before I get hellbanned: I'm trying to make a very real point, sometimes the only solution is to avoid such a situation. short of learning karate and packing a gun I just have to avoid the subway at night.

I'd like to note that I too feel unsafe around heavy drinking, people do stupid things and I wanna meet my grandkids, so I will often not go out with people who I think will get crazy.

I agree though that in general women have to be a lot more careful about their company, and this is true of all cultures and circles. I remember being very surprised in high school when my mother would make me go out to pick up my sister (born a year apart) who was at a friend's house only 3 blocks away at night, when I used to walk twice that (and this wasn't a particularly "bad" neighborhood).

Still, this strikes me as an unreasonable level of fear in response to common social situations.

Yes, rape culture is real. Yes, drunk people are more dangerous, on average, than sober people.

No, this does not mean you should start skipping events where people are drinking because some of them might hurt you.

Just because our western culture is generally terrible doesn't mean that you should go around living in fear. The moment you start equating the median drunk stranger with "someone I should avoid being around", you have crossed the line into pathology, in my opinion.

This isn't really your judgement call to make on behalf of somebody else, is it?

I'm a fairly big guy with some martial arts training, so when it comes to being around a bunch of people who are inebriated, I assess the level of risk to me as being pretty low. If I were a woman, and someone who's less physically imposing than almost everyone at the party, my assessed level of risk would doubtless be higher. Too, if I've been raped or subjected to other sexual violence previously -- as a significant number of women have -- I can't imagine my risk tolerance being very high at all.

Also, I'm not terrified of drinking events at conferences. It's not like it's this super-fun thing I'm so sad I'm missing because I've got this unreasonable fear. They're things I skip sometimes because it's more fun to go do something else than risk dealing with bullshit (or on rare occasions actual risk).

Carrying a firearm makes you think ten steps ahead to avoid dangerous situations, because suddenly, any dangerous situation you may find yourself in is now a dangerous situation with a gun involved.

I've skipped going places when I was carrying (places that I would have gone to, unafraid, unarmed) because of the _potential_ that I would find myself in danger and have to do something I didn't want to do.

This rubs the wrong way when most people that carry concealed tell me "I do it to protect myself". Well, no shit, Sherlock, that means you're going to have to discharge the weapon if you're in danger. And a sufficiently likely conclusion involves someone getting the drop on you and/or taking your weapon, anyway.

Some of us are sufficiently averse to being forced to kill people that we will go to great lengths to avoid potential danger.

I think, even as much as it'd undermine your clever preaching to men here, you'd find that most men consider the venue, who's going to be in it, and escape plans before ordering the first shot.

Sort of like walking down the street on your phone, being oblivious to your surroundings is a ticket to problems.