Based on present context in the post ETAH

I should preface this with the fact Im a male and I live in the UK, as Im sure my reasoning will come out sounding stupider than a woman who has to experience the true fear of someone racing at them with genuine malicious intent whether it to be yo physically harm or abduct or futher whenever they walk somewhere either secluded or in the night.

If I genuinely felt like someone was intentionally following me or scoping me out I would definitely not walk on the same path again at least for a good couple of weeks and would go somewhere more open, again I wouldnt wish bodily harm or worse to happen to anyone who just wanted to go for a walk.

At the same time however I understand your fathers thoughts on feeling weird doesnt necessarily mean that you have to be scared of someone coming at you or that you are actually in danger - I walk my dog at nights past a churchyard on a very badly lit road and am genuinely scared some roadman wannabe gangster from the bordering towns is hiding in the bush or - embarassingly enough - the next zombie apocalypse is gonna start in that churchyard which makes me cross the road every single time.

Whilst the second scenario is less likely, the fact that im in a village with relatively richer houses around the prefacing situation strikes genuine fear in me and if I had the option to walk a different path then I would.

I feel like there are a lot of people stuck in a loop of thinking that everyone is safe and the fear of being harmed is somewhat a delusion in the eyes of some of the older generations and whilst I do believe your father would be a complete asshole if I had different experiences with my parents, there are both generational and gender based differences to consider here, in retrospect I feel as if he was just portraying to you what his parents wouldve told him at the time and at the same time I think its an asshole thing to do, I think with reasoning and explanation as to why you're worried and your fears about being followed he could come to a better understanding of your situation.

Instead, you decided to throw the privileged argument at him and this is something that I cannot agree with based on where i live as previously explained I get scared myself walking in my own village, there are multiple areas in the UK that people of both genders and various generations are also worried about walking around especially in areas such as London where knife crime is at an all time high as well as gang related crimes and people either claiming to be gang memebers or wannabe gangs in smaller towns and counties.

I would assume there have been times where your dad has been concerned about his surroundings when going out, however either not much happened or nearly nothing happened to spike his anxieties and they died down.

Now this doesnt account for the gender difference again, as you being a woman puts you at more risk but I do believe that there wouldve been times where he had fully been concerned of being at risk as this is something mostly everyone goes through at some time based on some of the experiences and I do believe that parents like to hide these situations away from their children so they see them as strong pillars of encouragement growing up etc.

Finally, him calling you overly dramatic and taking things too far wasnt a good way to respond in the slightest, I do feel again if you both sat down to discuss this after the short arguement then maybe you could both see eachothers sides a bit better

Please feel free to slate me over some of this as this is my first long reply to a AITA thread but again Id like to remind you I am a Male in the UK so my perception compared to OP is definitely different in both respects to her Gender and possibly the crime culture within her country where Id assume a large man following a woman in both of ours would be the same outcomes, crime in the earlier years and risks to people of both genders may not.