A woman on Twitter had an interesting comment to make a couple of days ago, about a male friend of hers who had a habit of walking the streets of their city at night, with headphones on. ‘Why don’t you do it too?’ he asked. She didn’t record her response to his question and didn’t really have to. Her tweet went viral anyway because thousands of women around the world understood the implications of that naïve question. Her male friend simply assumed the world he lived in was the same one his friend walked around in.

These revelations seem to appear every other week, from women everywhere, all of whom point out to anyone willing to listen that they don’t feel safe outside their homes. Apparently, every woman in your life and mine has experienced anxiety, fear, and panic at some point in their lives, simply by being in proximity to men. Their fears are laughed off, they are dismissed as hysterical, and the reality they desperately try to introduce the rest of us to is lost in the bargain because the truth is so inconvenient.