It’s just a wild guess, but I doubt I will ever hear these words from a woman: “Yeah, I got on the Purple Line in the Loop. We were packed in, standing wall to wall. After a minute I felt this guy’s hand groping me all over my hallowed parts. We started dating after that. He’s such a great guy.”
And I’m guessing I’ll never hear that, because it is my understanding that women don’t like to be touched under creepy circumstances by strangers.
Previously, when I’ve heard women complain about being groped on public transportation, I figured it was an exaggeration. I’ve been touched on the “L” too, but I don’t think those guys meant it. We all seemed to be trying not to touch each other, but at rush hour, it can be impossible.
You just do your best to aim for the faces and personal atmospheres you find least offensive.
Once I started asking around, however, I realized that fully half the women I queried had some story to tell, like the co-worker who said a guy on squeaky-clean Metra just flat reached over and put his hands on her knees.
Then there was another co-worker who had never been groped–Aha! I thought–but she had been flashed.
All I’ve ever gotten were brief encounters with drunks, punks and the occasional other-worldly free spirit. So I’m willing to accept that women may well have a very different experience on public transit than men do.
New Yorkers proved this to be the case with a recent subway sting that nailed 13 guys for groping or flashing. That might not seem so monumental until you realize that the same thing could happen to your wife, sister, daughter, girlfriend. Then it starts to seem a lot more like a mini-rape than some freak’s idea of a little fun.
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I can’t know how disgusted a woman must feel when that happens.
I do know from my experiences that when a guy plops down next to me on the train and lets his body mass spill over the invisible line that marks the adult-size seat I paid for, my burn begins.
I realize this perpetrator probably doesn’t mean any harm, but he also doesn’t care that this is very unwelcome intimacy. And if pancaking myself against the wall doesn’t solve it, I say something, because I have a right not to be touched.
Heck, even my wife has a right not to be touched by me, if that’s how she feels at the moment.
I don’t know if the gropers think this is a crude form of flirtation or what, but I would suggest this to women who suffer this indignity. Say something. You don’t have to say it to the scum bag, but you can say it to the guys around you. Because I also suppose that a few of them would be willing to grope the perp’s face long enough for a cop to show up.
After all, we’re not wild about being in the same gender with these guys any more than you like being on the same train.
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Send e-mail for Ross Werland to [email protected].