Silly girls

Early this morning I found myself in Eastwood, Darp country. On suddenly realising this I quickly wound up the windows, locked the doors and covered the emergency button. Without warning one can easily have a ratbag leftie mullet, with a hulking coconut bodyguard jump in front of the cab and scream, ‘You ! Fascist ! Pull over !’. As a small ‘f’ fascist, I figured one can’t be too careful in these badlands.

Shortly thereafter I spotted a girl, ambling along Victoria Road in Ryde. She looked pissed. What an idiot, I thought. As I pulled up she turned around, then walked over to hop in the front seat. ‘Thank you’, she said. ‘Mate’, what are you doing walking by yourself at one o’clock in the morning ?’, I demanded. ‘I couldn’t find a cab heading this way’, she replied, ‘They were all heading back to the City’. This is usual on a Friday and Saturday night when cabs are scarce.

‘It doesn’t matter’, I scolded her, ‘You should cross the road and hail one. If their Vacant light is on the law says they must take you’. ‘Oh, I didn’t know that’, she said. ‘There’s carloads of arseholes everywhere at this time of morning’, I continued, trying to scare some sense into her, ‘and it’s really dangerous’. ‘Yeah’, she responded, ‘a couple of times some weird guys stopped and offered to drive me home’. I rest my case.

Furthermore, I’ve given up on warning girls travelling alone, about sitting up front in taxis late at night. I used to say to them, ‘Didn’t your mother tell you to never sit up front in taxis ?’. And often they would just look at me blankly and say, ‘So..’.

Unfortunately, predatory behaviour is everywhere in this world and sadly, too many young women just don’t get it.

UPDATE : I've just realised the possible imputation Darp and/or his bodyguard is a 'silly girl'. Wrong. These guys are real men, doing the right thing and havin' a go. The only requirement to be an Aussie.

Comments

[Darlene]

Interesting post, Adrian.

Not sure when this mentality came into existence.

Without wanting to sound like old mother time (and acknowledging I don't have children), I think some parents are letting their daughters go out into the world without a sense of the need to protect themselves.

I know someone who hitchhikes. She is in her early twenties and highly educated and also streetsmart, but....

While it would be nice to live in a world where we didn't have to worry about these things, that will never be the case.

Perhaps these young women are so filled with booze and their own sense of their rights (but not responsibilities), they have no capacity to think beyond that.

By the way, I also think parents should teach their sons that being in public and acting like a galah is not acceptable either.

A friend was telling me how her partner's colleague got beaten up during a booze-filled night out.

On a lighter note, let me tell you I was more than happy to be sitting in the back of a cab when one cabbie started going on about how "how he wasn't doing anything on the weekend, just going home to eat McDonalds and watch television" and "what was I doing? for practically the whole journey.

Blah, beware the dateless cabbie.

[Darp Hau]

HEY,

I cut the mullet last week!

[adrian]

Darlene, this mentality came into existence when their own sense of their rights was instilled recklessly by teachers preaching principles of rights and feminists proclaiming creeds such as 'reclaim the night'. Rights divorced from reality.

To my mind this mentality culminated in the vicious Sydney rapes of 2000. Last night I ferried a journalist around The Rocks and George Street taking photos of hordes of hoons in hot cars for a forthcoming article. In the end we left as he felt uncomfortable with their overt aggression.

It was this same tribe, which later exited the City in droves, I saw around the time of the posted incident. Hence my scolding the girl for walking alone.

Your cabbie proposed...just going home to eat McDonalds and watch television - what an offer, every girls dream date !

Darp, you trendsetter, (drawing in breath for the requisite gravitas)...
Well may you say, 'I've cut the Mullet', but what about your mates' Mullets ?

[Julie]

Adrian

Do you think it is "teachers preaching principles of rights" that is the basis of the behaviours? My thoughts are that it stems from my generation not exercising their responsibilities as parents and insisting on specific behaviours from their children. The kids then see all the behaviours that are applauded by the media ... and think they should be able to behave similarly. With an absence of parental input (and indeed with parents behaving poorly as well) the kids don't stand much of a chance really.

[adrian]

Julie, you're spot on. Though is not our education system largely influenced by the baby boomer generation.

Baby boomer parents too weak to insist on and enforce certain safety standards, for fear of appearing like...like, well parents !?

Gutless parents who take the lazy path of least resistance by assigning equal rights to their dependant children, rather than do the responsible parenting thing and crack the whip, 'Oh, we're more like friends to our children, rather than parents'. Jesus wept.

As if 'parent' is an uncool, dirty word. It's simply demonstrates how immature and selfish many baby-boomer parents are. As such, they don't deserve to breed.

[Darlene]

Damn straight.

Think parents are so busy trying to be friends with their kids they have abandoned their roles as teacher/disciplinarian.

I have been a participant in Reclaim the Night.

I went last year but more as writer and my sense of its unhelpnessness started some time ago.

Indeed, there is nothing like being involved in women's groups at university and within the broader community that get dominated by extremists to make a gal do some questioning.

I think RTN started with good intentions but it had its creation within the context of radical feminism.

Thus it views men as essentially the problem (and it must be said as essentially the enemy).

It is a nonsense to think positioning the other gender against you is going to help gender relations.

RTN also tends to view women as victims as the content of the long, tedious barrage of speeches indicates.

These days I think equity feminism is much more the go because it demands women have equal rights and equal responsibilities.

If the vicious rapes you are referring to are those of the ethnic gangs, they also came about because those boys were taught to behave like they were back in the old country.

There was an article in The Weekend Australian which featured a fellow from Sudan who talked about his dominant relationship in his family and his concept of the rightness of a gender division within the labour market. He also said if he met any gays he wouldn't talk to them because they weren't any gays in Sudan and it was against something or rather.

Well, sure, but he is not in Sudan now.

I am waffling on a bit so I will just end by saying, that offer of Maccas and tele was sure hard to knock back. NOT!

[skippy-bushkangaroo]

adrian

mate my main problem with the post was the emphasis placed on the woman suppousedly doing the wrong thing.

From a practical point of view, yes, the woman was in danger being on her own late at night. But you spent pretty much the whole post saying how she was doing the wrong thing, with only a sentence-or-two against the f***wit blokes who were giving her a hard time.

They're the real problem mate, and it sh**s me no end that they have nothing better to do than go around giving people trouble.

Apart from anything else it doesn't matter if she's a girl or a bloke - being on your own late at night is a recipe for disaster. I'm a pretty big bloke 110kg and well stacked, but on saturday night i was walking on my own from the cross to oxford street at about 4am, and i gotta say i was a bit nervous. It doesn't matter how big you are or if you are a bloke...someone with a big knife can still f*** you over.

Anyway my main point was that while the girl was in a dangerous position, let's not completely BLAME her....let's rant against the f***wit blokes in the cars and get them off the F***ing road so any of us, bloke or chick can walk down the street in peace....

Love your work

skippy

[bourbonbird]

i was one of those birds who did stupid shit at all hours of the night and was eventually left wandering the streets doing the walk of shame at sparrowfart - all walks come out in the night, and now i see it from your point - had a pretty bad scare, and now my mates are always taking the piss out of me for being so cautious.

whaddya do? think before you do stupid shit like that again.