I wear my Apple EarPods, the classic kind with cords, for this purpose. A familiar gut feeling, the kind sharpened over years of simply existing as a woman in the world, told me I probably wasn’t alone. When I put the question to Twitter, asking users whether they wear their AirPods—or any headphones—in part because they want to tune out unsolicited attention from strangers, I heard from nearly 100 people, mostly women. Twitter is not a representative sample of the United States, let alone people who wear headphones, but a clear theme sounded through the responses: Wearing headphones made navigating public spaces feel safer.

Headphones act as both cue and barrier; they convey an air of unavailability that warns strangers not to bother and provide a membrane of protection when someone decides to anyway. Suspended in a state of plausible aloofness, people with headphones plugged in their ears can pretend they didn’t hear those comments and keep on walking.

“Before I started wearing headphones, catcallers who felt that they were being intentionally ignored would sometimes follow me, touch me, or say increasingly graphic things—sexual, racial, violent,” says Whitney Lee, an attorney in Washington, D.C. “When they believe that I’m only ignoring them because I can’t hear them, they tend to disengage faster.”