This paper assesses explanations for women's fear of sexual violence. Many existing analyses share a common theoretical basis, but certain conflicts arise in the empirical evidence. These concern a number of paradoxes between fear and violence, in terms of their extent, their nature and in particular their spatial situation. A research project on women's fear of crime in Edinburgh aimed to improve understanding of these. Evidence from the questionnaire survey showed a further mismatch between women's common sense knowledge about general risks and their perceptions of personal risk. Many women know that the usual location of violence is private space, yet only fear attack in public places. Data from qualitative interviews suggest that this contradiction is preserved by the tendency to distance violence from the self, a process which is central to the management of danger and consequent lifestyle adaptation.
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