I don’t want to argue on Facebook so I’m bringing it here. A guy I went to high school with (and had a very brief and dramatic almost-dated-but-missed-it with) did a kids-these-days post about how he was outside a bar and saw some early-20s guys refusing to walk an early-20s girl to her car, so he stayed outside a little longer to make sure she got there safely. Which is nice. Except. Back in my late teens, I went to a party this same guy was at. And when I left, he asked one of his friends to see me to my car. Which shows a very nice consistent principle over the decades, and he definitely can’t be accused of judging young people for attitudes he only formed in middle age. But. The friend who walked me to my car then started kissing me and was difficult to get away from, and it was a scary and stressful situation to extricate myself from, alone in the dark with some guy. I can’t know for sure there wasn’t something worse along that path, but I’m pretty sure I would have been both safer and happier if I’d walked to my car on my own.
But you can see why I don’t want to argue that men SHOULD NOT walk women safely to their cars—particularly since the conversation is already devolving into “it’s not about gender: men AND women should be looking out for each other!!” plus the traditional middle-aged bitching about how this young generation is the worst and no one has respect or manners anymore.
I asked on Twitter the other day if anyone knew the scoop about putting return addresses on packages: this week I’m mailing out a bunch of skirts and baby name books and cloth napkins for the fundraiser (up to $4578.41 so far!), and long ago a couple of post office clerks tried to tell me that a return address was required—but then they let me leave it off when I explained that it was a blog giveaway, which made me wonder if it’s really a rule. Surely saying “It’s for a blog giveaway” is not enough to override an actual rule, especially if that rule is for safety/security. And especially if, when I DO put a return address on the package, they don’t even check to make sure it’s real/mine.
Twitter dug up the evidence that it was in fact a rule (only for priority mail, oddly), but suggested clerks might have varying degrees of interest in enforcing it, which is proving to be the case. The first batch of packages I brought, the clerk made no remark other than “I’m trying not to cover up your heart” as he put the label very close to where I’d written “Swistle” and drawn a little heart in the return address field. (I didn’t at first catch his meaning, so it first struck my ear as a surprisingly poetic thing to say.) So he definitely noticed the return address situation, but chose not to do anything about it. The second batch of packages I brought, a different clerk said, “You know, you’re supposed to have a full return address,” and I started in with what I’d prepared to say (“Is there any work-around for that? It’s a blog giveaway, and…”) and she cut me off with a shrug and an “Eh” and an it-doesn’t-matter wave of the hand, before making sure I knew that if the package was undeliverable, I wouldn’t get it back. That made me think again of the suggestion made on Twitter that I use the post office as my return address: if I were tracking the package and saw it heading back to the post office, I could stop by and let them know to expect it. I don’t know how cheerful they’d be about that, but at least there would be hope. But I don’t remember ever getting back an undeliverable package, even when I do put my return address on there, so I am not very worried, just the usual low-grade anxiety which is literally unavoidable.
I saw that about the return address on Twitter, I don’t understand how it could be required when you can do it on your own and mail it and who would be the wiser? I don’t think I’ve put my return address on anything in a long time. Annoying.
Do you feel okay disclosing to this guy what his friend did all those years ago? If so, maybe you could let him know (privately?) that would-be rapists are more often a friend or a friend-of-a-friend than a lurker in a parking lot.
But it’s not your responsibility to tell him about it if you don’t feel okay about it.
For me, I’d probably tell him and then block him. Because I wouldn’t want to deal with the aftermath.
He knows about it—I told him way back then.
Wow. I remember that story but not that you told him. TOLD HIM.
If nothing else, that should have tipped him off that the good old days of widespread concern for women’s wellbeing exist only in his imagined perfect world.
Some years back, my generally nice son and some of his friends went en masse, via Metro, to a baseball game and a few of them got a ride back with my husband, but the rest of them sort of . . . dispersed? And my spouse let it happen (“I didn’t know what was going on”) and my son and one of his male friends were announcing, after I and friend’s mom chewed our respective sons out but good, tried to reassure themselves that it would be patronizing/sexist for the boys to insist on traveling back with the girls.
Well. Then there was Chewing Out II: Go as a Group, Return as a Group, Do You Think That Was OK with Their Parents, and Why Might That Have Been Not OK, and If The Girls Tell You It Was NBD Just Know Now that They Are Demonstrating Social Conditioning Not to Cause Fuss or Bother. At which point he got it.
OMG, you TOLD HIM and he STILL is “WHIPPERSNAPPERS GET OFF MY LAWN?”
He needs to go to a taxidermist and get stuffed.
My hat is off to you for even being willing to view or participate in such discussions. I am far too put upon these days to indulge proclamations of the ‘complaints-about-the-youth/I’m-one-of-the-good-ones’ sort, especially from men, who should be asking instead of telling.
These Trump years are turning me into someone very much like my cantankerous great-grandmother, and I’m too angry to care.
(However, I do have the energy to care about upsetting you, Swistle. Apologies in advance if this guy is a beloved friend who is generally very sensitive to the feelings of others.)
Here’s about what I think:
I think that the problem with your teenaged experience is that the guy asked his friend to see you to your car, instead of him doing it himself. Presumably he trusted his friend to behave better than the friend actually did. I don’t think there’s inherently anything wrong with people looking out for each other as a society– I know that I keep a quiet eye on strangers’ kids at the playground/in the town pool. I think the problem lies in trusting that everyone else is doing things with good intentions. Hopefully the “we should walk women to cars” guy learned something from your telling him back in the day.
As a counterpoint to your story: when I was in college, I had a massive, massive crush on a guy who had no problem with me hanging out at his place watching movies with him until 2 a.m. and who also had no problem with my walking home by myself– about a 35-minute walk. It was a quiet college town, but it felt stupid and unsafe. Realistically, it was stupid and unsafe. And I did it every night because my emotions were so out of control that I didn’t want to say no to time with him. I was never harmed on those walks–I was lucky– but I still think that the guy’s willingness to say “goodbye” and send me on my way should have been a big red flag about him. He was not thoughtful about my safety, even to a level that I should have expected from a casual friend. He wasn’t treating me like someone who deserved the depth of feelings I had for him. (As a side note, I also think that the fact that I had such a strong crush on him despite how disposably he treated me should have been a red flag to me about myself at the time.)
The “kids these days” tone of the post that you mention is kind of idiotic, though. That college experience of mine would have been in 1994 which doesn’t feel that long ago to me, but–good grief– was 25 years ago.
Ugh. That is terrible. I watch people get in their cars in my OWN DRIVEWAY before closing my door. I would never dream of sending anyone – much less someone I purportedly cared about – off on a very long walk home in the middle of the damn night. That is simply absurd.
Disclaimer: I don’t know if the post office would frown upon this suggestion. In the past, I have mailed myself a package from a location that I will not be returning to (example: on vacation, and mailed a package to my house) and I put the same address and return address. I wonder if you could use your name and the recipient’s address as the return address?
Otherwise I’d use the post office address.
(Or continue using nothing if that works!)
I do that all the time. My husband rides his bike across the country and sends me stuff home…he uses the same address (ours) as the ship to and the return address. Only time it was ever a problem was when the package got lost in the system. Never got delivered or returned (ha ha)…
The post office has never said anything about that.
I use my last name and my town as my return address, and it’s never been an issue. I’m just lazy. Occasionally I’ll use those printed address labels you get from whatever charity you gave $15 to, and they are inevitably spelled wrong or something, and that also doesn’t seem to matter.
Walking back to cars- I thought this was going another way, TBH. My husband walks me to my car whenever we take separate vehicles, and I’ve never thought about it. We meet at the gym, after work. It is still day time and very light out. He will walk me to my car (provided I’m not in the spot next to him), before he goes to his car. He also makes sure my car starts before he leaves the parking lot. It’s a small gesture that I find very sweet and not patronizing.
Same here about my husband. It’s more about safety.
My friends and I, make sure we are in the house before we drive off if we are dropping each other off. I have never considered this patronizing or, just common courtesy among people. But I would feel very uncomfortable if a complete stranger walked me to my car!
I had never before questioned the return address mandate! I ALWAYS put it on everything, even the most unimportant and generic of return envelopes! MY GOODNESS. The possibilities are opening up before me!!
People should walk other people to cars if said people request it. People should not insist to walk other people who do not want to be walked.
My dad used to be very paranoid, specifically, about the local bowling alley. “Get your guy friends to walk you to your car!!!” He also liked any time I hung out with one particular friend, because said friend was very tall and a black belt (and the most un-intimidating and un-agressive person ever…)
Meanwhile a few nights ago, a (female) friend had a weird altercation with a panhandler outside a restaurant when she stepped outside to take a call. She was shaken and asked to be walked to her car because he was hanging around still. I, also female, walked her a few blocks to her car then walked home- she offered me a ride, but we were in my normal part of town and I felt safe. I texted her when I got home, and everyone was happy.
It’s all about communicating and making sure everyone is happy with the situation!
Could you get a PO Box for blog mail? Is that an expensive thing? I literally have no idea.
I am imagining myself in the position of the early-20s girl. If I asked a friend to walk me to my car and they refused, I’d be a bit upset – after all, I wouldn’t ask unless I was nervous. But if I then noticed an unknown man (or one not well-known enough to feel safe) witness the refusal and then watch me walk to the car knowing I was nervous and alone, I would be Very Freaked Out. It’s good of him to look out for people in vulnerable situations. But sometimes, good intentions can be creepy.
Of course, he might have been very subtle and non-threatening and reassuring. But I notice this tendency sometimes for some men to be more invested in the idea that they’re a Good Man than in how their Good Behaviour actually affects the women they’re being Good toward. Given your experience, it sounds like this guy might have a bit of a blind spot in that regard.
I was thinking the exact same thing! Some men think their I Am One Of The Good Ones aura radiates so clearly that everyone can see it, when in fact, she had no way of knowing that he wasn’t what she should have been afraid of.
My husband is often walking back from the railway station late at night after work and I have successfully trained him to cross the road and walk on the other side if there’s a lone woman walking just ahead of him. He’d never thought about it.
I just want to say I love the taxidermy comment. People are weird.
No idea about the return address but I sent a nephew homeade cookies at his college address once and they came back to me. Months later which was gross. I must have had the wrong address for him. All along I assumed he had received them, so then I felt bad that all the other nieces and nephews got their cookies but him.
So I sell photography in an Etsy store (I don’t usually link my website to my comment but I might this time for the curious since I’m bringing up the site anyway) and, while I know other photographers who sell a lot more than me use a post office box, I just use my own return address on any prints that I ship. It’s never really worried me, but at the same time I don’t think I’ve ever had anything come back to me, so perhaps it’s not really necessary.
Not sure if Canada has a similar rule about having to provide a return address; I just do it because I was taught to add one.
Blech. I hate the paternalism of “I’ll walk you to your car” (without me asking for it) and this story exemplifies so much of what men just DON’T GET about sexual assault. Most of the time, it’s a guy we know, and what we REALLY need is for men to stand up to their friends who say sexist crap, or rate women on a scale of 1-10, or grab women in bars, or use the B word, etc. They need to speak out against men who have a sense of sexual entitlement and degrade women in any way. The scary rapist waiting in the dark to attack is a tiny, tiny percentage of sexual assault. I live in a well-known “dangerous” east coast city, and my worst encounters with men have NEVER been with strangers. The number of times I’ve had men tell me I shouldn’t walk home or shouldn’t do XYZ is infuriating…especially when some of those same men are goddamn silent when their buddies say and do sexist things. I work hard at being extra aware in parking lots and walking home (and btw men are statistically more likely to be violently mugged than I am) and have for decades – that is NOT my main issue – but what I need is for these men to do the bare minimum and stand up to their friends’ toxic masculinity. Don’t walk me to my car unless I ask. Listen to me about what bothers me and check your friends. Be ACTUALLY brave, not performatively brave.