If the man is blocking your way, call for help. If nobody else is in earshot, call for help on your mobile/cellphone. The most important thing is that you get home alive and unharmed.
You are a woman. If you are like most women, you are only one-half to two-thirds as strong as the average man. You're probably stronger than most children, though, so please don't use your strength to threaten or brutalise children. In the meantime, bad men of all nations, colours and creeds use their strength to threaten and brutalise women and children all the time. And sometimes women and children have only seconds to guess if a man is bad or not. So if you feel scared, get off the elevator. Exit the shop. Get out of the stairwell. Leave the room. Run to the nearest place of safety. Pull out your phone and call someone.
You are a woman and if you're alone in a room/elevator/forest with man, and he happens to be a bad man, you don't have any so-called privilege anymore, whatever colour you are. You have a famously underprivileged female body---and a phone.
When I was an amateur boxer, many years ago, I learned two important things. The first is that the world doesn't end if a man punches you in the face, so don't go through life worrying that a man might punch you in the face one day. The second is that fighting men with your fists is nevertheless very, very dangerous. It is very, very dangerous because men--and I'm including 15 year old boys here--are so much stronger than you, even if you are a super-wiry 27 year old in top condition.
I'm sorry I have to say all this again, but I've just watched a video of a man mocking a woman who is clearly afraid of him because she has encountered him alone in the woods and she thought he was standing in her way. When she called the police on her cellphone, he shouted "You're not talking to anyone! You're not talking to anyone!" When it became clear she had been talking to police, he shouted "Karen!"
I don't know if he's (usually) a good guy or a bad guy. But I do know that if I were brave enough to go running alone in the woods, I would have pulled my phone out if I was startled by any man I encountered there. Finding oneself alone in the woods with an aggressive male stranger of any colour is just about every woman's nightmare.
Update: Here's some statistics from 95% "white" Scotland, population 5 million:
- [In 2018-2019] sexual crimes increased by 8% from 12,487 to 13,547. The recording of these crimes is at the highest level seen since 1971, the first year for which comparable groups are available.
Years ago I worked in a grocery store. There was a man who hung around and talked to me, but didn't ever appear to buy anything. Late one night after one of my shifts was over, I tried to leave only to find that he was sitting by the door on a bench. He asked me questions like how old I was. The other door was locked at that time of night, so this was my only exit.
ReplyDeleteI was nervous and didn't know what to do other than answer his questions. I didn't want to get in trouble at work for not being "friendly" to a customer. People sometimes made complaints to the store. I wish I would've gotten my manager or another employee to walk me to my ride's car. Thankfully, it didn't go further than him talking to me. I was lucky.
He bothered at least one other woman who worked there. I don't know what happened. Maybe someone told a manager about him.
That is alarming. I wish all men knew that it is not kind to wait for a woman who doesn't really know them outside her workplace, especially at night.
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