Perhaps they are really saying: This will not happen to me. I will be prepared. And, in hoisting that hypothetical gun, they feel they are made safe from the appalling vulnerability of living.
Writer and academic Lauren Elkin discusses her latest book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London, the freedoms and constraints of urban space for women, and the power of first person.
I am alone. Alone with my small size, my cracking bones, and the guilt that wraps around my spine like a jungle vine. Don’t be hysterical, I repeat to myself.