Step Back, Doors Closing

Dedicated to Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti, who compiled the anthology that took my views on sexual violence and flipped them on their heads. 

I was riding the metro to work today and finally grabbed a seat halfway down when I looked over and saw a younger middle-aged man wearing a bright red baseball cap with a smile stuck on his face. I was raised in the suburbs and did what you do there when you accidentally make eye contact with a stranger. I smiled. About a minute later, he got up, hopped across the aisle, and sat right in front of me. My music was on, but my eyes were going crazy. I was nervous and, to be honest, thought it was really strange. I was convinced I hadn't gone crazy- and had merely been cornered by it- when he turned around, smiled that goofy smile again, and then opened his mouth. I could read his lips.

"What's your name?"

I immediately suffered a flashback from the last time this happened, when I was alone and buying a coffee in McDonald's. I had been stirring my sugar when an all-too-older man came up behind me, spread out that same smile, and asked me who I was, where I was from, and what I was doing "here." Out of instinct, I said my name, not calmly but nervously, and quickly looked away.

"Where are you from?"

I rattled off my home state, smiled, and looked down. No prompts, no interest. He didn't catch on; he pursued some kind of story about gambling. Soon, he wanted to know why I was on this train, perhaps a lead into "what's a girl like you...", and I responded with an outright lie about visiting someone. The chances of me ever giving my information to some dimwit in a red Phillies cap is beyond me. I noticed movement on the cab and realized people were moving forward toward me.

"Alright, you look like a nice girl." (I'm glad, because if you don't get out of my face I'm going to have to stop rattling off fictions and start giving you a real answer.) "I'm gonna leave you alone since you clearly aren't interested. You're very much so not interested." He repeated 'not interested' until an older woman sat next to him, looked directly at him, and made her purpose known. I smiled; she was doing this for me. In contrast, there was a pause where I listened to two women behind me chat about how naive I was. "Some 29 year old got killed because she told someone where she was staying! Girls these days! They trust everyone. I would never tell some creep where I was from..."

"You should really move here. We'd go well together, I think." I looked up and saw every eye in the train on him. I looked down. I didn't want to answer; I wanted off the train.

When we hit my stop, I jumped up and ran. Before I got off, a suited 'gentleman' grabbed my arm and whispered, "Honey, don't ever give a stranger your information." I was struck with the realization that every person on that metro thought I was a trusting fool, and I looked up and shrugged. "I didn't. It was all lies."

The immediate reaction to this, of course, was that it led to me realizing just how many problems there are in this world if a girl in a sweater and jeans can't even ride a train by herself. At the Men & Women As Allies Conference in Washington, DC from April 14-15, we listened to an opening plenary speech by a male about how impacted he was by exercises where men compared their daily dangers, and their daily precautions, to that of women. When he compared his daily activities, which, to a man, present no danger in simply involving public transportation or lonely streets, to the situation when it involved a woman, he found that she had to go out of her way, all day, every day, just to ensure she would return home unscathed- and also realized that even then, she risked being overtaken, overwhelmed, or endangered, despite her precautions. And he was absolutely right.

It is troubling that we live in a world where women must constantly watch things from the edge. We must constantly be aware of where we are, who we're with, our surroundings, our clothing, our actions and body language. It has been delegated to us, by society, that our tasks include watching other people instead of demanding that others watch themselves; we must keep ourselves safe from predators instead of living in societies where we are empowered by messages that predatory behavior will not be tolerated. This is where socialization and the battle for sexual equality collide:

We live in a world, in a country, and in a society where women have to worry that standing on a metro, or walking down the street, is somehow an endangerment to their safety. We live in a world where women are told to drink less, to have fun less, to dress more conservatively, while men who attack them are simply portrayed as people acting on their "primal" or "animal" instincts. Do we condone rape and sexual violence? No. But we implicitly blame it on women when we consistently tell them to prepare and fail to follow through on educating (slightly less than) half of the population on how to properly conduct themselves.

When I got back to school, there was a presentation by the "Yes" Campaign happening in the middle of one of our school cafeterias. I sat back and watched as a campaign that I completely support (and we can discuss consent at a later date) branded alcohol the "most popular" date rape drug and failed to mention that when sexual assault happens, chances are higher that the men have been drinking than the women. 

When a collegiate woman needs to worry that every man on her metro car is a predator, there is a problem. The fundamentals of this problem are illustrated in how various people reacted to the situation as it unfolded.

First of all, thank god that the bystanders on that car were active. People moved toward me and made a general effort to significantly effect the situation by isolating the man in question.

The women behind me and the men who grabbed my arm, however, significantly impact my consumption of the events by somehow making me feel as if I had made a "bad impression." It struck me, then, that I cannot comprehend why women are afraid to, so often, verbally challenge people who make them uncomfortable and end situations aggressively. In a public setting like the metro car, there is no reason why I should not have been more comfortable taking on my creep than letting him sit there with that persistent, goofy, disgusting grin on his face. There are so many things I could have said to him.

I would have started with, "Sir, I'm so glad you think I'm a 'nice girl.' Some of us spend years trying to figure out what 'nice girl' looks like. So tell me, what does it look like? The studious, but lonely, girl on the metro? The desperate girl on the metro? The naive girl on the metro? The clueless girl on the metro?

I'm none of those. I'm an intelligent, informed, and aware young woman and I would appreciate you acting as such. Instead of making uncomfortable and unacceptable- and unwarranted, uninvited, and probably dangerous- overtures and proposals to and at me on a metro car, I would appreciate if you would keep your eyes and your mouth to yourself and handle yourself in the way a man should when he has the dignity to realize that I'm too young, too smart, and too good for his attention. I don't want to move here and live with you, and I don't want to shack up with you in my home state that you once rolled through.

No, I'm not interested. You're not respectful, courteous, or anything of the sort. You are living proof that no matter how progressive the city, no matter how respectful the woman, there is nothing I could do on this metro car to prevent someone from trying to lure me into their lives in an overtly sexual and inappropriate manner.

I smiled at you because I made eye contact with you and you, like every stranger on this car, could have deserved a nice gesture. But I've since realized that you deserved nothing of the sort, and I hope you can come to realize that the last thing I deserved was an invitation.

This is my stop, and you're staying right here."