Girls, Travel Alone.

Dear Girls of the Universe, I will give you a piece of advice I bet very few people in the world will, especially your fathers.

Travel alone.

I’ve done it, and somehow, despite the warnings of the best intentioned people, I survived. Not only did I survive, but I learned incredible things and grew into the independent person I am today. People often respond differently to women making plans to travel than they do to men with similar aspirations. This is obviously sexist, even if administered in a purely caring and cautionary way. Truth is, women are often more vulnerable to violence in many parts of the world – including their homeland – not just the place they plan to visit. As a young female who has traveled a bit, I am frustrated at those who think my gender is a reason to seclude myself from the diverse cultures and landscapes of the earth. I do not plan to live under a rock for the entirety of my life and even if I would chose to do so it most certainly would not make me immune to violence against women. People who think this kind of danger is less prominent in their native culture than in others are usually just being ethnocentric.

So if you are a woman and thinking of traveling, I say go for it. Clearly every culture is different, and when you leave home you should always respect the local culture regardless of your personal moral attitudes. Do some research, put your personal beliefs aside, and embrace something new and try to gain something meaningful from it. But do not allow someone to tell you the risk isn’t worth it.

Before I went to Uruguay at the naive age of eighteen, I had a multitude of people tell me what to expect who were trying to prepare me for all the shocking and horrific things they were certain I would witness. Warnings of overbearing sexist men and rampant poverty abounded. You know what? Every single one of those people was wrong. I took their advice with a grain of salt, knowing that if I asked them to point to Uruguay on a map not a single one would have been able to do it. No one I talked to had ever been to the country, and I admittedly knew very little about it myself. But the difference between me and them was that I acknowledged the fact that I knew nothing and was open-minded about learning, while they were convinced they knew what I was going to see there. At least I had actually googled the country.

Then I visited Uganda. From a western perspective some of their cultural traditions can easily be viewed as sexist. But as I spent more time there and talked to locals, I realized they view the practices in a completely different way, and I have no place in telling them how to conduct their lives, especially on matters that I cannot understand.

Traveling alone is the best decision I have ever made, and thinking that girls are discouraged from doing the same upsets me greatly. In an age where most people recognize that women should be allowed the same opportunities as men, why would anyone discourage an experience that promotes growth, learning, and opportunity? Even when concerns are expressed in the most well-intentioned of ways, telling a girl not to travel because of her gender is sexist and counterintuitive to the goals of modern society. Not traveling because of one’s sex only perpetuates the issue instead of addressing it. Just as dictating what women can and cannot wear does not solve the problem of rape, confining women to their hometown also does nothing to make the world safer. Women are not the problem, and being forced into a conservative lifestyle because of the few assholes in the world is showing apathy towards an injustice and leaving the victim with the task of solving the problem.

So travel. Travel a lot and travel alone. Nothing in life is completely safe; and if it were, I imagine it would be horribly boring.