In various countries around the world, women and teenage girls are regularly groped while riding commuter trains. This, I suspect, is not news to most of you; indeed, I know one reader of this blog who’s had this happen to her. In Japan, one survey found that two-thirds of female passengers in their twenties and thirties had been groped. Because the problem is so prevalent in that country — and the authorities are so ineffective at controlling it – some train lines have instituted women-only train cars in an attempt to cut down on groping (and on false accusations of groping as well). “Women-only” train cars have also introduced, in a limited way, in India, where harassment of women in public – known as “Eve teasing” – is distressingly common.
So what’s more appalling – the fact that groping on trains is so common in Japan that two-thirds of young women commuters have had to endure it themselves, or the fact that a small number of train cars have been set aside for women in a fairly half-assed attempt to curtail some of this groping?
For a lot of MRAs, the latter. The subject came up on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit recently, inspiring some of the regulars to fulminate against this allegedly misandrist outrage. Fatalistic pulled out the n-word and this facile comparision:
Here’s what I’m seeing here: “At least we let you in the back of the bus, nigger.”
ExpendableOne, meanwhile, managed to work in a staggering number of standard-issue MRA complaints into this one sentence:
I think it’s discrimination and subjugation entirely based on misandry, negative male type-casting/stereotyping and anti-male heterophobia.
Ztakn seemed to suggest that it was all part of some oddly indirect money-making scheme on the part of, I guess, women:
To keep it short they exploit and propagate fears not only demonizing men in society but also terrorizing women and scaring the shit out of them making them more paranoid than they need to be.
And then they do it for money.
How would that work exactly?
1) Get groped
2) Set up women-only train cars
3) ???
4) Profit?
Given that the Men’s Rights subreddit is one of the few Men’s Rights forums online that is not completely overrun with misogynist fanatics, there were others who responded more reasonably. Alienblonde noted:
In Japan it’s a massive problem where school girls get groped by older males on trains in peak hour.
Happened to me in Europe too when I was back packing. Some old Spanish guy sat beside me and decided to feel me up.
Women shouldn’t have to deal with this and unfortunately, until it stops happening, I think [women only train cars are] justified.
Naturally, this being a Men’s Rights forum, she quickly found herself the focus of a game of “blame the victim.” Fatalistic accused her of “[j]ustifying discrimination with this all men are potential criminals feminist dogma.” When she pointed out that she was not, in fact, doing this, he moved on to castigating her for not making a public scene when she was groped:
You should out the people who actually do these things rather than treat the rest of us as criminals by default with disgusting bigoted policies and the back of the bus mentality.
When she pointed out that this could have put her in more serious danger, he merely scoffed:
You would have to be paranoid and spoonfed the most egregious of feminist women are helpless, men are unstoppable beasts that need other men with guns to drag them away dogma to believe that all but the most psychopathic would persist or try to harm you if you outed them to a crowd for their actions.
Easy for you to say.
Of course, when women DO confront sexual harassers on trains, as I noted in a post on the infamous New York Subway flasher last November, they get reactions like this sarcastic Reddit comment from one member of the men-are-oppressed club.
Yes, because obviously her heterophobia needs to be glorified… Penises are so disgusting and scary, obviously women should totally be justified in fearing them and there couldn’t possibly be any kind of misandry involved with such contempt, befuddlement or “helplessness/horror” to the mere sigh[t] of male anatomy. /s
Yep, if you’re a woman on a train, not wanting to have some random dude pull his penis out and rub it on you is “heterophobia.” Who knew?
In the case of the subway flasher, the alleged perp did indeed flee when confronted. (He was later arrested.) That’s pretty much the best-case scenario. But it’s hardly the only possible result, and it’s understandable why a woman riding the train to work (much less one backpacking alone in a foreign country) would hesitate to publicly accuse a groper of groping her. Having women-only train cars cuts down on the number of times women are put in this difficult situation.
Yes, in an ideal world, there would be no need for women-only train cars. In an ideal world, men wouldn’t grope women on trains.
@MRAL Here, I’ll translate Ami for you:
“*Yawns* Your remarks make it very obvious you are a Poe. Let’s come up with a new topic for people to comment on rather than debating whether or not people’s stories of public groping are true. Everyone who’s still raw after talking about misogyny in last night’s thread shouldn’t engage with MRAL, but come to me for supportive hugs instead!
“MRAL, since your experience playing WoW using a female avatar was more positive than when you use a male one, does this now mean that you’re being spit on virtually as a male? Soon we’ll have virtual height bigotry! Some other examples of virtual spitting could be: ‘Just how long IS your motherboard!? Your monitor is HOW small!? That graphics card is SO BETA! You’re a social freak level 80!'”
Better?
No, I don’t think they’re explicit lies. But I’ve come to the conclusion that women in our society are so privileged and arrogant, they interpret nearly anything as harassment (esp. if from a looks omega) and then exaggerate to holy hell. This was reinforced by my experience as a female MMORPG character.
Think, MEAL, think: in what significant ways is WoW different from real life? Come on, I know you can do this.
In terms of the harassment study, I really can’t think of anything. You’re dealing with anonymous people (just as on traincars or in public, where people are strangers). For all intents and purposes I am a female on the street. I don’t experience much negativity, on the other hand, I experience favoritism. The wymyyyyn here need to check their considerable privilege.
The utter cluelessness…it leaves me speechless.
You think these stories are bullshit? Fuck you, very much, MRAL. Never once, in all your inane ranting, have I ever doubted that you are who you say you are, and you really do perceive the world in the twisted way you do. In fact, most posters here are extremely credulous of your (frankly, rather incredible) stories of less-than-optimum eye symmetry and elevator snubbings.
Here’s a representative sample of the most memorable times a man had treated my body as his property in public. (This list is by no means exhaustive):
I’m sixteen, at my very first Dropkick Murphy’s concert. It is an all day event, three stages, lots of cool punk and proto-punks to mosh with, a whole crowd of my best male friends from high school are with me. I’m moshing, bouncing around, getting really close to the stage. The Murphy’s are playing one of my favorites, and I’m really into it. AND THEN. I feel a tightness around my right breast. I look down. A hand IS RUBBING MY BREAST. I look around. An older man (20s? 30s?) leers at me and melts away in the crowd. FUCK THAT NOISE. I go after him, I grab him by the shoulder and spin him around. We’re in a completely different part of the crowd, away from anyone who knows me. I kick him in the balls and yell, “WHAT DID YOU LEARN?!?” All the men around me tell me that was “not cool”. I tell them to fuck themselves and sit out the next song alone.
I’m 23, taking a taxi from my post to a friend’s town three hours away in Central Asia. As I mentioned earlier, being the third passenger to arrive in a taxi full of men is a losing hand, but it is past 6 pm, and this is my only chance to get out of town. I am offered some shots of vodka by the other passengers, and I figure the ride is gonna suck anyway, so I have two. The fourth passenger (also a man) shows up, and we leave. I’m behind the driver, because even tho I claimed the front seat, Mr. Fourth Passenger was an Afghan war vet, so I gave up my seat at the driver’s bequest. Mr. Middle Seat is “drunk” and somehow when he “falls over” while the car bounces over potholes, he always falls on my lap, or shoulder, or leg. I start to brace my arm against the driver seat to keep him off. Mr. Right Seat tries to pull him off me, but Mr. Middle Seat is too “drunk” and keeps fighting back. At one point he proposes marriage to me. I say no. He asks if I will marry his son. I say no again. Finally, half way there, the driver stops the car and tell Mr. Middle Seat that he will be kicked out if he can’t behave. When we get to Mr. Middle Seat’s destination, we push him out of the car and he collapses on the sidewalk. We dump his bag next to him and leave him there.
I’m 26 and riding the metro alone around midnight on a Friday, after a bar-crawl. I start to doze. I wake to hear a man’s voice saying how sexy I am. I look over to see a man TWO SEATS away from me, masturbating. He notices I’m awake. He removes his hand from his pants and says nothing. I stare at him for the remainder of the journey (two stops). As I get up and turn towards the door, I hear him start talking about my body again. I turn around and give him the finger, but he doesn’t meet my eyes. So I come closer and put the finger in his face and say, “You see this? This is for you.” Then I get off the train.
Are these stories specific and believable enough for you, MRAL? Did I include enough detail? In case I didn’t make it clear, each one of these incidents infuriated me, made me feel like shit, ruined my evening. Because I was a woman, and these men used me for their sexual gratification, without a single thought to how I might feel about it. Fuck that, and fuck them, and fuck you for thinking this is a bunch of whiny bullshit that you don’t have to worry about.
That girl in the elevator? I wouldn’t be surprised if an experience very like these crossed her mind when you said something to her. Imagine how much more receptive and friendly she might have been, if she hadn’t been subjected to crap like this her entire life. This is why you should care, even if you don’t have enough human decency to think women shouldn’t have to defend their bodily autonomy whenever they are out in public.
Right. Women don’t normally lie, we just exaggerate. Us silly women-folk just making a big deal out of nothing. All those emotions and things cloud our judgement, you know?
Just more excuses not to take anything a woman says seriously.
MRAL, imagine having a stranger grab your pec and squeeze it in public. Or having someone you’ve never seen before throw their arm around your shoulder. That wouldn’t startle you at all? You wouldn’t feel like your personal space was being impinged on?
To be quite honest, kes, if someone “falling over” onto you is the best example you can think of, in 30-odd years… get the fuck over it. Hell, that’s happened to me once, with a woman who was also drunk, and you know what? I laughed about it. That is NOTHING compared to what I and other men deal with in a misandric society. Fuck you.
I guess I should have punched that woman in the breast, taken her outside and beaten the fucking shit out of her and then kick her in the box when she’s down. That would have been A-OK, amirite?
Heh. Small, scared little boy. I guess I wasn’t being clear enough, I thought that the subtext was obvious. This man wasn’t falling over on me, he was “falling over”. He was using every swerve of the car as an excuse to try and grope me. I knew it, he knew it, the fellow passengers and the driver knew it. He also wasn’t drunk, he was “drunk.” Men in my host country often use “drinking” as an excuse to leer on and grope women. And the culture condones it. The police would have laughed at me if I had complained.
And thanks for ignoring the other two incidents, which frankly made me more angry, because they happened at “home”, not while I was a foreigner.
And what, exactly, do you “deal with”? Getting “spat on”? We both know that you have never actually had someone expectorate upon you. I have. It was so great! I was late for work, or else I would have gone after the man that did it and punched him.
I’m 20 years old, asshole.
Yes, I know. It shows.
Anyway, look. The only one I see as being a real big deal is the first one, because that’s assault. Other than that, well, rude, but to be totally honest, what’s the big deal?
And you say those are… “the worst”? Color me unimpressed. Try being fucked by God at birth, rejected all the time for being an omega male, and generally treated like shit 24/7… not just at a few selective points in your life.
I know Holly pointed this out earlier, but I am stunned anew at how young you are.
MRAL, I didn’t have sex til I was 19. There is still hope! You just need to quit hating an entire gender. 😛
“Try being fucked by God at birth…”
Hey, David! Do we have our next T-shirt? 😀
“Try being fucked by God at birth…”
He’s not really my type.
“Try being fucked by God at birth…”
Especially amusing considering that, based on a Christian interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve, all women are quite literally fucked from birth by god with painful child labor, being subservient to our husbands, and our children at risk of snake bites.
That’s assuming, of course, that one holds that there is A) a god, and B) it is something like the character of Yahweh as described in the bible. As it happens, I reject both premises.
women are so privileged and arrogant that they interpret someone merely approaching them without Her Royal Seal of Approval and doing, well, anything, as “harassment”.
It wasn’t harassment when I was walking to the mall and a guy zipped by on his scooter and passed me, looking at me funny. It wasn’t harassment when he suddenly turned around and said, “Excuse me!” in Japanese to get my attention, although it was pretty scary (but that could be my hysterical femininity talking).
It was harassment when he waggled his cock at me before zooming away.
See, I live in reality. I know it’s not harassment to have a guy seem like he’s walking the same direction as you. I know it IS harassing to have a guy stare at you, follow you, follow you into a store, follow you out, and cross over each side of the street with you when you keep crossing the street to confirm he is, in fact, following you. The last guy did all this but was literally *bumping into me*.
It isn’t just making mountains out of molehills. It’s real, actual, fucking scary shit. And when everyone you know has a story like that (either the women have a story about them or the men have a story about their wives/sisters/in-laws), it’s no real jump to say that men MIGHT be the problem. It isn’t one or two guys doing it. It isn’t just “omegas.” A lot of times it’s guys with a lot of social power (cops, company presidents, etc.) willing to lose it all for a picture of some panties/actual panties/feeling up panties.
Frankly, MRAL, you’re the one who’s full of shit, equating your “experiment” with WoW with real experiences by real women.
MRAL: Your analogy is crap. This isn’t an issue of bigotry. It’s not an issue of “discrimination”. It’s not an issue of misandry.
It’s a reaction to a problem. One that large amounts of data support.
As to your playing a game and not getting unwanted attention; it either supports “the stories here,” or it’s immaterial. Take your pick.
Because, honestly, there is not one shred of evidence to support you. Without a verifiable log, of your entire interactive experience, there’s nothing but your self-reporting (with all the risks of selective memory and confirmation bias to go on).
I’ve done the, “be a woman” thing (both by intent, and when someone didn’t parse me as being male) and the reactions were far from benign, right to abusive (yes, I used the word abuse… being told, “you just need to get laid” is sort of offensive, but, “I’d fuck some sense into you,” crosses a line).
So, I see your personal experience, and raise it with observation of others playing female characters, who got a more steady diet of that sort of crap.
So which is it: is personal experience (the source of the reports which gave rise to these cars) valid, or not. You don’t get to have it both ways. Your experience validates the womens’, or your experience is meaningless.
As to the idiocy of your maligning the people here… what is your intent? If you are as smart as you claim you have to know it’s not going to persuade anyone you are right. It’s nothing more than insult (and fairly severe. Not so very long ago telling someone they were a liar could get you called out in a much more serious way that Arnie’s, “lets take this outside” in another thread was).
So I really have to think you either aren’t all that smart (no matter what your IQ) or you aren’t here to for the debate. If you’re trolling, you’re doing a decent job, but it can’t last. You’ll have to keep uppping the ante to get outrage, and then you’ll end up like NWO, a slave to your passions, hoping for reaction as charity.
If it’s something else; if you like being mocked, just say so. We’ll be glad do that too, but honesty is the best policy in these situations. Heck, there are places (in Boston) where you can get your kink on in person, and people will be glad to make fun of you, and then go out for coffee when the scene is over.
I was speaking metaphorically asshole.
I’m not really religious, but the Bible was written in BCE when society actually was patriarchal. In this day and age, society is, not exactly matriachal, but certainly misandric. Therefore, your arguement is invalid.
“I wonder if these MRA’s had to present as female for a day, and then experienced all the messed up shit we have to deal with from men, would that wake any of them up to reality?”–nimue
I wonder what you would do if you were male for a day.
You probably end up killing yourself.
I used to pass as male before my breasts passed the D-cup mark. No one ever made an unsolicited comment on my appearance or bearing. I really, really miss those days sometimes.
Choco, why the fuck should I believe you? My experience says different.
It’s interesting that the only place this pandemic of harassment is made public is internet feminist blogs, where anything can be true and anyone can be an entitled victim. No one has ever complained to me personally, in real life, about harassment… because that would require, you know, verifying it.
Finally, I AM NOT A TROLL. I think my posts in this thread have been very reasonable and quite honestly, I think an outsider would side with me. I keep coming back here for, well, I don’t know why, why does anybody? Part of it I think is that fymynyst spyces have been an echo chamber for too long. Futrelle, I will grudgingly admit, lets me comment unmoderated and unedited, unlike pretty much any other feminist bitch blogger.
MRAL: metaphorical or not, it was still funny. 😛
When I was in my teens freaking out about not getting laid ever, a big thing that helped was reading sex blogs. They’re (mostly) written by people talking about their real-life experiences, and it helped me get some perspective. Not getting laid til your 20s isn’t really that uncommon. It doesn’t mean everyone hates you personally, thinks you’re hideous, etc… we just have a problem with the ginormous chip on your shoulder.