Fear of commitment of self-help, Harvard psychologist Deborah DePaulo has written books such as "Singleism" on the stigmatization of single people. The use of the term "fear" or "phobia" imparts an inherent linguistic bias. It recasts specific lifestyle decisions (such as bachelorhood vs. marriage, or a conscious decision to remain childfree by choice) implicitly as generalised, irrational phobias while failing to identify, describe or address an individual's specific motives. For instance, the men's rights movement, citing high divorce rates and expensive alimony and legal costs, would speak not in terms of "fear of commitment" but of "marriage strike" to reflect their position that
Women's fear of crime and victimization rates. A 1998 study in Glasgow, Scotland, found a gender disparity in fear of crime levels smaller than what is generally accepted. The study also found that men and women with similar fear levels tended to use similar reasoning to explain their fear of crime or lack of fear, although men's and women's fear appeared in different situations (men tended to be more often fearful about property crime, whereas women were more fearful about violent crime). A 2010 Turkish study using a large nationwide sample confirmed that women expressed significantly higher levels of fear of crime than men.