Tini Howard

I was sitting in my sewing room, feeling pretty childish for crying over a sexist Facebook thread, when I decided it was time to re-evaluate some things.

I feel like I’ve reached that good, comfy part of feminism. I am confident, strong, intense, unafraid. I’ve read some stuff and changed some minds. I’ve learned to gracefully accept (most) others. I speak my mind and forge my own path. I have learned that being ‘unafraid’ and being ‘fearless’ are not quite the same thing.

Simply ‘unafraid’ takes time in and of itself. Women now talk openly about fear. Rather than convening in community center gyms after work to learn ‘self defense in a safe space’ like my mother did in the Eighties, women are speaking out to our male partners – fathers, brothers, husbands, friends – about the daily experience of fear. Most of us feminists have asked around when making a point, say, at a party: ‘how do you hold your keys when you walk to your car at night?’  Too many women confess we think of our keys as a makeshift weapon, something to be put into the eyes of an attacker if need be. Many men, in between defending that men are also victims of violent crime, express that they haven’t ever thought about that.

Scarier still, let’s go back to that party, to that woman and that man. Statistically, she is more likely to be assaulted by someone she knows rather than a ...