I am a relatively robust 5ft 8in, and when I have to run – for the bus, to catch a toppling child – I usually have the nervous energy to get there in time. These aren’t attributes I’ve had much cause to think about, particularly not in a professional context, and then a few weeks ago something odd happened. I had to interview a man at his home in the middle of the woods in upstate New York. No photographer would be present, and after a quick glance online I couldn’t find evidence of a wife. His profile, moreover, indicated he was 6ft 7in. And for the first time in my working life, I wondered.

Self-victimisation has always been a mainstay of feminist debate: the question of where taking sensible precautions ends and supplication begins. Being over-sensitive to risk is not only curtailing but, for women who fear male aggression, shifts the burden of responsibility from potential aggressor to “victim”. In this context it also made little sense: the man I was meeting was neutralised by a degree of celebrity. As a friend said, “George Clooney is not going to kill you.”

Disparity in strength between men and women remains a material difference that can’t be rationalised away

But these are strange times. Like every female reporter I know, I have been thinking a lot about Kim Wall, the Swedish journalist allegedly murdered by a man she went to interview on board his submarine in Denmark – a job no woman I know would have turned down, at least not on the grounds of personal safety. A few years ago it would have been easy to dismiss this story as a horrifying but freakish event. That is not how it reads to me now.

And yet neither does it seem sensible to entirely alter how I navigate the world. “You have to call him and ask him to meet you at a cafe,” said a friend, when I mentioned my unease on the morning of the interview.

“I don’t think I can,” I said.

“Why not?”

“It’s a bit … rude.”

“That’s ridiculous. Where’s the wife?”

“I don’t know if there is a wife. But he’s nearly 80.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

One of the more subtle points to have come out of #MeToo is the degree to which women are socialised not to cause trouble, something it is hard for me to separate from my general British conditioning. The conversation seemed ludicrous, and I felt ludicrous for having it, and yet a sense of vulnerability remained. Another friend insisted that statistically I was more likely to be killed by a falling air-conditioner unit on the way to the interview, but this didn’t fix things either. Disparity in strength between men and women remains a material difference that can’t be rationalised away.

Before I left for the train, my children’s babysitter dug in her bag and handed me her Mace, which I felt compelled to accept with the words: “Oh my God, that’s hilarious.” Soberly, she replied: “People are terrible.” In fact, he wasn’t. He was very nice. But considering the alternative didn’t feel like a piece of self-victimisation. It felt like a necessary and overdue widening of the lens.

• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist