Aileen

I was harassed on the Edinburgh — Glasgow 8pm train this evening. I’m just in from making a long statement to the police. And I’m writing things out here partly to make myself feel better and partly to try to make speaking about these things more normal. They happen a lot. It needs to stop.

The train was absolutely rammed at Waverley Station, and I hopped on with a few minutes to spare. It was standing room only and I was next to a young mum with her baby in a pram, right up against the doors.

Seconds later, three intoxicated folk in their 40s clattered up to the train. The women shoved their way on and the man stopped to piss down the side of the carriage onto the tracks. Then he pushed into the tightly packed doorway, the doors shut and the train pulled out.

‘Sorry for urinating,’ he slurs at me. I gesture at the mum and her baby. She looks so uncomfortable and a bit scared. I give her a wee smile and waggle my fingers at the baby.

‘You’re beautiful,’ the drunk man says. I ignore him. He tries to touch my cheek and my neck. I tell him sharply, ‘don’t touch me.’
He is affronted and acts insulted. ‘But you’re beautiful!’ he says, in a tone that tells me he thinks he is offering logic. ‘I have a daughter like you!’

His female friends mutter and tut. He laughs at me. ‘Ooooh! You’re… what’s the word? Political!’

‘You bet.’ I tell him.

‘What hope do you have for the future?’ he jibes. His tone tells me that he means ‘how could a woman like you find a partner?’

Again he tries to touch me. Again I tell him ‘don’t touch me.’ This level of entitlement is making me absolutely livid.

He huffs and his female friends roll their eyes. ‘Just leave it,’ they say.

He moves onto the young mum. Same again. He tries to touch her in the same way. ‘Don’t touch her either,’ I say, sharply again.
‘Awww, but why not? She’s beautiful.’

‘Because she doesn’t want you to. Can’t you see? You’re trying to push into our personal space and that’s really not OK. I don’t like it and she doesn’t either. I’m happy to chat, but you’ve totally crossed a line and I’m making that clear to you now.’

He goes back to his beer. And that’s when his female friends lay into me.

‘You can’t dictate what he does!’ one of them says. ‘Yeah, you’ve got personal space problems. Issues! You’ve got issues!’ her pal goes.
I’m caught totally off guard because I’d assumed their comments and eye rolls until this point had been directed at him not me. It hadn’t even occurred to me that this might not be the case.

Tears are running down my face before I even register how upset I am. I keep my head down and don’t look at anyone, apart from trying to give the young mum a reassuring smile.

‘Drama queen!’ the first woman jibes. ‘Look at her creating a scene!’
‘No personality in the corner there!’ the second woman points at me.

My nose is running and my breathing ragged. I take some deep breaths, trying to calm myself but it doesn’t work. They keep making jibes. ‘I was only joking, beautiful! You’re beautiful! I’ve got a daughter like you!’ the man nudges me. I can’t stop crying.

The second the train pulls into Linlithgow I get onto the platform, and change carriages.

I am so grateful to find friendly strangers in the doorway of the next carriage. They ask what’s happened. One man is very sweet, telling me he thinks it’s horrible. Another woman agrees. But then she quickly starts explaining how it was always like that when she started work in the 1980s. She implies that I should pull myself together and not be upset. She means well but I feel tiny. I just can’t stop crying.

When I get to Queen Street a young woman and her boyfriend who had been in the first carriage come up to me. The woman is upset because she’d seen what happened and not felt safe to do anything about it. The man apologises because even although he’d been only half a metre away, he hadn’t realised anything was going on.

I want to tell other women to not be afraid to speak up when they get harassed, and to speak up for other women getting harassed where possible, because others will look out for you and support you. It’s plainly not always true. But that doesn’t mean we can stop.

Cis men, please ask your female and non-binary pals what sexist harassment looks like. You might be surprised at how often it doesn’t look like anything at all.

If you ever do see something happening, and you feel safe to do so, please please please either speak up against the harasser, or else speak with the victim to keep them company. The fact that no-one did this for me tonight meant that I felt threatened and unsafe.

Get the British Transport Police number into your phone. It’s 61016. Being able to text them from the train was a wee comfort and gave me a task to focus on. It also meant I had a reference number I could hand to an officer in the station.

I made a two hour statement to wonderfully competent but brisk, clinical policeman. He put a roll of toilet paper next to me when he realised the tears weren’t stopping, and asked me about my festive plans between questions. I signed off the second draft of my statement, and off record, started to tell him that I didn’t think that the man was a bad person, just- the police officer chipped in, ‘uhuh, he was just drunk.’ I was going to say ‘seriously conditioned into a sense of entitlement taught to him by his being male in our patriarchal society.’ I cannot stress enough that I don’t blame that officer for what he said. He thought he was being nice and reassuring. I sincerely appreciate that. But even after giving a long, detailed statement of such a clear cut incident, to hear that sort of statement made it all the clearer how much work we have left.

Fuck the patriarchy, and the entitlement it teaches. Mon the strong women. Here’s to lessening this utter shite in our lifetimes. It harms us all.

PS If you think this post would help anyone, I am happy for it to be shared.