Packed tram around 4pm. Guy sat across from me starts telling the girl sat next to me how good she looks and how well she dresses and asks if she could please tell other girls who dress like sluts how to behave and have respect for themselves. How these girls are throwing their lives away but maybe they can see the error of their ways if a peer tells them how they should adjust their behaviour to be more demure and value themselves more, as obviously they haven’t listened to any efforts to do so by their fathers and brothers.
This guys is speaking eloquently in a very polite, soft and charming tone, but what he is saying is so patronising, misogynistic and unhinged, my jaw drops. On the inside. We’re all strangers, the girl and I are dressed in jeans and jumpers. Everyone around us can hear what he his saying. Everyone is trying to ignore him. My only option is to engage this girl, this complete stranger, in conversation about the traffic and where we’ve been travelling, ignoring the man’s repeated attempts to engage us in his view of the world. To try and get us both out of this awkward position, as confronting the man feels like opening a can of worms or even worse – provoking an aggressive response in a very small crowded space.
Do I need to add this was in central Melbourne, not somewhere ‘dodgy’?