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.
Exactly, Shaenon. What we have here is a massive failure of empathy. In MRAL’s case, I would speculate that he’s too immersed in his own pain and loneliness to appreciate the pain that others experience.
That’s me being charitable. Non-charitable me has other ideas.
Delurking to say: Pecunium, I think I love you. That was awesome.
She is pretty hot, and what are those other ideas?
Still, he keeps coming back here, so maybe there’s hope.
Pecumium, that’s still not comparable to having a deformed eye. But I’m not here to talk about that, really.
She is pretty hot, and what are those other ideas?
Or maybe not.
Spoiled??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Pecumium, I think you’re real cool.
MRAL, I didn’t get laid until I was 19! I have a friend who didn’t get laid until he was 33! So, you know, there’s still hope. Be patient.
Stop being a dick. And you are totally spoiled.
Let me get this straight…. I have two eyes, which point in different directions, and that’s not a a big deal.
You have one eye, a bit less open than the other, and that is.
You are just below the national average for height, and the world discriminates against you?
I post a long list of behaviors you engage in.
And all you can do is say, “HAHAHHAAHAAHAHAAHHAHAHA” to how I describe it.
Yeah. Spoiled. Immature and spoiled.
Honestly. My 13 year old sister has a better grasp of how the world works than you do.
Incidentally, I’ve been to Tokyo and seen the women-only train cars. They’re only women-only during rush hour, when groping is a serious problem because the trains get crowded enough to make it easy. Parts of Seoul have also instituted women-only cars, because Korea has the same problem.
In addition to the groping, it’s common for men in Tokyo to take up-skirt photos of women and post them online. This has been a problem for many years (guys used to smuggle cameras in briefcases), but has gotten much worse since the invention of camera phones.
I’ve read up on this issue as part of my job (long story), including reporting in the Asian media, and it’s disturbing how little the harassers are blamed by Japanese society. There’s a lot of focus on protecting women, mostly by segregating them, and very little on punishing harassers. Women are not encouraged to defend themselves or even report when they’ve been harassed. It’s a terrible approach that does nothing to solve the real problem, which is that Japanese men know they can get away with groping women, and some of them, inevitably, take advantage of that power.
Non-charitable me thinks you’re just a dick.
But let’s forget non-charitable Captain Bathrobe; he’s also kind of a dick.
Charitable me wants you to get help, while you still can be helped.
Captain Bathrobe, you’re *far* too charitable. The premise of the initial post was that widespread harassment of women on public transportation has necessitated the creation of sex-segregated train cars in some markets. is unlikely to change his beliefs. Assuming any level of reading comprehension on his part, MRAL knew that already, before you told him!
MRAL didn’t believe that widespread harassment was a problem when he read the initial post, and he won’t believe it now. Instead, he argued that women who report their experiences of harassment are…not lying exactly, but too stupid and hysterical to tell the difference between someone brushing past us in a crowded space and someone deliberately grinding their crotch into us. And now this thread is, in no small measure, focused on him and his problems.
I’m new here, so maybe someone can bring me up to speed. Why is everyone white-knighting this asshole?
Why is everyone white-knighting this asshole?
Pity, I think. He’s being pretty reasonable over on the Books by Women thread. Sometimes he has moments of clarity, but then goes back to being a dick. I think some here believe he’s still young enough to be saved from the MRM if he can just ditch the attitudes that are holding him back.
NWOslave, on the other hand, is just a lost cause.
NWO can be funny on occasion, though. He’s so thoroughly ridiculous.
As to white knighting MRAL, i have to agree with Lady Syrus. He has just enough moments of clarity, and he’s young enough, that there’s a chance he can grow into a good person.
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast”, after all.
Oh, I think NWOslave is endlessly entertaining, I’ve just abandoned all hope of getting him to see things from a different (rational) perspective. It’s hard to argue with the crowd that believes in black helicopters and the non-Robert Anton Wilson Illuminati.
Wow. This thread is really, really upsetting. I really feel for the people who told their stories here and to have it so summarily dismissed by MRAL is so offensive. I know so many woman who have experienced this, and I’ve experienced it myself. I wish they could have some empathy for what it feels like to just be walking down the street and having your breasts grabbed, or having a man spit on you (yes, ACTUALLY spit on you) on the bus if you ignore his propositions, or when responding to “Hey baby hey baby nice tits” and a dick-flash with “Fuck off” gets you punched in the face. Or when walking home alone some guy pushes you into a wall and tries to take your pants off. These stories are all real and it doesn’t mean that all men are bad, or all men are rapists, or that you can make any generalizations about men at all. But stories like all these should still be taken seriously and it is so incredibly offensive when they are dismissed as exaggerations, lies, or “not that bad.”
MRAL,
I have some thoughts about your experience playing a female character in WoW. You mention that you did in fact get some “inappropriate comments” but that they were not “a big deal.” I’m glad that you weren’t hurt by them, but have you considered that a female player might hear them differently? After all, comments directed at your female avatar is obviously not about you, since you’re not a woman. There’s a clean separation that the sting away. Imagine, on the other hand, a 16 year old girl playing a female character because she wants to feel like her character is her. Thinking back on your experience, do you think she would have experienced it as harassment?
Also, just so you know, a lot of the complaints I hear from female WoW players are about harassment from people who work out that the *player* is female, especially from guild members and other groups who use voice chat. So while your experiment may have been well-intentioned, it wouldn’t have been able to catch all the kinds of harassment actual women experience.
Like I said, min0u, non-charitable me thinks he’s a dick.
Charitable me thinks he’s clueless, non-empathic, and in a lot of pain. Can he be helped? I don’t know. I just don’t like the thought or writing off anyone so (to my mind) young.
This does not in any way diminish how repugnant some of his comments were–especially those that accused other commenters here of lying, exaggerating, or imagining their experiences of being groped and harasses. Like I said, massive empathy fail at the very least.
Captain Bathrobe, you’re *far* too charitable.
I don’t think anyone has ever said that about me on the internet before. I must be slipping.
CB: I don’t think “far too” is right. I’m trying to be charitable, but it’s getting harder.
Happily he’s not being too bad in the books thread.
Happily he’s not being too bad in the books thread.
But he’s been SUCH a wiener in this one.
Zombie: In the realm of the charitable: So long as I have any left, I try to treat each new thread as a new beginning.
NWO lost all my charity pretty much right away. MRAL is still hanging in there.
MRAL, the more I read your comments the more I think you really need to go talk to a therapist and/or a psychiatrist. Your sensitivity to slights (and perceived slights) and your loathing of your own body (the eye, your perceived shortness) could very well be symptoms of depression.
When I was your age (and through my early twenties) I suffered from untreated depression. I was also acutely sensitive about being slighted/ignored, etc.; I hated my body. When I finally started taking antidepressants, not only did it lift my mood, it also made me much more resilient (and able to brush off slights and perceived slights).
Here’s something I wrote about depression not that long after I started taking Prozac. Some of it might be relevant to you. (Reading it now, it’s good to see that some of the less-than-helpful attitudes towards antidepressants I wrote about have changed for the better since then.)
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/reflections-the-sickness-of-the-soul/Content?oid=883679
I still deal with depression today, but my life is a hell of a lot better than it was when I was untreated.
“MRAL is still hanging in there.”
This has almost nothing to do with anything, but I wanted to share an amazing description for a ‘motivational poster’ in a game a play. Let’s say it’s to help cheer people up from all the harassment stories and MRAL bitchery:
“This is a poster that depicts an adorable kitten hanging from a tree, desperately clinging to life with the tips of its claws, the anguish on its face making it clear it’s about to plunge to its doom.
The caption, of course, says, “You Want it WHEN?””
As a penis-American, I don’t have much to offer for this, other than sympathy and a kind ear to the victims.
However, I can offer this short story:
while in college, during a party at our house, one of my roommates (not a good one, but that is a far longer tale) grabbed my girlfriend’s ass as she walked by. When she turned and confronted him, saying “what the hell?” he just smirked. So she leaned over and grabbed his crotch. Kind of hard, too.
He looked very shocked, she straightened up, shrugged her shoulders, said “meh” and held her finger about two inches apart. The entire room cracked up.
That stupid roommate never tried it again, at least not with her; I hope he may have learned a lesson and not tried it with ANYONE ever again; however, from his later behavior, it is entirely possible that he is now NWOSlave.