That’s the moment-to-moment safety, and being with a group dealing with one guy you’re safer, yes.
The other issue is though, she’s on live TV. That means if she makes a thing out of it, she knows that there’s a chance the narrative turns her into the “angry woman”, the “karen”, a punching bag for misogynists nationwide, and possibly the target of an online hate mob. She couldn’t forsee what the outcome would be, and the much bigger danger lay in that unknown, and in the moment her immediate impulse seemed to be to smooth the issue over as quickly as possible to avoid any kind of attention.
With hindsight it’s good that that didn’t happen - although online hate mobs will latch onto some very esoteric targets that we don’t always hear about so there’s no guarantee there - and the fact an older man stepped in on her behalf before she said anything probably helps with that, because now the narrative looks more like a gentleman stepping in to rescue a helpless girl. That’s truly meaningless, I know, but those few seconds of hesitation on her part completely change the impression a lot of people would get. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is, and it’s a reality a lot of men completely miss.
This is also part of the difference that good allyship can make. He is the respected older man, so he can leverage his privilege to help her. Of course that also means he pushed her to do something she wouldn’t on her own, and I don’t know how I would’ve handled that situation myself. I guess also his reaction was immediate too, and I think I wouldn’t have wanted to let the moment go. You see something like that and it should make you angry, and leveraging that anger into a constructive response is maybe the best thing you can do. He at least asked her what happened, so if she REALLY didn’t want to address it she could’ve denied what happened.
I would hope if things escalated the camera man would have intervened…
That’s the moment-to-moment safety, and being with a group dealing with one guy you’re safer, yes.
The other issue is though, she’s on live TV. That means if she makes a thing out of it, she knows that there’s a chance the narrative turns her into the “angry woman”, the “karen”, a punching bag for misogynists nationwide, and possibly the target of an online hate mob. She couldn’t forsee what the outcome would be, and the much bigger danger lay in that unknown, and in the moment her immediate impulse seemed to be to smooth the issue over as quickly as possible to avoid any kind of attention.
With hindsight it’s good that that didn’t happen - although online hate mobs will latch onto some very esoteric targets that we don’t always hear about so there’s no guarantee there - and the fact an older man stepped in on her behalf before she said anything probably helps with that, because now the narrative looks more like a gentleman stepping in to rescue a helpless girl. That’s truly meaningless, I know, but those few seconds of hesitation on her part completely change the impression a lot of people would get. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is, and it’s a reality a lot of men completely miss.
This is also part of the difference that good allyship can make. He is the respected older man, so he can leverage his privilege to help her. Of course that also means he pushed her to do something she wouldn’t on her own, and I don’t know how I would’ve handled that situation myself. I guess also his reaction was immediate too, and I think I wouldn’t have wanted to let the moment go. You see something like that and it should make you angry, and leveraging that anger into a constructive response is maybe the best thing you can do. He at least asked her what happened, so if she REALLY didn’t want to address it she could’ve denied what happened.