fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2591 ]

[ SECRET POST #2591 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2591 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 046 secrets from Secret Submission Post #370.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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is a terrible book.

It encoruages a really unhealthy paranoid mindset in people who have no reason to have one.

You're a spoilt white girl, not a kid in Lebanon, knock it off.

Why do people keep reccing it?

Are they reccing it from Tumblr? If so, they are people who have never been in the real world and don't realize that the world is safer than what the scary reblog on Tumblr says. Or the fact that crime has been steadily getting lower through the years. Or if they are young women, that men are much more likely to be victims of random violence (muggings, murders, assaults).

"Are they reccing it from Tumblr? If so, they are people who have never been in the real world and don't realize that the world is safer than what the scary reblog on Tumblr says. Or the fact that crime has been steadily getting lower through the years."

Oh hey, crime rates are falling! No need to lock my car or the door of my house, and no need to worry about walking by myself through a parking garage at night with some guy who appears to be following me! Everyone can stop worrying about crime now, because the rates are down!

Seriously, come on. Lower crime rates does not mean no crime. A person's individual risk might be less than it was X number of years ago, but that doesn't mean it's stupid to take reasonable precautions about one's safety.

"Or if they are young women, that men are much more likely to be victims of random violence (muggings, murders, assaults)."

Even if this were true (how 'bout those rape stats for women, huh?), why would it matter? The advice in Gift of Fear is applicable to men as well as women. Recommending it to everyone regardless of gender makes sense.

But it's a lot easier to dismiss young women who have the temerity to use a popular social networking site, isn't it.

No one said you have to be stupid. Just less scared. You can be smart and relaxed you know.

Good joy strawmanning the fuck out of that instead of actually taking from it what was said.

Because horrible things also happen to spoiled white girls as well as kids in Lebanon, and there's nothing wrong with trying to prevent them from happening. Anyone who implies that being spoiled, female and white invalidates your right to not be attacked, raped or murdered is... well, deserving of much side-eye.

Disclaimer: Not a spoiled white girl, and still finds portions of Gift of Fear useful, especially the parts that say you don't have to make nice with creepy people just because you're female.

Didn't read the book, but I think the world is really an unsafe place for many people regardless of their race, nationality, or gender. In general, I think that the world is very unsafe. I'm a bit paranoid myself. Sometimes I think that many people either don't recognize or disregard the danger.

(Not talking about crimes as such, though - there are plenty of other shitty things that can happen to a person.)

Yes, the world is an unsafe place. The trick is to be aware of this fact, take what steps you reasonably can to mitigate the most avoidable risks, and not obsess over the stuff you really can't do much about (or whose risk to you is so small that the cost of guaranteeing they don't happen is wildly disproportionate to the danger.)

Yeah, IA. I manage to do almost everything of the above, apart from the "not obsess over the stuff you can't do much about" part. Some of this stuff is so horrifying I cannot stop thinking about it. And the risk isn't negligible, either.

Also, I often feel a surge of fear when I do something wrong or neglect to do something. Like, I know I'm a human being and I'm going to be lazy and make mistakes, but I feel like I cannot actually afford it.

IMO, these are often the main problems when it comes to dealing with the world as a dangerous place. "The unfixable stuff is too awful to bear" and "the number of mistakes I make is too great".

Um, that's exactly the point of The Gift of Fear--that you can mitigate the most avoidable risks by listening to your intuitive sense of danger. It's not a book urging people to obsess over improbable risks--in fact, the author explicitly advises people not to do this, and he had some choice things to say about how obsessive worry and Mean World Syndrome do not make you safer. It's pretty rich that you're calling it a terrible book when it's screamingly obvious that you haven't read it.

I'm pretty sure this is not the OP.

Uff-da--rereading the comment, I'm sure you're right. OTOH, I'm standing by my conviction that OP is spouting off without ever having read the book.

Eh... I think that's an oversimplification. There is a lot to be said for that book's lessons on situational awareness, understanding and analyzing your own instincts, and stuff like that. What concerns me is when it's used as justification for unhealthy behaviors or habits; caution taken too far becomes paranoia, awareness taken too far becomes a persecution complex, and so on.

Then, too, some folks like living in, effectively, a role-playing game where they're under constant threat from forces all around them. You see this in right-wing fantasies about the constant threat of the Antichrist or the U.N. or whatever. I think the constant threat of 50% of the population being male is the Tumblr equivalent of that, if that makes sense.

Probably because it's supposed to encourage the opposite of an "unhealthy paranoid mindset." It's about learning to listen to your intuition and recognize the signs of real danger, in contrast to the jillions of stupid things our society tells us we should be constantly anxious about. See: the knockout game and other made-up menaces that the media goes nuts over, instead of reports about how to recognize if an SO is abusive or something.

I don't get why the author being white bothers you. White people are subjected to hysteria about stupid things to fear just like anyone else, perhaps even moreso than any other group.

I haven't read "The Gift of Fear", but it sounds somewhat similar in concept to "A Girls' Guide to Predators".

Honestly? That kind of information was really useful to me.

Most of the men in my family - my uncles, my grandfathers, my great-grandfathers - were really shitty role models. Luckily my mum married my dad, who is amazing, given what a douchebag his own dad was.

As a woman, I was never ever taught the warning signs to look out for abusive people & potentially dangerous situations. It's not something they tell you in school, it's the kind of thing some people pick up through life experience.

As a woman, I was taught to be nice and polite and to always consider other people's feelings. This is further compounded by my personality - I'm very shy, and I don't want to hurt people.

But there are some situations that require assertiveness. So books like "The Gift of Fear" are incredibly beneficial to someone like me, who has often been taught to ignore my gut instincts.

Sounds like someone read it and it freaked them out. Or you live in a safe area and don't realise that there are many places in developed countries that are unsafe but - shock, horror - people live or work in or commute through despite this.

Like other anons have said,

1. The situational awareness advice is really good for any one - not just "spoilt white girls".

2. As is the advice about predatory people who use a 'yes ladder' to work out how far they can push you - it's okay to say 'no', and this book gives one reason why it's important to.

3. Did you miss the entire chapter on how to deal with unstable people in the workplace? That shit is really good advice for anyone who is any supervisory position or in charge of recruitment.

Just because something is statistically unlikely doesn't meant that you shouldn't understand what you can do to be safe if such an eventuality occurs - unless you're advocating that planes shouldn't have safety presentations because place crashes are so improbable.

You know, I'm betting the OP didn't actually read the book. They probably just saw it on tumblr, had a knee jerk reaction and decided it was dumb. Which is a stupid thing to do, but there you have it.

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