Roxbury man arrested for rape at gunpoint at Back Bay station

I don't do any of those things.

I live in the city. I take the T including buses. I take a cab home maybe once or twice a year and even then I take them from Forest Hills station rather than door to door.

Are you suggesting I'm not a woman?

Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can borrow mine. - http://despair.com/sanity.html

If you are any person in the city, you are wise to exercise some caution. Women are more vulnerable, both because they are often perceived as more vulnerable to muggers and also because of the added risk of sexual assault.

Calling something a "war" in the US is almost always a meaningless justification to rile up a scared populace into supporting extremely costly measures that huge chunks off the foundation of our society without actually solving the supposed problem.

Every now and then I see social goals sabotaged by some of their own activists, because the activists are too scared or angry to reason about the problem.

Calling the problem of sexual assault a war against women sounds like hyperbole, and plays to the same crowd as the activists who are too damaged to be trying to solve other people's problems.

Think of how many people seem to tune out, say, women's issues in general. I have a theory that's not so much because they don't care, but that crazy activists have discredited the issues in many people's minds.

Imagine an activist with a megaphone sloganeering about "war on women", and how many bystanders would roll their eyes and move on. Then imagine the activist knowing s/he has only 5 seconds in which to grab those bystanders' attention, and manages to say something compelling. Shocking statistics are one way, but many reported results also suffer from Crazy Activist influence, and people know this. Again, the crazy activists are making life harder for the non-crazy ones.

My mother used to tell me to do all those things. I never have and nothing has happened to me in 24 years of independent urban living.

I decided a long time ago that, while there are some risks of violence to my person and those risks are real, there was a much larger risk of being controlled by all those things women are "supposed to do" to protect ourselves. Socially controlling women through threats if they don't play certain games is an age-old problem.

I also noticed that much of what you put on that list are adaptions that are aimed at preventing stranger attacks. Stranger attacks do happen, but they are rare. Acquaintance attacks are the bulk of assaults. In fact, doing things out of fear of stranger attacks might even put you in the path of an aquaintance attack. The whole idea that you need a man to protect you is a dangerous myth.

The real war may be more a matter of women being controlled by the fear of violence, rather than the actual risk of violence. I have yet to see any solid data that anything in your list of "what women have to do" will realistically reduce the risk of attack.

In the United States, 1 in 6 women report an attempted or completed rape at some time in their lives, according to a Department of Justice 2000 report.

this one? Mind finding that "one in 6" stat? Also, please note that the report covers ALL sexual assaults, not just rape. I couldn't find the word "life" or "lifetime" in the entire thing.

Next, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#False...

Read to see how in one community, the rate was FIFTY PERCENT...and researchers have come up with false-reporting rates ranging from 2% to 90%.

Also, since you seem rather hysterical ("checking behind shower curtains and under beds"), you might want to check out that section that talks about how male-male and female-on-male rapes are suspected to be vastly under-reported.

After all- the vast majority of crimes are pretty equal-opportunity. But rapes aren't? Gimme a break.