This morning I was trying to catch the tube to Earls Court – I was waiting on the blue line platform, they were having signalling problems so things were running a bit slowly and there were a lot of people about. Finally a train arrived, and we all started piling on, there was quite a push but nothing very out the ordinary for a busy rush hour with signalling problems.
Suddenly the girl in front of me starts violently waving her rather extensive bottom around, which seemed a little unhelpful given quite how crowded the train was, I was being pushed by the people behind me and so push a little to try to get her to stop being obnoxious. Next thing I know shes shouting at me “CATCH THE NEXT TRAIN. YOU! CATCH THE NEXT TRAIN”.
Confused, I got off and walked away, I know when I’m not welcome. Well, sometimes I do anyway.
I think what happened was that I’d managed to brush her behind with the corner of the book I was carrying, which she had assumed was me attempting to feel her.
Of course everyone else on the carriage will have understood her to be a victim and me to be a perpetrator. And there is nothing I could do or say to change that view.
What they can’t see is that I hadn’t noticed she was anything other than a person who was standing their ground a little more than they should in the face of a rush of people, nor that even if I were the sort of guy to go around feeling girls bottoms on crowded tubes that neither her, nor her particular bottom, were in any sense attractive to me anyway, nor that it was the kind of incident that was going to spoil my entire day.
Which has made think a little about stereotypes. Clearly she thinks of herself as the kind of person who has a nice bottom, and that it was reasonable to read things into something which was actually an innocent action – I was lifting my book to chest height so there wasn’t a chance I would accidentally touch someone inappropriately, it just happened that the push of the crowd was a little stronger than I’d anticipated which meant I was a little closer to her than I expected.
The stereotype is of woman as sex object. And man as (ab)user of that sex object. If you have such a strong belief in yourself as a sex object, you can project onto others a strong belief that they are abusers of that object.
Now I can’t sleep.
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