Bus Journey March 2013

Make a Scene

Last year a man groped me intimately and then began to masturbate on a public bus. For anyone who believes that the term ‘sexual assault’ may be a bit ‘dramatic’ that is what happened in layman’s terms. I am not about to go on a large unequivocal rant about rape or sexual deviance, if anything this is therapeutic and an opportunity for me to share my worries that have incurred since my ‘experience’ or the ‘incident’.

There were no tears involved in what happened, police yes, but tears, no. It happened at 10.30 am. on a Friday morning and after it happened I got off the bus and went straight to work, cause what else would you do, like? On my Mam’s insistence we rang the Gards who got the CCTV footage from Dublin Bus. Dublin Bus were incredibly sound and as a result I am unconcerned with how late they are and how grumpy they get. I recounted the events of the bus journey so many times that day and it was incredible how meaningless a description of someone kicking you in the vagina can become and how normal it can be to tell a total stranger what a man said to you as he licked his hand and rubbed his penis. I was tearless throughout and somewhat stunned by my Dad’s anger.

I wanted to write all of this down because I am annoyed. I am annoyed at my reaction. When it happened, my first thought was “But I don’t look nice today…” and I didn't. I didn't look nice because I am not obsessed with my image and do not feel like I need to wear make up constantly and wash my hair everyday, so why was this my first reaction? Surely by not doing those ‘tasks’ constantly or everyday I must feel pretty attractive without them and I do. So essentially I felt I didn't feel like I looked a certain way, I didn't look like the type of girl who deserved to get groped on a public bus. No type of girl deserves to get groped on a public bus. After getting over this first thought I then moved to embarrassment. When the man finally let me pass (he had been physically blocking my exit) I walked calmly to the top of the bus, not looking at anyone and hoping people didn't realise he was talking to me when he shouted “ You’re gonna have to put your hands in your knickers at some point…”. After this I once again calmly walked off the bus, 3 stops early.

I cannot reconcile myself with my reaction. None of it seems to me to be a ‘logical’ response to someone who has just been groped and interfered with. At no point during the events did I feel I could have hit him or batted him away and that, in my head seems like a logical reaction. When my Dad asked me why I didn't hit him I told him I didn't know. It is very clear to me now that I didn't hit him or shout because I didn't want to make a scene, that wouldn't have been socially acceptable. At the time I obviously felt having someone grope and masturbate did not warrant me being socially unacceptable on a public bus. I have re-read the previous sentence several times and it does not look right but the statement itself is also not right.

I am entirely disappointed in myself and everybody who was on that bus. I fully admit that I was entirely defenceless, I beat myself up about it quite a bit and hope that if something like that should happen again that I will react differently. But what about everybody else on the bus? I still find it so hard to believe that 15 or so grown adults can sit there and watch a man grope, masturbate and shout at a young woman without feeling a need to intervene. One man sitting next to me even moved seats as the masturbation had heightened and he was obviously beginning to feel uncomfortable. He did not ask him to stop, he did not tell the driver, he just wanted to be out of sight of the situation at hand (pun unintended).

I'm a relatively strong minded person, who can generally fight a good fight so why did I do nothing? Why did nobody do anything? Why at 10.30 am on a Friday was everybody supposed to just ignore what was going on?

I have no answers to these questions. I have hypotheses and assumptions but really nothing else. I'm still embarrassed, not for the reasons I walked off the bus, more for walking off the bus in the first place. I did very little to protect myself because “causing a scene” wouldn't have been appropriate and I take it that everyone else on the bus felt the exact same.

Apart from this embarrassment I am completely undamaged by it. Why I continue to think about it is because I don’t think everybody else would come out unscathed and that worries me. Almost every single person I've told this story to has a similar story that has either happened to them or a friend. These stories aren't shocking, they've just become something that happens. Somewhere a long the way we were told to just grin and bear it. I suppose in a way I’m asking people to make a scene in future. There’s a big enough scene going on in front of you, you might as well throw yourself in and make it bigger and bigger for the right reasons (pun unintended). In this respect the more tolerant we become, the weaker we become and I think as a society we should strive to be described as anything but weak.