No one helped me with the train perv. And I get why.
Modern life is complicated for men.
Can you believe sexual harassment is still a thing? When it happened to me on Sunday night, my first thought was, Oh come on… really? Have you not seen all the phone videos of pervs and racists being publicly shamed on social media? Or the signs on tube carriages that warn that even the wrong kind of staring can get you arrested? How is this still a thing?
But it is and, for the first time since I was about 18, I experienced it. The irony being, I was on my way home from interviewing Caitlin Moran, on stage in Brighton, about her book What About Men?
It’s a thought-provoking book full of hilarious - but also heart-breaking - truths about what it’s like to be a man trying to navigate a post-feminist world. I truly believe everyone should read it but the boiled down takeaway is this: It’s not just women being fucked over by the patriarchy.
Little did I know I was about to watch a live example of that being played out.
I’ve never been much of a target for pervy crap from men. Maybe it’s my well-practised resting bitch face? Or the fact that my whole short hair and glasses thing is giving Valma from Scooby Doo vibes? As you can see in the above pic, that evening I was wearing a baggy-crotched adult babygro.
But here we were. I was already in a bad mood because the very quick train I was supposed to take home was cancelled just as it was supposed to be leaving. This meant me taking a long way home via the tube. Fuming. Could it get any worse?
Yeah.
On the tube, I’m sitting next to one guy and there are three sitting opposite us. I’m minding my own business when I hear, ‘Excuse me, love…’ And already I know that I am the ‘love’ because I am the woman. I put my head up and lock eyes with him. I’m still assuming I’m going to be asked what the time is, or if I have any change. But no, he asks, ‘Are you white?’ Which throws me because, I obviously am. So I pause and must look puzzled for a second before quickly shrugging and nodding.
‘Yeah…. Then I bet you’ve got a nice pussy, ain’t ya? Hey? Yeah, I bet it is.’
(Sidenote: Of all the words you can think of to describe the female gentalia, ‘pussy’ is the one I really cannot stand. I don’t know why - all those years of hearing about Mrs Slocombe’s in my childhood? I’ll take ‘cunt’ over it any day of the week.)
I let my eyes sink into disapproval.
The other men around me visibly tense up. One sitting opposite locks eyes with me, shakes his head and his eyes flicker with anger. I grimace back and shake my head. Each of us stares more intensely at our phones. No one’s going to make a viral video tonight.
Of course I want to get up and sit somewhere else. But another instinct takes hold, one that I think many women will understand. I’m worried that removing myself will be the very thing that makes it worse. He might well enjoy getting a reaction. If he gets up to follow me then I really might have an actual problem, and one that possibly others will need to get involved in. So either way, I’m now feeling deeply responsible for everyone else’s discomfort.
Still, I decide that not moving might be enough to defuse the situation. I’ll never forget the time my mother once realised, suddenly, that she was sitting right next to a 5ft venomous brown snake - Australia is no place for wimps - and had the wherewithal to just stay statue still. If she’d moved she’d have almost certainly been bitten. This was the principle I was applying. If I didn’t react, he might quickly understand the goading was pointless.
Turns out I am wrong about that. Undeterred, he repeats the pussy mantra, over and over again.
But now I realise: He’s drunk or maybe on something. Possibly crack. Bulging, dazed eyes, rambling obscenities. It’s no excuse, but it’s a mitigating factor in how one reacts.
My daughter says she would have got off and waited for another train. And yes, I did think about that too but my belligerence kicked in. I was already getting home much, much later than I should have had to.
I still have 15 minutes or so on this train. I’m starting to worry about what happens if this guy and I are going to the same station. I start to text my husband, asking him to come and meet me: the walk home is short but it’s also dark and quiet. But then I feel guilt. Don’t worry him. I then feel stupid: You’re over-reacting, this is not a big deal. This gross, high man will not stop talking about genitals, shagging me and I’m the one feeling silly and like, somehow, I just have to demonstrate being able to handle it.
Some people might be outraged that the other men sitting near me did nothing. Said nothing. But I wasn’t angry with them. I think we were all quietly assessing the situation. He’s mentally ill. He could be unpredictable. He has not tried to touch me and frankly, I don’t think he can stand up.
And it’s at this point it hits me how complicated this scenario is for these men.
I imagine they’re all wondering if they should say something. Actually I’m sure they’re all sitting there feeling a huge expectation to say something. I’m not sitting here secretly wishing they would, but I bet they think I am. And so then they’re now also feeling embarrassed - cowardly - because they’re silent. And men are ‘supposed’ to be big and strong protectors, right? Those are the patriarchal rules, yes? I bet the guy who offered me his angry eyes expression, is feeling especially silly about just pulling a face. It’s interesting that I find his presence the most reassuring, and you know why? Because he is the one person who has at least made sympathetic eye contact, yes, but also: he’s a big guy. He could take him, I think. If it came to that. And that’s hardly fair, is it? This man doesn’t want to have a punch-up when he’s just trying to get home on a Sunday night. I wonder if he is thinking, Oh god, I really hope no one’s expecting me to stand up to this prick. I hope I don’t have to.
To be a man and confront someone like that is to immediately invite escalation and, in all likelihood, a physical one. I don’t want that. And I don’t blame these guys for not wanting to start a possible whole other thing where it is they who end up in the police station. I think of my own husband, and the time many years ago he nearly got his face smashed in when he and I both tried to help a woman being beaten to a pulp by her partner. I know that in this scenario, I would not be massively consoled that he was being a hero if he was being rushed to A&E with stab wounds.
I feel guilty for not moving to another carriage, because I feel guilty about possibly making the men feel guilty about not doing anything. I think they are relieved that I’m handling this calmly. But I also think they’re probably thinking, ‘Why doesn’t she just bloody move?’
And still the ‘pussies’ keep flying. One stop before mine, Big Guy leaves the train. The stranger I’ve chosen to believe has telepathically communicated to me that he will Kick Off if really necessary, is now gone. And so now is when I finally decide to move, several metres down the length of the carriage.
Pussy man does not follow. So of course, now I feel really stupid and guilty for not just moving in the first place.
There was only one person in this situation who didn’t feel an ounce of guilt, tension, embarrassment or shame. And you know who that was.
Now, all in all this was a low stakes occurrence. Not one anyone that should have to put up with, but no real harm done. But it says so much about the female experience that I am at pains to tell you that I’m not trying to over-play what happened, and yet still feel embarrassed that you might think I’m being a drama queen. I’ve thought about it a lot over the past couple of days, unpacking just how struck I was by the silent pressures everyone - me and those around me - got lumbered with. I sat there trying to calculate what to do with this man’s anti-social behaviour, largely because I immediately felt the awkwardness it was putting everyone else through as well as me.
I don’t have any profound conclusions. I just found it a very interesting anthropological moment. These observations gave me a real time distraction that helped me breathe and stop feeling quite so mortified as someone loudly enquired about my… you know the word, I can’t type it again.
What are your thoughts? How have you handled similar?
Terrible situation for everyone, and your reaction is completely understandable. I have left a Tube carriage where someone has been acting pervy towards me, but in that case I was standing and it was easy to step out at the last minute and wait for the next train. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have one day per week where all the men were switched off for 24 hours and we could all have some peace!
It sounds like you would have appreciated it if the men around you had stepped in but the same can’t necessarily be said if the situation is reversed.
I stepped in to a rapidly escalating situation on a train recently because I felt a woman might calm things down.
A clearly volatile man got on the train with two mates, sound system blaring. A male commuter stood up and asked him to turn the music down. It all kicked off.
Music man was twitchy, angry, getting more aggressive and then Mr Commuter told him he was a prison officer and he “dealt with men like him every day”. I thought the next thing might be a knife coming out so I took a call on it in the moment and it worked.
I stood up (because these two men were standing up/facing off) and I pointed to two kids in front of me and I gently suggested to him that the kids were scared. He backed down, even called me ‘love’ and then got off at the next station.
Funny thing, though, was that all of the men in the carriage that had done nothing (and there were a lot of men in that carriage that morning) either said nothing or thanked Mr Commuter. None of them even looked at me.
The only person that thanked me was the grandmother of the two kids. Even the man that I’d possibly, maybe rescued from getting beaten up or worse just completely ignored me like I didn’t exist. Male pride maybe?