Public Transport

Kirsten

Was on the tram. A man hemmed me into the corner of the seat. I thought that would be it. Then he put his hand down my trousers into my pants. I froze and couldn’t even speak. It was only when the tram stopped I got myself up and away. I’m angrier at myself for not doing anything than I am at him.

Anon

This anecdote is much lighter than most on here but is an example of unconscious sexism. I was stopped at a routine police roadblock recently for a licence check (common and normal in my spacious and quite rural country). The middle aged, male traffic officer asked what town i was coming from and the city i was heading to , which is usual. After i told him, he quipped ‘thats a long way just for shopping!’. I then informed him of the actual purpose of my trip – to give a presentation at a conference. There was a pause…’oh…good luck ma’am’. I can only hope that the encounter might make him think twice about jokingly presuming what women driving long distances alone are doing. Could he have asked the same of a man?…sure, but i doubt he would have!

Beth, Salford

I got harassed on the bus the other night and it was terrifying. One drunk man was shouting down his phone, about smashing shit up and how tonight his actions would get him in prison, so I spent the whole bus journey on edge anyway. Then another drunk man proceeded to try and chat to me. He came over to me, I was wearing a blazer with badges on the lapels. He hovered his fingers very calculatedly over the badges on my chest reading them out one by one, his fingers centimetres from my chest. My mind was flooded with what to do but I decided to let it happen and only intervene if he touched me, out of fear if I became confrontational, the other drunk who was ready for a fight might seize the opportunity. While this happened one woman looked at me and when I made eye contact she snapped her head away. A man turned to watch to assess the situation. Afterwards, he smiled and almost laughed as if to say “bloody drunk people, eh?”. I couldn’t smile or laugh about it. When I went to get off the bus, as I’m standing waiting for the bus doors to open, the male bus driver decides now is the time to tell the angry drunk to pipe down and behave. I think when I got off the bus and cried, I was more angry and upset by the fact that the men in the situation 1. Had the audacity to act like this in public and make me feel uncomfortable and 2. Had the privilege to be able to laugh it off, or insight confrontation without taking into consideration how it could end for themselves or the people surrounding them. I also felt sad that myself and the others felt that it was only appropriate to intervene if I had been fully assaulted and not when my personal space was invaded and I felt uncomfortable. I realised I wouldn’t have been able to think these things without the feminist reading I had done in the last year and I began to wonder whether knowing everything had made the situation better or harder. It certainly felt harder/sader/angrier unpicking everyone’s reactions. However, when my friend told me the next day that she had also been harassed that night and later in the week my other friend was sexually harassed and we were all able to talk about it in clear terms, and we were able to articulate our anger and I was able to console and empower my friends and myself after such traumatic events I realised that I actually had a bit of superpower in knowledge and ignorance is in fact not bliss.

S

I went to turkey with my family. I was 15 at the time. I was groped multiple times in the train by men who were way older than me. I felt so uncomfortable. i din’t say anything but i moved away from them as quick as possible the moment i realised it. it happened about 8 times. Turkey is a hot country so i was wearing a skirt though i know what i was wearing would not matter. Just being a women is enough to be targeted. I once had a long distance friend who i spoke to on instagram, he was a guy and he once told me to show hims my tits. when i said no he said “other girls do that stuff” so i said “not me” he didn’t continue further wiht the request but he did moan over the phone and that was when i went silent on the phone until he hung up. 7 months later he randomly said he wanted to “fuck me” and he once told me that he would want to see “someone fuck me in the bum because it would be funny”, I did not find it funny at all, i felt vulnerable and small. I didn’t realise how bad it was because majority of the time we had a great friendship that it completely took me by surprise when it did come up. I kind of hinted at the shift in his behaviour and he just said “looks can be deceiving”. Once in school i was on a school trip and i went to a girls school, there was a moment when everyone was walking ahead of me and i stood still because i was really caught up daydreaming and suddenly i felt a presence beside me, it was a teacher who stood right next to me in a very empty room so his arm can tough mine and at first i didn’t really think much of it and i thought he would move but he just stood there but facing behind me i turn around and i can see that he was pretending to read writing on a wall but really it was just so he could be close to me i was a kid so i froze up like children normally do when they are scared but i had a feeling that he had this weird interest in me by how he stared at me and how he made sure i sat near him in one of his classes because of his seating plans.

Olivia

I was 14 years old when it happened. I was in a crowded ski lift when I noticed the man behind me was quite close to me. At first, I found it quite strange but then I thought I was getting paranoid. During the few minutes we were in the ski lift, I felt his hand brushing the back of legs, I tried to ignore it by scrolling through social media. When we got to the station, everyone got off the ski lift and I was ready to get off when I got pushed up against the lift. In that moment I realised I was being pinpointed by his two poles, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t do anything. The only thing that was crossing my mind was a alert/instinct telling me GET OUT OF THIS SITUATION. So, I elbowed him, I could see what he looked like, he was a old man I would say in his 60s. I rushed out of the lift to get to my family who were waiting at the button lift. I hadn’t processed what had just happened. It was on my mind for a while. It took me a month to build up the courage to tell my mum. She brushed it off and told me it was nothing and that I shouldn’t worry about it. What really scares me is what would have had happened if I didn’t manage to get off that lift.

A

To the post on the 20 January 2023 about men with long hair not being asked if they’re gay… Nah, that does happen, a lot. I’ve been called gay, a fag, homo, and many other things. I’ve also been groped and sexually assaulted by women and men. Sometimes the men don’t realize that I’m a man until they grab and I turn around. That one is always fun to see their faces but then they immediately follow it up with a “you fag.”

Freya

I was just on my way home from work, on one of the busses heading out of Brixton. I sat down on the top deck at the front of the bus, and I notice a man sitting down behind me. Though my headphones I hear his voice saying “I’m sitting behind a beautiful girl, a beautiful girl, I’m sitting behind a beautiful girl” my heart felt like it was gripped in a vice. I can see in my peripheral vision another man to my right looking at the man saying this about me, and then turning to look at me. There was no mistaking it I was in trouble, and the bystanders on the bus knew it, and I knew it. Without turning around I saw we were coming to a bus stop and I rang the bell. I causally got up as if I was completely unaware of the whole thing. As I started to walk down the stairs I thought I caught him say “I’m sorry darling” I thought if you are apologising, you knew what you were doing was wrong, so why did you do it ? Making me feel scared and unsafe. I immediately hopped onto the bus that followed behind. But the whole journey I could see him through the window of the bus in front. I worried the whole time that he might see me and follow me. I looked over my shoulder the whole way home. Thinking about it, I think I saw him before I got on the bus as well, I can’t be sure but he could of followed me onto the bus as well. Nothing like the threat of being assaulted to wake you up hey?

Mo

The constant accusation by the red top press and elsewhere that a women is ‘flaunting’ something (dress, abs, legs, backside, etc) is aggressive and abusive. Women wear clothes they enjoy – it is not flaunting anything. This word should become a total no-no when used to describe any female, as the word feisty is; let’s start challening its use please

AD

When I was a young woman I was repeatedly sexually harassed and treated like I was defined by how I looked. As an older woman I am routinely ignored, spoken to like I am stupid and I often feel invisible. I have really struggled to find who I am in public space. What I notice most is the cruelty towards women inherent in both- either as an object to be leered at or a non-person. One way I notice how I am not heard or seen by men is that they so often get my name wrong- it’s not an unusual name. It amazes me how often even men who have known me a long time still get my name wrong. I said to one of them once “You would not get my name wrong if I was 30 years younger” but I wouldn’t want to go back and be treated like that either.

M. G.

Non-binary afab swede here. I think I may have been groped on my back during a bus ride when I was a teen, but I was unsure whether or not it was really a grope or an accidental grab, so I shrugged it off and I forgot about it until now. Maybe I was in denial at the time because it had never happened to me before.