Why do gay people walk fast

Not really.

I know I’m not alone though – I see reflections of myself everywhere. I would like to give the groups of students I have to avoid the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that a three-versus-one pavement standoff will not conclude in my favour. However, I firmly believe that no conversation is good enough to warrant forgetting your surroundings.

I will agree that some pavements in St Andrews are hazardously narrow, and anyone having spent a few weeks here will be aware of which ones I’m talking about (Doubledykes Road, I’m looking at you).

You and whoever you are walking with must now coordinate evasive actions or size up the oncoming group of Walkers to consider who will give way first. Of course, if I was just slightly more assertive, I could negotiate this situation with the least risk of life. But I’m just a slow moving girl, I can’t keep up with rigorous scientific evidence.

Anecdotal evidence, sure.

“Men don’t tend to adjust their speed when walking with women friends, and they are likely to walk faster when walking with other men,” mindset psychologist Dr Rebekah Wanic says.

So fellas, before you pop “I hate slow walkers” into your Hinge profile, in an attempt to signal that you’re ‘active’ and own Salomons, think about what you’re also signalling.

“Even thinking about it annoys me. “I’m always like ‘sorry, what was that’, because they’re saying it into the air three feet in front of me.” None of this is conducive to feeling like a strong, independent working woman.

Ultimately, gendered expectations about speed and efficiency boil down to deep-rooted expectations about who is most able to move freely and easily through the world, and who has to adjust their needs for others’ comfort.

It would be completely reasonable to assume that a narrow walking path would encourage fellow walkers to economise space so as not to cut short the academic careers of fellow students. Why would that be? I would like to propose an estimated statistic of 95% ‘won’t they’ option choosers who remain in conversation and leave all the pressure on me to take evasive action.

Her ex was 6’1”, which, as she says, “isn’t that much taller”.

Indeed, Gasparovic calls this the “couple’s shuffle”. “It’s a sweet way of syncing up,” he says.

“They don’t seem to notice but everything is said twice,” she says.

Holly’s worked for male bosses for over five years, and says she spends her “whole working life walking roughly two steps behind them, trying to keep up”. But surely, conversation should not impede anyone’s ability to judge space and distances — and no, I do not think that squeezing into your friend by a few inches is in any way the same as briefly accommodating for an entire person to walk past.

I would feel so inferior, and it was draining.” Now, she believes it was “a weird power play”.

“Someone marching ahead of you all the time makes you feel lesser,” Ria says about her now ex. That is where I leap onto the road in a desperate attempt to save my momentum and stay alive. 

Of course, I could simply freeze, stand still, and wait for them to correct their trajectory.

(This is certainly what I sense whenever I try to get my boyfriend to treat our walk to the shops less like a mission and more like Quality Time together.)

Ria’s embarrassment also seems important here though. Flustered and frustrated women, pacing the streets a few yards behind guys who don’t see the daggers shooting out of their lady-companion’s eyes.