Gender and Safety

I was discussing gender with somejauntypolka back when I was in Vancouver last. I casually mentioned that when I was a teen, I helped a friend (WT) with his Beltline paper route and this was my first indication that things were simply different for women.

One of the houses on WT's route was the Calgary Women's shelter. You know, the place where you go if you're being abused by your husband. I knew what the building was because of the paper route - I would have had no inkling of its purpose otherwise since it's location is not announced on the property. It's basically a big house in Beltline.

Rumour has it that the front of the building is reinforced to withstand small-arms fire and attempts to drive through the front door with a pickup truck - neither of which are unimaginable situations in Calgary. I have no first-hand knowledge of this, but it has the ring of truth, so I've helped spread that rumour myself. It was the level of security that put the original thought (Women have to be concerned about different things than men - especially with regards to personal safety) in my head.

I was reminded of this recently due to this post in ontd_political. The context was how a white woman would be needlessly scared of a black man, but in the comments, it was pointed out that the problem wasn't necessarily black/white as man/woman. Her behavior (making a point of allowing a man that is following her to go ahead so that she couldn't be snuck up on and attacked) would likely have been the same if it were, say, me.

I know this, because I've had it happen. I've had women see me and cross the street, or let me pass so they can keep an eye on me. I'm a big scary-looking guy. I don't mean to be, but it is what it is.

I lived in a downtown high-rise (Continental Towers) for about eight years. One day I noticed that women in elevators behaved (to me) in an inefficient manner. When I entered an elevator, I would immediately press the button for my floor. I did this because it was the point in time when I was the closest to the buttons. It made little sense to me to do it later because I'd have to reach past people, possibly in an awkward way.

Women didn't do that - they'd almost always wait for me to press the button first. I also noticed that an unusually high percentage of them lived above me in the building (that is to say, on higher floors). This also struck me as odd as I was near the top.

So I did a little back-of-the-napkin experiment. I paid attention to how women behaved in elevators. The hypothesis - I was scaring them into behaving in a defensive this-might-be-a-rapist sort of way. I kept a running tab in my head of the numbers of "normal" behaving women and "defensive" behaving women. I did this for a couple months.

Some background:

• I didn't change my own behavior - i.e. I didn't try to act scarier or attempt to put them at ease by being chatty (I hate small talk between strangers anyway).
  
• I was on the 20th floor of a 25 story building. Given the lack of a 13th floor, no tenants on the 1st or 2nd floor and slightly smaller occupancy in the penthouse, this gives the odds of someone being on a higher floor at roughly 5 to 13. Between two and three times as many people lived on lower floors then higher floors.
  
• People on my floor didn't count - we recognized each other.

My findings?

• If there was just two of us, roughly half the women would wait for me to press the button first and then press the button for a higher floor.
  
• Women behaved more relaxed if the elevator was crowded.
  
• If I was talking with someone else (typically my roommate), the odds went down, but not to "normal".

I'm sure you could spot some objections to the experiment, mostly due to potential selection bias and lack of controls. So be it, I'm not submitting this for peer-review.

My conclusion was that women judged me as a threat and behaved accordingly. At first, that really bothered me. I'm a fairly liberal guy. I'm all for equal rights. I make an effort to identify and reduce my prejudices - including sexist attitude - and I like to think I have more success at that then failures (but no one is perfect).

Of course, a stranger isn't going to know any of that. Now I just think of it as a sad case of prudent behavior in an imperfect world, rather then taking it personally. Better that I should occasionally have my feelings hurt then for some random woman to get raped/beaten/killed in some stairwell.

On the bright side, I don't see any of that defensive behavior around women who do know me (quite the opposite in fact - I've been the "go to" guy in sketchy situations before) - that really would bother me since it would indicate that they feel there's something personally unsafe and threatening about me, as opposed to threatening in a purely generic way.

Any other men notice this or am I just being hypervigilant again? Ladies: I've heard anecdotes that all of this is recommended behavior - any truth to that? If you do it, where did you learn it from?