I Was Harassed in Public. The Reaction of Bystanders Was the Most Surprising Thing
A young man recently filmed himself being a model bystander when he saw a creepy guy making a woman very uncomfortable. He pretended he knew her and gave her an excuse to walk away from the guy bothering her, for which she was clearly grateful.
Most women have had a similar experience to this woman.
Most women think it sounds trivial when they describe it. It’s often not the words spoken, it’s everything else. It is hard to explain how the atmosphere, body language and tone of voice made the situation feel ominous. Instead, we often end up saying “it was nothing really” and dismiss ourselves.
One of my many Nothing Reallys is below. When thinking about it for the first time in decades, I realised that the bystanders were as noteworthy as the creep himself.
I had an abundance of onlookers near me who did not act. However, I also had one lone man who eventually did try to intervene, but I rejected his help. Hopefully you will see why I did. And why I think we need to focus more on bystander responsibility.
Lisa and I were 14. It was summer and we were wearing 90’s A-line strappy dresses. We were all polyester, hormones and cheap perfume.
In an old London Underground train, we sat on a pair of ancient seats opposite another pair of ancient seats in a booth. A long row of people sat facing us.
A man came and took the seat opposite us. Something about him pushed up a red flag in my mind.
I focused on some grey-pink chewing gum blobs, lined up like tiny brains on the floor. I hoped he would get off the train soon.
He didn’t. He stared at us instead. And kept on staring. An unwavering, penetrating stare. He examined our faces but also everything else; legs, thighs, ankles, feet, tummy, barely existent breasts. I shifted in my seat and tried to pull down my dress over my legs. I wished I was wearing trousers.
After 5 minutes of staring, which felt like an hour, he tapped our legs with a leaflet he had. I moved my legs. Lisa did the same.
He carried on, his eyes never leaving us. He tapped again. I avoided eye contact. I tried not to act too bothered as, while I did not want to encourage him, neither did I want to make him angry.
Why didn’t I just move? Despite my belief that wearing thick eyeliner and knowing how to inhale cigarette smoke made me a grown up, it did not. 14 year olds do not think like adults. I stayed put. He moved his legs so they rubbed ours. I cursed the small seats.
After what felt like aeons of staring and ‘accidental’ leg touching he asked us if we liked McDonald’s and if we would come with him. He would pay. We ignored him. I could feel Lisa as tense as wood next to me and I knew she was trying not to cry.
I looked around the carriage. It was full. The people in the seats facing us were silent, like a one-row audience. Not one of them moved or spoke. I began to think we were wrong to be scared and we were being impolite by ignoring this man. If that were not the case then one of the audience would have intervened long ago because, well, they were normal people.
With his eyes pinning us down the man started to ask questions:
“What are your names? Where are you going? Are you meeting friends?”
He looked at me and asked if I liked French fries. Staring at some graffiti, whose author was promising to be very intimate with my mum, I squeaked “no”. I naively hoped that might put him off. It didn’t.
Lisa started to cry silently. He was unperturbed and pushed on. He touched my legs with his again but it was his non-physical action that was the most unnerving; the staring. My mind raced, trying to run away from his eyes.
A thought dawned on me. Maybe this man was horrible but no one was saying anything as they thought we had brought it on ourselves. We were wearing dresses and lots of badly applied make-up. Surely this is the attention we wanted. This was our fault.
The thought of my daughter having these kind of self-blaming thoughts puts me in a frothing rage. But I was young then, stumbling blindly through puberty in the 1990s. ‘Slut-shaming’ wasn’t a well-known phrase in my world but ‘whore’ and ‘she was asking for it’ were.
When all these thoughts were creeping in, a man in his 30s walked up the length of the carriage towards us. He stopped at our booth. I was barely aware of him until he spoke.
“Is this man bothering you? Are you two ok?”
Lisa, with a tear-stained face, remained silent.
I said, “Um, er we’re ok. Yep. We’re ok”
He looked torn, understandably unsure of what to do.
“Are you absolutely sure? Do you want to move seats? You can have mine.”
“No, thank you for offering. We’re ok. Thank you.”
People are not always rational. We were both so terrified of making the man angry that we would rather put up with him than move. The nice man walked away reluctantly. The other passengers averted their gaze and looked sheepish.
The train finally reached a place we knew well. I nudged Lisa. We got up and took a few steps. The train doors were slowly opening. I checked the creepy man was still sitting down and hissed at Lisa
“We’re going to run up the stairs and out and go to the nearest shop on the high street. Run!”
She was crying. We ran. We emerged into the sunlight and hearts pounding we ran into a Body Shop.
After a very long time loitering by the white musk section, we decided it was safe to leave. We were wary and tense. Instead of going out as we had planned, we went home. We didn’t see the man again.
Looking back, the lack of reaction from all the onlookers who were 2 meters away from us (much closer than the man who tried to help) annoys me almost as much as the creep himself.
Although my story shows that help might be rejected anyway, the fact the kind man spoke up did two important things for me.
1) It persuaded me that the creep opposite us was being as horrible as we thought and we were not overreacting. It was not Nothing Really.
2) It made me realise that it was not our fault and there might even be help if we wanted to take it.
Often, someone making it clear that you are not to blame and that they will back you up means a lot.
So is there a best practice guide to intervening?
Yes, there is! Bystander training has been implemented in lots of universities but in workplaces it is far less commonplace. The group of friends I asked had never even heard of it.
The ‘bystander approach’, as promoted by Dr Jackson Katz amongst others, looks at the role of bystanders in respect of sexual assault and sexism. It asks people, particularly men, to speak up and take action when they see or hear something awry.
It is not about being a superhero or putting your own life at risk (please don’t). In fact, the smaller actions are really important. Bystander action, as defined by people like Dr Katz, includes everything from men telling their pals that their comments are sexist (and they sound like a douchebag) to speaking up if they see a bit of sexual harassment at the gym. Men are not simply discussed in terms of their role as perpetrators of harassment or abuse, but they are invited to be part of the solution. The idea is that by involving everyone in the conversation we create a social shift to ‘a peer culture where sexist abuse is seen as uncool and unacceptable’.
The need for change is as relevant as ever given the results of a recent UK APPG report showing most young women have been harassed/assaulted in public, as well as a report showing 60% of women have been harassed while running.
More people should be speaking up about speaking up. Safe and effective methods of intervening should be discussed more widely and the involvement of men in this conversation is crucial. We have to ask our brothers, fathers and sons to start using their bystander voice more. This is not a responsibility to be borne by women alone.
