What’s with that picture they used?
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Oh, you know us silly wimmin and our love of nighttime bird watching. That’s why we click on all the dark bushes. Maybe there’s a baby birb in there!
/s
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This.
I (male) was hypervigilant in highschool from bullying, and thought I had some perspective of the sort of attacks women and girls routinely face. And then I started teaching a women’s self-defense class, and heard first-hand what the threat-level was like, and realized I was completely fucking clueless.
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I think a lot of men might feel fear walking somewhere unfamiliar alone at night. But in a lab, during the day, looking at a photo, they don’t expect to feel fear walking there at night.
And of course, these are paths on campus, so probably familiar places.
ETA: so, it is really a really important difference that women, even when they are in the lab, looking at photos of familiar paths, found the darkness to be the most salient part.
[Hadn’t realized that my incomplete thought was unclear. Sorry to raise your hackles, @anon67050589 !]
That was my first thought too, but I’ve changed my mind. Even if men also, unconsciously, check the dark spots before going straight ahead, the finding that the dark spots were more salient for women is interesting and important.
For example, if a male-dominated team is designing the paths, the fact that they aren’t as conscious of the darkness outside the path could lead them to make different lighting decisions. They might only think of the visibility on the path itself.
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My college life was +20 years ago, so there is that. From a sexual assault standpoint I would agree, but from an overall assault situation things were pretty evenly split between men and women.
I lived in a dorm that was toward the egde of campus. You did walk along a main-ish road that ran into campus, but on the other side were woods for much of the way. Of course it was dimly lit. Someone was usually assaulted and robbed at gun point once a year in this area. I agree with the idea up thread that having eye tracking would be much more accurate to determine what people considered a threat. When I walked this area after dark +70% of my time was spent scanning the edge of the woods. I’m just a man, not the man of steel, and this doughy body isn’t standing up to a gun.
That’s a hell of a “but” and I don’t think it’s evenly split even if you exempt sexual assault. Sexual assault is an existential threat, so not sure of the point of exempting it.
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While it may seem that way in distant retrospect to you, it’s almost assuredly untrue.
As defensive as you have ever felt at any moments of potential threat, multiply that feeling exponentially for how most women feel on a regular basis; it’s not just sexual assault that we fear, and it’s not just at night or when we are alone.
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Note - Not picking on you, it’s just the latest reply saying this:
Eye tracking would be an interesting data point, but it is missing the point, I think, of the study.
The point of the study was: “imagine themselves walking through these areas and to click on the area(s) of the image that stood out the most to them.” So this is their conscious decision on what to focus on/look out for. That means it is in the fore front of their mind and feelings. Would a man’s eyes also look to the edges and a woman’s to the center? Maybe. But because they looked around in different areas doesn’t change the fact on what they were consciously focused on.
Let’s change the scenario and have a person with a knife. Most people would focus and click on the person with the knife, the most immediate danger. Some people’s eyes will also look AROUND the threat, because they are looking for other threats, people near that person who would be in danger, or a path for escape. Their eye map showing them looking around at other areas doesn’t change the fact that their conscious concern is the clear threat in the middle.
What this experiment shows is a difference in where people perceive or anticipate danger. Where else their eyes look doesn’t change that.
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then there’s no “but this other thing” needed.
yes. sexual assault by men is why women worry about walking alone at night on their own college campuses.
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That got my hackles up, because the points you’ve made here are equally true for women. They also were in the lab, and they also were looking at familiar paths.
But then:
There you go! That’s exactly the sort of real-world awareness we need so that solutions can be forthcoming.
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Solutions?!? Heavens NO! This is all for culture war arguments on the internetz!!! /s
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Right. That was the point I was trying to make: Saying “men feel fear in dangerous situations too” misses the importance of the finding. Edited to clarify.
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The first statement in this reply fairly describes what I was trying to point out in my perhaps too-short comment, not that we have physically different eyes. My wife also observed that as women often assume much more of the childraising role, they have a greater tendancy to look for things that could affect their kids as well as themselves, which would imply need for a broader look angle.
The study has nothing to do with a “broader look angle” or peripheral vision or whatever you are implying. It’s about paying attention to a path versus paying attention to areas where threats may be concealed. You are looking at one of the photos where the path is in the middle and shadows are to the sides. The other heat maps vary according to the composition of the photo. As @danimagoo and others pointed out:
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How many college students do you know who have kids already? A few, sure, but the majority don’t. Are you saying that lady brains already have this skill built in because of course their main purpose is to produce children?
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Your initial comment was ill chosen in the phrasing; regardless to any conscious intent.
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No, just no. There was nothing in this study to suggest that women who had kids were more security conscious than others. Women, as a whole, are forced to be more security conscious by asshole men who will not allow them to exist in peace. Much as our Black and LGBTQ fellows are forced to do the same, because our society values them so much less. I am not certain that this was the ideal structure for such a study, but it confirms what most of us were already familiar with. The world, especially in the dark, is just a more frightening and stressful place for women than it is for men. If nothing else, listen to the women who are posting here. They will be more than willing to tell you how much it affects their everyday life. And, damn it all, they should not have to. It should not be like this. And yet it is…
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It is so because there are too many who simply will NOT see; either because they do not care, or because the problem seems too massive and would require actual time, energy, and hard work to resolve it.
It’s far easier to just throw up one’s hands in defeat, claiming “that’s just the way it is,” without ever even trying to change it…
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Perhaps only partially on topic, but while I was studying I saw a documentary on designing and building playparks with girls in mind. It was fascinating as the features they desired were not particularly unusual or complex but they were things that would never occur to me as an adult man. It was a really good lesson in involving the real “users” of a design and not assuming you know best.
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