No! For men, rape is NOT the default.

[hfojvt]

57. in what way?

I mean, obviously, I do not know what it is like to be a woman. I don't even have close friends who are women, other than my mom and sisters, and they have been pretty distant for the last 30 years or so as I went to college and lived my own life. We see and talk perhaps a dozen times a year (outside of facebook posts), but not daily interaction like in childhood.

But I see women at work, working out, going to parties, getting married, they don't seem to be "living in fear of men". They seem to have many friends who are men, but they are not all that fearful of strange men like myself. By which I mean they don't know me or all that much about me, but I can walk past them and occasionally make some sort of random comment - usually a joke or some sort of observation about the weather or the time of year, or about dogs, or sports, or politics, and they laugh or comment back, etc.

And for example, while I was writing this post, I got a call from my boss, a woman. Is she living her life in fear of men like me? I do not believe it.

Clearly, there is room for fear of SOME men in SOME situations, but women move among men without fear in a far different way than squirrels relate to dogs. And there is also room for my own fear of some men in some situations. Any one of us can goto a movie and suddenly be forced to deal with an angry man who is armed and shooting, for example, or even an unarmed large man who is disheveled and unkempt and potentially very dangerous. Or we could meet a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy who looks perfectly harmless, but actually is not.

But living life in fear of "men" in general? I don't buy it.