Before we can go forward with the new, sassy/fabulous and SEO-encrusted Itchy Foot Adventures that I’ve promised my new corporate overlords, I need to clear the air a bit.

I feel really ambivalent about all this Travel… For Women! business.  Especially because, ultimately, it is about the business.  I don’t believe that there need to be special websites for vagina-bearing people who like to leave home and explore the world.  Not to mention special products, services, publications, tours, guidebook publishing imprints….  Women are people.  For the most part, what we want from travel is the same stuff men want. 

So, on the one hand, I’ve accepted membership to a group of travel bloggers who write For Women.  On the other hand, I think that’s a load of crap.

Going deeper, I know that there are a few important differences between traveling as a man and traveling as a woman.   It’s not a matter of how many pairs of shoes is too many, or what to tell your family when they worry about you out there all alone. It’s bigger than that and not as easily monetized. 

I can’t assume the same things as a male traveler can assume; I don’t have the same freedoms.  Even as a woman who thinks most “Traveling While Female” safety precautions are bullshit.  I can’t trust men on the road in the way that other men can.  In countries where the public sphere is overwhelmingly male, it’s difficult for me to delve as deeply into the local culture as a man could.  Sometimes I can’t even do the things I want to do - like hitchhike or visit Saudi Arabia - because they’re either not safe or not worthwhile for me as a woman. 

This is the stuff that the Female Traveling blogosphere doesn’t talk about very well.  This is the sort of thing I refuse to ignore as a travel writer.