>> A lone woman walking in the middle of the night was as common a sight as Sasquatch; moonlight pedestrianism was too dangerous for her. Mnyeah. Also known as

>> A lone woman walking in the middle of the night was as common a sight as Sasquatch; moonlight pedestrianism was too dangerous for her. Mnyeah. Also known as walking alone while female after nightfall. I used to do that when I lived in Athens, Greece. There were two distinct periods of it, because I went through a phase where I had a decidecly gender-ambiguous appearance (short hair, combat boots, jeans and t-shirt) and another when I dressed more typically feminine (think your mom when she goes to the hairdresser's). When I looked like I could be a boy with weird hair, I thoroughly enjoyed my nighttime jaunts and I never felt threatened or harrassed. I walked around the seedier parts of town, where the drug-dealing and the sex-working happened- because that was the point, to see the night life that crawls out of the woodwork when all the decent people are safely sleeping at home. Despite all that I never got into trouble. I guess I looked like a bit of a freak so folks probably assumed I was out for a fix or something. But who knows?. When I looked my most femme, the situation was completely reversed, even though by that time I was bored of the sleaze and stayed firmly in the better-lit, higher-income parts of town. People would stick their heads out of moving cars and yell obscenities ("Hey baby, are you making house calls? MWAHAHAHAHA"). If I stopped, like to sit at a bench for a few minutes, shadows would detach themselves from the background and slowly amble towards me, nonchalant like, until I felt insecure enough that I had to get up and march away. Every single man I met would consider it their obligation to hit on me, one way or another- tell me how pretty I was (in the dark, sure) offer a ride, offer to buy me a drink... strangely enough, nobody ever offered to buy me a souvlaki which is what I actually was after most of the time. Note that this was Athens city in the period between 2000 and 2005, long before the immigrants started coming in. I'm just saying. Those people who made it a pain in the ass for a woman to walk alone at night? Plain, middle-class white guys in a country with a rate of violent crime among the lowest in the world. Well anyway. There you go. It sucks to walk while black, it sucks to walk while female, also- or at least, while recognisably so.