As a woman who has traveled solo to far more countries than most people have been, the internet is full of straight men explaining why women should definitely not do anything without their help and company, yet they are precisely the men I would be afraid of being alone around
If you’ve ever given unsolicited travel advice to a person of a different gender: keep it in your brain
Just saw a post with a woman asking for solo bike touring advice (she’s an experienced bike tourist) and lots of men are telling her she should definitely not do it
The first time I traveled solo, I was planning to take a bus, motorbike and car to get to Angkor Wat from Bangkok. I was 18 years old. Many men in my life told me I could not do that. Turns out they’d never even been to Cambodia
There are real safety concerns in many places, but if you’ve existed for any amount of time in *any* society as a woman, you do have a lot of experience navigating safety on a daily.. hourly basis? It’s not so different lots of places.
There are some specific cultural norms you gotta be really savvy about, but often I find that safety-plaining men over-index on the danger of ‘other men’ without so much as a real understanding of the dangers of men at ‘home’.
@skinnylatte also, ime, if their “solution” to the safety concerns is to encourage your dependence on men, that person…
Well, if they really don’t see how that is a safety concern in and of itself, they have no business giving safety tips.
And if they do see it, then they really can’t be trusted. 