Re: as bad as the tabloids pretend

Gallian <gallian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

INVALID_SEE_SIG@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (J.D. Baldwin) writes:

In the previous article, Maarten Wiltink <usenet+asr@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I once lived for six months in Lakemba. The (deliberately cheap)
apartment itself wasn't anything to write home about, but I had no
issues at all with wandering about at any time of day or night.

It helps to be six foot two, slightly over two hundred pounds, and
to exude that particular smiling invulnerability aura.

As I keep telling fearful five foot four females.

Yeah, that's been in the back of my mind while reading this thread.

Contrast:

I just clear the 1.80m mark, during my student days I was rather
skinny, getting slightly too heavy for my length now. I'm obviously
not well-muscled, and I have a strong aversion against committing
violence.

I'm well under 1.80, used to be considerably underweight (somewhat over
now), not strong (still am not), and while I don't start any violence
and prefer to get out of the way, when attacked, my attitude is "you'll
defeat me anyway, so I might as well make you regret it at length".

Yet I have met relatively little hassle in my life, despite living in
places and doing things[1] that, according to conventional wisdom,
ought to have had me dead in the ground by 25.

I walk without care in most so-called nasty parts of town, at night.
I've never been attacked outside my own, sleepy, home town, and here
never after leaving school; I've never been mugged; I've never even had
my pockets picked. I believe that the reason is that thieves and muggers
don't just go for the victims who would be easy to hold up, but also
those who would be little trouble afterwards. If you look confident,
even when you are not or should not be, you are likely to be a pain in
the neck.
It's like those snakes, corn snakes I think they're called, which look
like garter snakes but aren't poisonous at all. They're completely
harmless, and any predator which looks closely could in theory know they
are, but they move so confidently that they're just not worth the
trouble of tackling.
I note that the 80/20 rule holds here, as well; apparently, about 20% of
the people fall victim to 80% of the muggings.

Richard
.