‘Walking while female’ should not be a deadly condition.
Yet that it how it feels for many women to walk down the streets of LA — not in the dark of night, but in broad daylight; not on Skid Row, but in West Hollywood; not on a busy road, but near a college campus.
Kyrstin Munson, a heavily pregnant mom who took a walk this weekend with her toddler, felt trapped by two “zombies” who suddenly appeared on the sidewalk in her path.
The “zombies” were drug addicts. They might have been harmless, or too stoned to do anything. But there was no way she could know.
One thing she does know is that she’s had enough.
Enough of the fear, enough of the “fight-or-flight in full blast” as she wonders, yet again, whether she will have to defend herself and her child, or try to flee.
Then there are the sorority girls of UCLA, who report that they are being hounded, harassed, and stalked by homeless men, some of whom make crude sexual remarks, and one of whom screams at them.
As The California Post reported, the danger is so bad that the university’s largest women’s organization has hired private security to protect the sororities.
There aren’t enough police on the west side of LA — or anywhere, really — for young women to feel safe from the hordes on the street outside.
In recent years, women have been attacked and killed by homeless men. Brianna Kupfer, a 24-year-old UCLA graduate student, was murdered in 2022 by a homeless man who wandered into the furniture store where she worked in Hancock Park.
Throughout the city, women are constantly reminded that they are unsafe. On the LA Metro, there are continuous announcements that sexual harassment is “not tolerated.”
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That is good to know — but the fact that it needs to be said at all is a grim reminder of how common the problem is.
Too often, we talk about crime and homelessness in abstract ways. We rarely talk about how these problems feel on the ground.
Perhaps we should start listening to the women of LA — including women who are homeless themselves. They are doubly at risk.
We have outstanding female leaders at nearly every level of public office. There is no excuse for women to feel this unsafe in LA.
