I really haven't seen any stats on that, perhaps my area has been gentrified (as often happens in college areas), I really have no idea. But in the early 80s, things were not good...of course those were the days (as natives know) when the Philly police actually dropped a bomb on a house (you could look it up!)...
I would have guessed this person's age to be between 21 and 27. It was the fact that he was well-dressed that was weird to me. He was dressed like a normal college student walking to class, and was even wearing a back pack. He was definitely not inebriated because he moved like he was cornering me. He closed in in a way that was interesting. I didn't run because I was immediately convinced I couldn't escape that way.
Glad you're OK, CD!
As long as we don't count random strangers grabbing my backside or tits on the street (which has happened to me many, many times), I've only been confronted/threatened in public twice. Both times on the T which is what Bostonians call the subway. Boston makes up for it by being the only major city where I have spent significant time where no one has ever grabbed my backside or my tits on the street. I always forget you can't say rhymes with class around here, but tits are OK. I guess it's cause we don't call each other TITS when we're mad.
Durham/Dallas/London/LA/New York/Montreal cannot make that claim. There are others but I don't care to remember them all right now. The first few times it happened, I would get very upset. Then I got mad. Then I realized that these sad, sad men needed help, not help that I was willing to give them, but help nonetheless cause their lives were obviously in the crapper. So, I started yelling, "Get therapy, you need it!" as I kept walking. I've said that to obscene phone callers too.
The two incidents on the T, both in the late '80s: One. There was a young woman on the train with bright pink hair. I was staring at it wondering how long it took to get one's hair that color and if it required bleaching first and what might her natural hair color be and suddenly, angrily, "What are you looking at?" Disturbed from my reverie, I made eye contact and said, after a beat, "Your hair." That ended that.
Two. I had gone to meet my brother at Logan who came for a visit. My car had been stolen and I had not yet replaced it, so we took the T back to my place. While on the Blue Line a young man kicked out the plexiglass window behind my head in an effort to impress me (I think.) It shattered all over me and if it had been actual glass . . . let's just say I am very grateful that it wasn't. I turned to him and said, "Oh great. Breaking things. What would really impress me is if you could put it back together." My brother was terrified. He's like, "Sis, I do not have your back on this." But the guy got off at the next stop. His friends didn't. The MBTA police got on at the stop after that. Everybody on the train pointed to his friends who suddenly didn't know the guy. I saw him again when I got off the train and I was about to march up to an MBTA officer to point him out when my brother stopped me. He convinced me that going on record for one broken T window wasn't worth it. Just because the guy didn't actually hurt me this time, it probably wasn't a good idea to be seen ratting him out. I didn't report him. I can't decide if I regret it or not, but my brother was probably right. Given that this happened not long after my car was stolen (and both within 6 months of moving to Boston), my brother thought that I should move back to Durham. He didn't think Boston was safe enough.
Last edited by Bostondevil; 03-20-2021 at 09:59 AM.
We have an incredible violence against women situation that infuriates me. I am absolutely flabbergasted to hear about these physical intrusions (and I am probably not using the correct word but these men feel entitled to do this to females and I punched a dude in Winston-Salem for doing this in front of me) and that makes me madder than hell. For you. For my female friends, for my daughter. I think every female has these stories and worse.
Maybe not. It might be generational. I have hope. Every female I went to college with has stories (I have a couple of worse stories, but they didn't involve random strangers on the street, and on the sliding scale of bad to worst, none get even close to worst.) I was casually mentioning my multiple sexual assaults to a couple of 20-something female castmates when we were doing Midsummer's. They looked appalled and I asked them if they had ever had their backsides or tits grabbed on the street and turns out, neither one of them had experienced it. Yay! Crime has dropped since the late '80s (although I have had my backside grabbed since then) maybe this kind of behavior has dropped too, or maybe it's just Boston - lagging behind in random backside grabbers. One advantage to getting older, I haven't had an incident like this in almost 10 years!
I like this sentiment that it might be getting better, but given all the everything in the headlines right now, I have a hard time believing it.
It seems that while fewer women are "staying silent" about their experiences, it's still a very small number of men who are being held accountable. It's morally reprehensible in my opinion.
It's great that we all know now that Harvey Weinstein was a horrible human being for decades, but does that really mean progress, when the headlines are still littered with harassment, massages therapists being abused, workers being put in compromising situations by superiors, etc etc etc?
I'm all on board the progress train, I just don't see it yet.
We have more allies, that's for sure. Just keep being an ally. As someone pointed out to me recently, a great way to be an ally is to not let your male colleagues get by with calling women crazy (like Woody Allen does). I am not of the "believe all women" camp, but, I am firmly in the "take all accusations seriously" camp. Do the investigations and make the results public, even if a criminal prosecution is unlikely given time or lack of admissible evidence. Some claims will lack credibility but if you think a story lacks credibility and none of your female friends agree, then you are wrong. Accept that.
I'm going to suggest we not let ourselves get bogged down in this discussion too much. I wasn't trying to change the world by mentioning it. Before we move on though, I'm going to risk the potential infraction and say that the existence on the Supreme Court of a certain two Associate Justices makes me angry every single day.
Heh. I'm two weeks into a new job and trying to figure out how I'm going to handle my next interaction with a guy (not about assault issues) assuming a trend emerges. For context, I manage/lead environmental and social programs, often somewhere between required by law and voluntary, in large global companies. I've found over the years that most folks, even if they personally might not be big fans in their personal life, keep their opinions to themselves and understand the business reason but that there are always a few who can't help but be snide or let their personal opinion be known. As sort of a funny example, I once was in a meeting trying to bring on a rock star as a brand ambassador for $$$ reasons (hi, Ymo) and to position the company's "green" solutions and the senior executive in the room made a comment about climate change being a hoax. (Forehead slap.) Anyway...
I've had something like twenty 30 minute Team intros, 19 of them very normal meet and greets. The 20th, with a level or two up but not a SVP+, just filled his entire intro with snide little remarks. "We're not going to start making decisions based on gender are we...?" "The guys on my team...(puts hands up in a mocking way)...whoa, sorry, guys and girl. Don't want to get in trouble." I asked him if he'd talked to my new manager about the program we're starting and laughed in a pretty mocking way, "No, no I haven't. Sorry, don't want to piss her (my boss) off."
It was an intro meeting and I didn't say anything, though I did engage in a way by discussing business issues that made clear my opinion. Been trying to figure out if I start my third week by commenting to HR or address it directly if it continues to be an issue. Really pissed me off and got me stewing about what the right move is.
Spring just sprang and yard work 2021 has commenced, albeit slowly.