Sunday, July 02, 2006


Token Appreciation


No matter how safe New York gets, some things will never change. Take subways. Cops recently arrested 13 subway gropers -- and I'm sure that will hardly end the harassment that so many women and girls on their way to school -- experience on a regular basis. And say nothing.

My mom tells me tales of her hour-long subway rides to Music and Art High School in upper Manhattan from her 3rd street apartment, where on the way she was grabbed, flashed, robbed, harassed. If someone bothered me on the subway, she told me, I was to get off at the next stop and -- change cars. Not go to the police. Not yell. Just leave.

Seems like not all that much has altered since the 60s, the women's movement, the crive level. Reading that piece in the paper, I thought -- what is it about the subway that silences even the most outspoken women? Are you somehow violating the social fabric to point out when someone has been violating you?

Deborah Tannen weighed in yesterday with a New York Times op-ed on the subject, where she compares research she did years ago of Greek women facing issues of sexual assault vs. women on the subways. The Greeks yelled and screamed and even threw rocks. But she writes:


Most of the American women — like those recently interviewed in the New York news media — told me they had felt humiliated and helpless and had done or said nothing.


Last time I checked there weren't any rocks to throw at assailants on subway cars. And some women are the exception to the rule. One of my mom's high school friends was being groped on a crowded subway car years ago and spoke up when an unfamiliar hand got way too familiar: "Get your hand off my ass!" The man in a suit had no where to go and had to face the rest of the ride surrounded by pissed off people. All of a sudden, my mom's friend was in a car full of friends.

I faced this once on the metro in Paris in my college years riding with friends. I was the only one who spoke fluent French (although the language of "get the hell off me" is universal, trust me). We were on the train late night. A man was bothering one of my friends and she turned to me for help. I whirled around and out came a string of invectives that would have made my French teacher blush, then proud. There was something about speaking in another launguage that gave me a voice in the way that when I was in New York, I had none.

Deborah Tannen points out that the way the Greeks talk sounds to untrained ears like argument. There is an expressiveness that doesn't come with speaking English.

Maybe self-defense classes in New York should come with a Greek lesson to learn to say "fuck off."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good design!
[url=http://ubuawofj.com/jxmb/fyvm.html]My homepage[/url] | [url=http://cthffphn.com/srae/eyfp.html]Cool site[/url]

Anonymous said...

Good design!
http://ubuawofj.com/jxmb/fyvm.html | http://mkezodct.com/klvr/bhxo.html