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Should I Lie About Being Married When I Travel Alone?
Pros, cons, and just wanting to be left alone.
Traveling as a solo woman is no easy task. Before lockdown, from 2017-early 2020, I visited 12 countries while working remotely.
I related to what Sylvia Plath said —
“…My consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars — to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording — all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night…”
Yes, it is often assumed that I am something to be caught, or I am a temptress wandering at night with the intent to turn or seduce a man.
And the world never stops telling me where I can and cannot go as a solo woman. Their warnings are tinged with racism and xenophobia.
Latin America? The men are horny and wild. Italian? Very sexually aggressive. Turkey, India, Egypt? Well, they all have one thing on their mind over there, in countries where women are so covered up.
