harmless man simply walking to work and giving zero signals of violence, are enough to make them “have to be afraid”, can we really achieve a society where women are unafraid?

It’s a question worth asking. How much effort are you willing to put in for someone who will not help herself?

As soon as I encountered street violence for the first time, I developed the fear. I then solved the fear by starting to carry a weapon. I don’t require all men bigger than me (who can hurt me just like they can hurt a woman, and who are statistically far more likely to to hurt me than they are to hurt a woman) to alter their routes so they never walk behind me. I don’t cower in fear at home either. I didn’t have either of those options in the situation where I developed the fear — living on the streets of Boston. Instead, I got a weapon. It’s my companion. It’s my tool for being safe. It’s my self-regulated solution to the problem of danger.

Women refuse this solution. I have little sympathy for that attitude. Ever since I developed the fear myself, and moved to the obvious solution, I regard women’s fear of me as their own problem. I have a life to live here. I’m not going to add fifteen minutes of walking to my day just so they can feel safer for two minutes without having to lift a finger for it.