The constant looming fear of Cheryl getting raped?

A lot of people in the west speak with a southern accent. Some people affect a southern twang to let people know their cultural orientation ... George W. Bush pretended to be a Southern cowboy, but he was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and went to school at Yale. Effecting that Southern accent is enough to throw Republicans off track of who one really is, like slinging the Bible or hugging the flag, or talking about the war against Christmas.

"It's a reasonable assumption that promiscuity would lead to a belief that men are "only interested in one thing"."

No, it's not. All sorts of women are afraid of being raped - virgins, prostitutes, young girls, little old ladies, every sort of female in between, and if you had any experience of the real world or had ever listened to anything women say on the subject, then you'd know that. And yes, you CAN rape a prostitute, before you complain about that one, it's a violent physical assault and not just grabbing a freebie!

In the book Cheryl Strayed was quite clear that she liked men, she enjoyed the company of many guys she'd met on the trail, and had brought condoms along in case she found someone she really liked (she did). I'd say she was less fearful of rape than the average woman, because she spent months in the wilderness where a seriously fearful woman would have just stayed home.

Actually I think only one of the men was portrayed as a threat, the men she encountered when she found water, out of both of them only one looked slightly threatening.
The first man she meets looks threatening to her, because she was alone in the desert, without any means of communicating with anyone, and she had found a gun, but the guy turned out to be a decent man, even offered her shelter and a warm meal, and a ride. The rest of the men she meets actually help her along her way, the guy that is bathing in the river tells her to meet him at a camping ground and introduces her to his friends, who in no way threatened to rape or maim her. The man at the camp site who was grilling helped her organize her backpack and told her how to stop losing toenails, the guy from "hobo times" never threatened her, he actually even gave her a "hobo care package" (which I thought was hilarious).

The ranger she met just asked her to go drink with him, didn't push it one more time after the other MEN hikers came into the ranger's office, and they never threatened or even seemed slightly threatening towards her, they even called her "The Queen of the PCT".

Only another guy was seen with sexual desire, Michel Huisman and... let's face it, he's very attractive, and was nice to her, they had a connection, she slept with him willingly, he never once hurt her, in fact he was careful not to harm her bruises even more, bruises that she inflicted on herself in the hike.

I actually thought this movie did a very good job portraying men as most men are, just normal, decent human beings, not animals who are unable to control their most basic urges.

Before the hike she was promiscuous and, to quote the therapist she spoke to, was "having sex with anyone who asked". She was doing the sleeping around, no men were raping her, she was never even threatened with rape.

And also, as a woman, I am always looking out for men who could be dangerous, unfortunately it's the world we live in, women are told to always be vigilant, I'm not even as skinny as Reese Witherspoon was in the movie, and I'm afraid a man could overpower me and rape or kill me.

EDIT: Hell, even the husband, who she repeatedly cheated on, helped her out for most of the trip!

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Never forget what you are, the rest of the world will not.

Thats because men who dont fall into either category (rapists and hot guys), are invisible to women.

Where have all the good men gone?

Yes I get it, and having daughters may help. As one reviewer cogently states, "a lone woman in the wilderness means every encounter with the opposite sex comes cloaked in uneasiness and potential full-on fear." But Wild overplays and confounds this concept by making too many of the opposite sex so encountered by our heroine real creeps or worse. The first person she meets on her hike is shown as a creepy older guy whom she eventually accepts a ride from only because she is so desperate for help. With his inappropriate banter, he is portrayed as a threat (didn't you tense up and worry about her safety during their initial meeting?) and only until a wife is presented is the threat softened. Then she meets two threatening men, one of whom is clearly portrayed as a likely rapist, and she understandably runs away from them the first chance she gets. She then meets the weird ranger who inappropriately and persistently harasses her. That is a total of four unusual and repugnant guys, which is at least 30 to 40% of the men she is shown significantly interacting with during her time on the PCT. She later meets a highly attractive man whom she has romantic sex with, which seems to be contrived as a counterpoint to her earlier experiences. I didn't go into this movie expecting an amount of sexual politics more typical of "women's movies". Perhaps you did.


Life is a state of mind.

You cannot watch this movie and assume that any of these encounters were safe, the film was far too tense to take any of these males at face value and there was a constant looming threat that things could've turned ugly. They didn't, but you cannot deny the potential sense of peril that follows the film.

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