Single Woman Traveling Alone

The last time I was catcalled street harassed in Canada, I was out for a run with my sister and a car full of men shouted at us as they drove by. In my head, when I'm running, I motivate myself by getting angry at potential perpetrators of street harassment and imagining how I would respond to them if I have to. Not quite the strategy that Mindy Kaling uses, but I think we are kindred spirits anyway.

But often, when street harassment happens, you don't have time to think of a witty comeback, or to consider what the best option is for responding to it. The reason that that anger is enough to motivate me is because I wasn't able to stand up for my right to be woman in public.

Normally, I might not have included these stories in my blog, but I recently read Sex Object: A Memoir by Jessica Valenti and it unlocked something in me that I have been struggling to understand for most of my adult life...

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B015CYFEX6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Mainly, that I would be a different person, and my life would be much different, if I hadn't had to contend with sexism on a daily basis since I was a child. Her memoir explores the relentless presence of everyday sexism and misogyny (as well as the extreme) and the impact it has had on her cumulatively. I've chosen to explore the incidences of street harassment that I experienced over the course of three days on my trip, because they influenced decisions I made throughout the rest of my time in Europe. None of them were benign. The purpose of each incident was to remind me that as a woman I only exist to be evaluated by men, and that the public domain does not belong to me.

July 5, 2016: 8am Paris

Taking the metro to the train station, I noticed many glances directed at my chest while I sat on a bench. Women are not decoration. I don't want that kind of attention while I attempt to go about my day. On another metro train during the same trip, there was a man that seemed to purposely get as close to me as possible, always in my personal space, even though it wasn't nearly as crowded as the first metro train. I was reminded of Valenti's experiences on the NYC subway, when a man rubbed against her inconspicuously so many times that he ejaculated on the back of her jeans. She was 13 years old. There are websites dedicated to men who do this as a fetish. And although nothing like this happened to me, I was concerned about these possibilities during my entire trip to the train station, and that is important. I have witnessed men becoming violent to women who reject their advances in enclosed spaces where there is nowhere to escape. Women are at the mercy of bystanders in those situations. I avoided eye contact as much as possible, not wanting to "invite" someone to make comments to me. Do these men believe that propositioning women in public by saying sexually suggestive things is going to be appealing to them? Have they ever experienced a woman responding positively to these advances? No. The purpose is not to find a partner or to make a date with someone. The purpose is to assert dominance, to intimidate women.

July 5, 2016: 10am Paris

I was walking in the area around the train station, passing the time between my arrival at the train station and my departure two and half hours later. I was looking for a place where I could set down my backpack and read for a while. A man said "Bonjour" to me as he passed and when I responded with "Bonjour", he started walking in the same direction as me, slightly ahead, but frequently looking back to make sure I was still walking in that direction. What was the appropriate response from me? Should I have ignored a potentially benign "hello" and risked being called a bitch or something worse? I didn't know what to do. The other men on the sidewalk around us were potentially his friends. I was mentally calculating escape routes. He asked me, in French, why he hadn't met me before, considering I was so beautiful. There is no right answer to that question, except to get into a long conversation about where I am from and the fact that I am touring Paris (all of this is dangerous information to share, and was already obvious due to the proximity of the train station, my massive backpack and my distinctly North American running shoes). Thankfully, when my expression went stony and I didn't answer, he left. I felt terrified of interacting with anyone during the rest of my time in that quartier. I was grateful that nothing worse had happened.

July 5, 2016: 9pm Munich

After arriving at my hostel and showering, I put on one of my favourite dresses and some makeup, anticipating that after dinner I might want to go out or to meet people. I went to the train station across the street to see if I could find somewhere to eat. My first stop was a small variety store that had some meals in one corner of the store. As I was looking through the options to see if there was anything vegetarian, an older man came up and began looking at the yogurts and cheeses a few paces to my right. Effectively, he was blocking my way out of the corner, but at that moment I wasn't aware of this. When I looked up to leave because I hadn't found anything, he told me something in German. I looked it up with my best phonetic spelling and my best guess is that he told me I looked beautiful. I awkwardly looked perplexed and sidled away. For all I know he was commenting on the sandwiches, but I felt uncomfortable about the exchange. It is interesting to me that women get harassed for not accepting compliments the way the harasser wanted them to, but if a woman has enough self-confidence to tell them "I know" in response, there is something wrong with that, too.

July 6, 2016: 12am-5am Munich

I know I am an excellent dancer. This was the night I overheard someone refer to me as Vanilla Ice. I like getting attention from my friends while I dance. While I was dancing, an older man in the club took my hands before I had time to process what was happening and starting dancing with me. The girls I was with promptly pulled me out of his grasp while I looked directly at him and said "nein". But he questioned me and I had to repeat myself. No means no. Not asking me means I have no opportunity to consent to dancing with you. Someone I did consent to dance with kept putting his arms over mine to try to pin them to my side. He seemed to want me to only pay attention to him, and not to dance, as if dancing is something I do for other people instead of myself. After all, women only exist for men's pleasure, nein?

July 8, 2016: 1:30am Munich

After our excursion to Tollwood, I shared a cab back to my hostel. I can't help but wonder at the fact that on July 7, I chose to stay in a hotel room with two men I had recently met to avoid walking 20 minutes in the city after dark, which all three of us deemed too unsafe, but these same two men had no reservations about doing just that the following night. Aziz Ansari's Master of None captures this male privilege pretty perfectly:

I got out of the cab directly across the street from the small side street where my hostel was located. I had to cross the street and walk down that street to get to my hostel. I don't like crossing the street where there are no crosswalks unless it is a very low traffic area, so I walked toward the train station where there was a crosswalk. A man on the sidewalk put himself in my path, said something angrily to me in German (German doesn't always sound angry), and aggressively slammed into my shoulder with his. He was with a group who said nothing to him and did not interfere. Ten metres later, another man started speaking to me in German as well, less aggressively, and I shook my head and kept going. He was with a group as well. Standing up for myself could have resulted in real violence. I felt humiliated and like crying. I made it back to my hostel safely, but with a quiet terror and adrenaline and cortisol pumping through my body. People on the internet claim that these types of incidents are not representative of all men  (#NotAllMen) but none of their friends told the harassers to leave me alone.

All of these experiences combined to have a huge impact on my time in Berlin, in particular. I didn't go out at night. I didn't make an effort to make friends. I unconsciously tried to make myself smaller in public. And I didn't realize that the two were related until I retold my stories to my friend several days later.

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If you are interested in more stories of women traveling alone, I read this book on my trip to Newfoundland last summer and it was just as it's described by the publisher: "sometimes tragic, sometimes uproariously funny". I would highly recommend it.

http://caitlin-press.com/our-books/this-place-a-stranger/