KT67 wrote:
Basically if I was a 6 foot guy with muscles, I would feel safe walking/strutting through town after dark.
That might be a false sense of confidence though? I'd be interested in cis autistic guys' experiences with this. Because I think the criminal element are looking for someone to attack, whether that's sexually like with women or that's picking fights with guys who stand out somehow, as autistic people are prone to do.
Either way we need to make it so the town centre is safe for every adult at night. Someone's sex/gender/presentation/not being NT/disability/ethnicity/age etc shouldn't make them feel as if town doesn't 'belong to them' and they're unsafe - it's the public sphere!
It's weird, when I was younger I dealt with a lot of physical bullying over issues like how I dress. I'm 6' tall and weighed about 160bs then so I wasn't exactly small. If I went out in a 'normal' mindset there was a good chance I would end up dealing with some sort of confrontation but if I was 'cycling' and wound-up/manic and looking for a confrontation suddenly those same people would duck me. I believe my body language changed enough to broadcast that I wasn't just out for a walk.
Angry young men who feel powerless might engage in crimes (violence or harassment) but they'll seek out different targets than the people who are mostly out to steal stuff with violence just being a means to an end. The former are the main issue where I live and might not be discouraged just because you're a bigger guy. Jeez, some of them might not even care about winning, they just want to fight.
The latter needs to weigh the risk of every confrontation because they know they'll have to have several of them that night to make the time and risk worthwhile, that means they're unlikely to initiate any confrontation they don't think they'll win so being bigger almost certainly makes one less likely to be targeted.
Being bigger is a deterrent but so is how you carry yourself. If you march through public spaces like you've got a goal in mind and nothing will interfere with that goal it's amazing how the people around you respond. Presenting as though you're comfortable with confrontation seems to make a lot of people decide they don't want to start one in case you're more able to finish it.