Why Must We Be Kind to Creepy Men Just to Feel Safe?

It's the late afternoon, and you've just finished up at the office for the day. You're heading to the subway to catch the train home, picking a seat that tucks you away for the half hour it takes to get to your stop. With a sigh, you pull a book out of your bag and start to read. Your attention is pulled away from your book when you sense that someone is talking to you. A "friendly" man has just made a comment about your legs (wrapped in jeans and tucked into black polka dotted rain boots), mentions he's seen you on the train before and asks if you have a boyfriend. He has one hand in his pants and he smells like the tuna sandwich science project you found in the office refrigerator two days ago, but three of them, stacked on top of one another and jammed crazy far up your nostrils. You don't want to be rude, so you take a moment to consider your options before offering it to him. You feel a huge wave of relief when you realize he's heard you wrong. Other commuters give you quick-but-awkward sideways glances, the looks on their faces clearly glad that they chose not to sit where you're sitting right now. By the time you get home, you've already considered three alternate routes home from the office for the rest of the week.

I was 22 years old when this happened to me. I did have a boyfriend at the time, and I can count on two hands the different ways that someone has spoken to me like this on my way home from work. It ranges from "What are you reading?" to "So what stop will you be getting off at?", and each time it happens, my heart pitfalls into my stomach and bloats to the size of a watermelon. From there, it begins to make its way up the center of my body and into my throat until the only thing I can think to do to make the feeling go away so that I can breathe a just little easier is if I could throw it up right then and there.

When you try to respond to these pervy passengers, if you answer them you're screwed and if you don't, you're still screwed. But men who are ignored eventually become men who are angry, and it can be easier to handle the situation when they aren't hollering to the rest of the world that "this girl is too good to talk to me!" We are under such an immense mountain of pressure to support their expectations to be polite and still feel like a terrible person if you choose not to answer. It almost seems ironic to feel a sense of calm knowing that I'm not the only one who has to think about these kinds of things. That there are other women who live in the city and who take the train into work every morning or who try to find alternate routes to get to their classes and their day jobs just to be sure they make it to their destinations in one piece. We impose curfews for ourselves, easily convincing our brains that it's worth not staying out for another dance past midnight if it means we can be safer staying home. Nothing a little bit of warm honey lemon tea and some Game of Thrones can't fix.

I was at the gym the other day and had a short conversation with a another woman who was there. She mentioned that she was really enjoying the classroom-environment of our classes because prior to joining, she was an active runner but was frustrated with the number of "compliments" from men who would try to block her path and slow her down in order to talk to her in the middle of her run. And while she missed running outside a lot, the anxiety from the harassment was enough to keep her away.

Yet here we are: it is the year 2018 and we're still talking about this massive problem in our society today. Part of me feels that even though we're just starting to make a big deal about it with campaigns like #metoo and #timesup that things really aren't changing as quickly as we need them to. We're frightened, and we're running out of options. We also don't want to stay inside all the time. Protect us when we need protecting, and maybe one day soon we won't have to think about looking you in the face and telling you "no, I don't want to talk to you, please leave me alone" and not actually doing it because we're still too scared to turn you away. We've alienated each other, and I hope that we can try to help one another see our current reality as enough of a disaster in order to become more aware of what is really going on around us to care just a little bit more than we did yesterday.