Viral Thread Nails The Fear Women Can Feel In Everyday Situations 

If you don’t understand how women have to always be thinking about protecting themselves, let this Twitter thread explain it to you

Despite all the national conversation about gender violence and rape culture that’s been happening lately, there are still people who don’t get it. So for anyone who is still wondering how the inherent violence of gendered power structures affects women on a day-to-day basis, I present to you this brilliant (and scary) Twitter thread.

Men, think about the last time you had to sell something online. It probably wasn’t a terribly traumatic experience for you. You may have taken some safeguards to ensure you wouldn’t get mugged or something, like meeting the buyer in a public place. I don’t know. I’ve never had to sell something online as a man. Do you guys even do that? If you do, surely you don’t worry about getting stalked, harassed, raped or murdered in your own homes.

But women do.

Twitter user @tragedythyme spelled it all out in her thread about selling a dryer on LetGo. As a woman reading the thread, I was nodding the whole time because yeah, totally been there.

Obviously, you can’t meet in the Walmart parking lot to sell a dryer. So this woman did what she felt was practical to keep herself safe.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044478462500867

Except that didn’t work.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044481809506306https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044484208697345

Oh how many times women have been faced with this decision. Every time we show up for a blind date with a man. Every time we climb into an Uber with a male driver after dark or when we’ve been drinking. Every time we see a man walking toward us on a dark sidewalk.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044486326763521https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044488369426438https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044494136606720

Women will understand what’s coming next. That pit in your stomach when you realize you faced that decision – and made the wrong choice.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044496728641537https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044498762878976https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044500834897921https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044502487465984

Sure, no one got hurt in this situation. But a woman is likely to lie awake at night wondering if her family is safe because this man knows where she lives and what time of day her husband is gone at work. In her own home, she cannot relax from the constant fear of violence from men.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044504026787840https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044505989664768https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049044507495424000

Oh, and in case anyone wants to call this interaction harmless, there was an update posted to Twitter later.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049135060782338049https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1049155866874826753

There it is. The reality of surviving as a woman in America in 2019. Courtesy of Twitter. If you’ve somehow been missing this conversation up until this point, well, now you know. And men, as you are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of this violence, it’s on you to fix it.