Some drunk idiot mate is far more of a risk to you than that grubby man who's shouting at bats.
Added 2017-04-02 04:34:55 +0000 UTCThis is the article I wrote for SBS Comedy this week in response to a thread in a group I'm in online about safety for women going home at night.
During the comedy festival, everyone's internal clocks shift, after a few days of 'jet lag' type disorientation it's a totally reasonable thing for a comedian to consider coming home at around 2 or 3 every night a completely normal day-job type situation.
If your show finishes at 10.30 (as mine does, this year), I'm not even undressed and packed down til 10.45 and the adrenaline or regret-high is not even going to start winding down til around midnight, which is when you can stomach the prospect of eating something (no, I can't eat before my show - all the blood goes out of my brain to my tummy and I just want a nap - you gotta be hungry for success!), and then one in-depth conversation at the artist's bar takes you to around 1.30am. And then you have to consider how to get home - whether you walk or catch an uber or find another way home.
So of course safety comes up, in the chats we have. But I am always torn in these conversations whether to emphasise statistics or empathy. On one hand fear of being attacked is real, and some idiot hassling you (while much more likely to end in unpleasant feelings than in actual physical assault) can definitely ruin your night. Or even your week. If it happens in the context of having already experienced some sort of traumatic assault, the words 'ruin your night' are a deep understatement for how shitty some idiot shouting at you in the night can make a person feel.
On the other hand, the statistical likelihood of being attacked by a stranger is low. Like actually very low.
It *feels* high. Like terrorism, or candy-handing Paedophiles in vans, outsized news coverage of these events blow them up to disproportionate levels in our minds. So I want people to do whatever they can do to feel safe. But I also want them to know that for all intents and purposes, they probably ARE safe. Here's the article I wrote to try to get that message across, in the vessel of comedy jokes.
