With all due respect, I think it's particularly cold to
1) Make fun of people for not feeling safe in their community and
2) Make fun of them for the ways they choose to protect themselves and the people they love
Obviously, as Gemme said, people's reactions to this will be coloured by their own personal experiences and different people just react differently to the same situations. If you don't feel the need to protect yourself like they do, fine, but have a little respect.
I don't think it's wholly an American thing. I know several couples, both same and opposite sex ones, in my
Canadian neck of the woods who sleep in a certain position or proximity to the door in order to protect the ones important to them should the need arise. As far as I know, for them it has nothing to do with sexual dominance. While some of it does seem to fall on traditional gender or sex roles, I think a lot of it just has to do with one person recognizing that they're bigger, stronger, whatever and better able to fight off a would-be attacker than the person beside them. My mother did this with me when she was a single mother and we shared a bed. I did the same for my younger sister when my mother worked nights and it was my place to be the responsible, protective one. It doesn't mean that the protective person looks down on the other person or is acting out some macho role playing. In my experience, it just means that a desire to protect those who are important to you or not as physically strong as you (which is not in and of itself a value judgment and not something I believe needs to be skewered).
Furthermore, one thing I think people are perhaps overlooking is that not everyone has faith in their local police force. Many of us, through personal experience, have come to realize that the police in our communities cannot be relied upon and are often the
aggressors, not the saviours the culture would sometimes have us believe. Just in my local community, an officer was recently given his job back after being charged with abuse of resources, assault, false arrest, and threatening to personally decapitate someone he thought was involved in a break-in at his house. I have had friends who have been dismissed and even laughed at when the police thought they were out of earshot when they came to report their rapes. I know people personally who have been beaten so badly by rogue police officers that they were hospitalized with broken bones and concussions. We have the highest rape rate and the lowest conviction rate in the country and the police response to peaceful protestors in a neighbouring community was so abhorrent it made international news and was even shown on Democracy Now.
Do I trust them to protect me if I need them in that environment? Fuck no.
Your backyard is not my backyard.
