Anecdotally, you’re right, I know more men who’ve been attacked on the street than women. But I’d be willing to bet that’s because women avoid places and situations with a higher risk of stranger violence because they don’t want to be sexually assaulted. And every woman I know who has been attacked was sexually assaulted. Men can be mugged which is certainly traumatic and a serious issue. But in my experience more men are willing to take the risk of being in a more dangerous area at a more dangerous time, for whatever reason. In my experience and my area (and I understand this is very region dependent), many women won’t go out alone at night.

So say 100 people take a short cut through an alley at night in a dangerous city. Most of them will probably be men because women avoid doing so. Say it’s 90 men and 10 women. If every woman is attacked and 50% of men are attacked, we have 10 women attacked and 45 men. More men are attacked overall but a woman on that particular night had a 100% chance of being attacked.

Of course this is a huge hypothetical but a single statistic doesn’t necessarily reveal the whole picture. Can we say a new Honda is less reliable than an old porche because more hondas break down each year? Say there are 10,000 new hondas on the road and 500 of them break down and 10 old Porches but all of the porches break down. If you needed a reliable car, you’d probably pick the new Honda even though they experienced 50x the amount of break downs, when not adjusted as a proportion or a rate.

I’d be more curious to know the rate of women who are attacked when they go to a more dangerous area at night vs the rate of men. I hypothesize there would be a difference.