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Here’s where I join in common cause with Black Americans: when they say they don’t feel safe anywhere, anytime. Women don’t either.

There are degrees of feeling safe that I enjoy that I know are denied Black Americans. I feel safe when a cop pulls me over. I feel safe when I pass a guard at a door. I feel safe in a courtroom. Where I don’t feel safe is in my home alone at night, or walking down a street alone in the evening, or driving alone. And I’ve only experienced secondary trauma.

My daughter, who is a rape survivor, pointed it out to me one day when we were walking along a residential street in Philadelphia. She said, see that person walking toward us?

I said, Yeh, so what?

She said, I can’t help it. I need to cross the street to avoid meeting that person. That’s trauma speaking, that’s not me.

She moved out of Philadelphia to a state that has a third the population of Philadelphia. That’s one solution.

My sister, a sexual assault survivor, says, I know the odds are still there, but I can reduce the odds from one-in-four to one-in-a-hundred, so I never go out without a tazer.

Even in my little protected bubble, there are things I don’t do. I don’t go to late-night jazz sessions. I don’t hitchhike ( I did once and the cops picked me up and gave me a lift because a girl had just been murdered doing the same thing.). I don’t go to bars alone. I don’t backpack around the world. I know women do and they return home exuberant with their experiences, but I don’t.

My sister with the tazer lived alone on a tropical island, fished in the ocean, grew her own fruit and vegetables, carved out an incredible life for herself. I visited her as often as I could. But one of those trips was traumatized because another woman got off a ship in the same harbor, went for an afternoon stroll down the beach, and was murdered for no reason at all. The whole time I was there, the police were looking for the perp, and we kept a wary eye on anyone seen walking on the beach, or alone on the road, or knocking on the gate.

When my sister turned 60, she discovered a gated community in Florida, and she gave up her island adventure and moved to Florida. When I asked her what she liked about the new life, she said, Jenny, for the first time in my life, I feel safe.

Say no more. My adventuresome sister needs not justify her cushy new life. She, and my daughter, and everyone else, deserve to feel safe.

Life is not safe. I know that. There are always accidents and it‘s part-and-parcel of being alive. But people should feel safe from other people. And women should feel safe from men. And we don’t. And for good reason.