"Women Have Seen It All on Subway, Unwillingly" nyt

[bloom]

This week, as the Police Department announced the arrest of 13 men charged with groping and flashing women in the subways, women around the city nodded. Yes, they said, this had happened to them. Yesterday. Last month. Last fall. Twenty years ago....

The crackdown in New York followed a number of highly publicized cases in which women helped the police arrest flashers by snapping pictures of them with their cellphone cameras.

Some women said yesterday that they did not expect the police effort — 13 suspected gropers and flashers were arrested over 36 hours last month — to make a big dent in the problem. But, they added, it was a start.

"I feel better they caught these guys," said Juliette Fairley, 35, an actress who said that she encountered a flasher on her N train at 42nd Street not long ago. "But there will always be people out there like this."

...Sara Payne, 25, of Manhattan, who takes the No. 1 train to work for a jewelry company in the Bronx, said she has been flashed about six times on the subway in the eight years she has lived in New York. She said it happened more when she was a freshman in college than it does now.

"Maybe I'm a little more confident now," she said, "so people are less prone to try and intimidate me."...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/24/nyregion/24harass.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th


This reminded me of the story about the website where women were posting offenders. I wonder if the "crackdown" is related. :shrug:

[benburch]

1. We should give the women garden shears.

Because if these jerks had less to show off, they might not bother.

[eleny]

2. I liked seeing the story of the woman with the cell phone camera

It was on the news in the last couple of months. A guy flashed her, she snapped his picture with her cell phone. It went on the net and the guy was identified and caught. He's now serving time. Cell phones with cameras, Ben. That's what we need.

Edit: Here's the story http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/340923p-291030c.html

[TheCowsCameHome]

3. Geez, that's great. Imagine when perv finds he's on "Candid Camera"

Smile pretty, you sicko!

Way to go!

[BrklynLiberal]

11. Excellent idea!!!!!! The best reason for upgrading to a cell phone with a

camera.

[NJCher]

4. that's pretty clever, but sans camera

The way to deal with it is to glance impersonally at the perv, keeping a blase look on one's face. Then eyes straight ahead, back to business, nothing to see here, yawn.

They live for the reaction. Cheating them of it is the best revenge.




Cher

[Berry Cool]

5. But how about the ones who are groping or pressing themselves at you?

I think it's high time women in that situation started saying "Excuse me, will whoever's got his d--- pressed up against my butt remove it, please?"

I would think that would cause a sudden clearing of the space around her...

[Book Lover]

6. So the cops are actually doing something about this

How ... nice of them. Fucking finally.

After maybe the third time I was groped, I stopped being nice. If you were ever on the E r F train in the early 90's and heard a loud Queens voice yelling, "Get your fucking hands off me!" well, that was yours truly. I don't understand why more New York women were so reticent to make a scene on the subway. Well, actually I do of course.

[Warpy]

7. I never saw a flasher, but I did occasionally get groped

I have a stage voice that shatters glass, and "Get your hands off me, you pervert!" would invariably cause said pervert to slink out of the train at the next stop, to the amused giggles of the rest of the passengers. It worked on pickpockets, too.

A friend was flashed when she had her 2 kids, age 4 and 5 in tow. She had the presence of mind to point at the exposed member and say "You call THAT a penis?" Needless to say, he slunk off, too. The kids had been taught the proper names for anatomy, and didn't seem to be particularly damaged by viewing some of it.

If gropers and weenie waggers didn't have a tendency to escalate over time, they'd just be a source of amusement for uppity broads like my friend and me.

[bloom]

8. An opinion piece in the NYTimes today

talks of the reactions of women - she suggests that women in our society do not confront the men - apparently that was the case among women she interviewed. I remember yelling at some asshole in middle school - he seemed to think that that was funny (as did the friends he was with - it was a croweded hall) - like it added to his enjoyment of his harrassment. Middle-schoolers (he might have been in 9th grade - it was a 7th-9th grade school) might be more likely to suport the harrassment by their peers - a subway situation might be different. At least unless - it was a subway full of friends (or men who were into the "men's code" or whatever) who all thought that sexual harrassment was funny. :grr:

Having the sense that others would back the women up - instead of the perpetrators - seems to have a lot to do with it.


Anyway - here's a snip of the article:

July 1, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Moving Violations

By DEBORAH TANNEN
Washington

RECENTLY, the New York City police arrested 13 men, saying they had groped or flashed women on the subway. Reading the press reports that followed, in which many women told of similar assaults, I was reminded of one of the first academic papers I published — an analysis of how Greek women talked about just such experiences.

I was also reminded of my own experience on the New York subway....This memory eventually receded, like the man through the subway doors. But it resurfaced 15 years later when, as a member of a team investigating how people talk about personal experiences, I asked New Yorkers if they'd had any memorable experiences on the subway. Indeed they had. And most of the stories I heard from women were about being groped, flashed, rubbed against or otherwise molested by men.

Around the same time, I spent eight months doing research in Athens, so I decided to record Greek women recounting narratives I could compare to the New Yorkers'. Since most of the subway stories were actually molesting stories, I asked Greek women if they'd ever been molested.

The experiences the Greek women described were similar to those I'd heard from Americans. But there was a difference. Most of the American women — like those recently interviewed in the New York news media — told me they had felt humiliated and helpless and had done or said nothing. Of the 25 stories Greek women told me, only eight concluded with the speaker doing nothing. In the others, she said she had yelled, struck back or both.

...For one thing, most Greeks, like their Mediterranean neighbors, place value on expressiveness, whereas American culture is influenced by the Northern European and British emphasis on public decorum. That's why Americans often mistake animated Greek conversation for argument. Another cultural difference is how readily strangers get involved in others' interactions. I once saw two men arguing on an Athens street; when one raised his hand to strike, he was immediately restrained by a passer-by....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/opinion/03tannen.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

[Swamp Rat]

9. Interesting

I'd like to see more research in this are in places like Tokyo, India, etc. where taboos are different than the USA and the Mediterranean.

[bloom]

10. I can't remember where all

but - there are places that are starting to have separate subway cars for women because the problem is getting so out of control.

On the one hand - it seems like that is reverting back to some old victorian thing - on the other hand - if the problem is so bad - it's like anarchy.

[onager]

12. Certainly not just an American problem...

I'm working in Alexandria, Egypt. The beautiful Montazah Gardens, on the east end of the city, are notorious for flashers. Lots of bushes, trees, and lonely trails. I've talked to both Egyptian and western women who have had bad experiences in that place.

This may be because Montazah is also famous as a local Lover's Lane and sort of pickup area. It's the only place I've ever seen fully veiled Muslim women holding hands with their boyfriends. ("Fully veiled" meaning the face/hands completely covered.)

I saw something sort of...heart-warming in Montazah not long ago. A car with 4 loud young male idiots in it pulled up beside a couple of teen girls who were walking along minding their own business. The girls were wearing the Muslim head-covering, the hijab, but they also wore Western clothes--jeans and tops. That alone can make a woman a target to many Egyptian males. They guys were doing the usual braying, hooting and hollering.

Anyway, one of the girls let loose with a stream of Arabic, and I don't think she was telling those guys to have a nice day. Whatever she said, it worked. They pulled off without another word.

As for public transport, I often ride the trams here in Alexandria. For any literary fans, those are the same Alexandria trams E.M. Forster wrote so much about. No wonder, since he met his first lover on a tram. He was an Egyptian tram conductor--the lover, not E.M. Forster :-).

The trams always have one car reserved for women. I found that out the hard way, when I boarded a nice, comfortable almost empty tramcar. A woman who spoke English eventually got on and told me I was in the women's car. She was nice enough to warn me that if the conductor caught me in there, I would be fined 10 Egyptian pounds (about US $1.50).

The difference between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where I also lived for a couple of years, is that women don't HAVE to ride in the women's car. They can ride anywhere they want, but if they want to ride with only women, the option is available. In Saudi Arabia, the back (naturally) of the public buses were screened off and women had to ride in there.

I haven't heard much about groping or flashing on the trams. That may be partly because every tramcar still has its own conductor, who keeps an eye on things--no pun intended.