The Perils of Being a Disabled Woman Alone on Public Transport.

and Why People Should Care.

I don’t normally write about this kind of thing.

The last time I did, I was put in the firing line of those with less-than-savoury attitudes, and for a long time I wondered what I was even doing, daring to live in this world, a woman with a disability, daring to speak up when something went wrong. I fell silent. But recently I have heard a lot of stories from women who feel confident enough to talk about the ways in which they were harassed or worse, so I will put my experiences out there. I think it’s important, because I know I’m not alone, and it might help people to see how certain ‘innocent-seeming’ things (like jokes about sexual violence, or a catcall) can set off alarm bells in someone’s head. The disability perspective is an important one to be tackled as well, and one I rarely see in these kind of dialogues.

Before I get into it, I have to warn that this is not a nice story, and I haven’t sugar coated anything regarding assault. I’m saying this now because the last thing I want to do is aggravate anyone’s trauma, it’s not a nice thing to do without some warning.

And the nature of where I am at the moment warrants some explaining. At first my adult experience of disability on the whole had been relatively okay, there had been no physical assaults on my body, only harsh words, friends breaking up with me and snide jokes. It was socially isolating, but nobody physically injured me.

But since those early days I have been groped in bars by men who laughed that I couldn’t get away fast enough, I have had strangers put their luggage on me on the train as though I was an object, not a human being, I have been followed in the street. The walking stick, once a symbol of my triumph over my failing legs, became something I started to fear carrying around. The clack-clack-clack of its ferrule on the streets I began to think of as a clarion call, a broadcast to the world that here was a person who could be taken advantage of.

Here’s the lowdown. I am hypermobile and my joints constantly dislocate, my skin tears easily and my blood vessels rupture more easily than the average person. As I found ways to manage my condition, and, after years of bad GP experiences, found a doctor willing to help me, I discovered one of the best ways to help relocate joints that had fallen out was to build up muscle mass. This can be no bad thing, I thought, as increased muscle mass means that I would be able to push someone away from me should a repeat of the pub incident occur, surely? So I embarked on a gradual course of physiotherapy, under some very strong painkillers, and a lovely diet of lots of protein, and it took a couple of years, but now I can pretty much walk as fast as a normal person.

I have to stress, this does not negate any of my symptoms. My hip still falls out around 5 times a day, and I am still in immense pain. And I am well aware that muscle strength does not magically make my joints stable nor my bones strong. I would still break if somebody attacked me. And furthermore, hypermobility affects everyone differently. I have a friend who can run marathons who has it, and I know many others who require a wheelchair who have it. There are variations everywhere — I use a sacro-ilial stability belt and a back brace to correct scoliosis, others use finger splints and wrist braces. The point I’m getting at is that intense physiotherapy does not work for everyone, it won’t negate symptoms, and I still have days where I limp, and where I need to use crutches and rely on very visible outward signs of my disability. I don’t want anyone reading this article fostering the idea that a disabled person they know would benefit from having the regime I do.

My main problem is not being able to drive a car. At least, not one where you need to use your feet to do it. I used to drive a lot, but when my joints rapidly degenerated at age 22, I nearly crashed and killed somebody after my arch fell and got stuck whilst trying to accelerate. So, and we come to the point of the essay, I have since then been relegated to using public transport.

Not having the luxury of private transport means that, if you want to have a social life, you either scrounge off your friends and family, spend your food bill on expensive taxis or take public transport at all hours and face whatever your fellow passengers throw at you. So at first I didn’t have a social life. My condition was too bad and even a slight knock could put me out. I slowly built my social life back up, though, because you don’t realise how much you love the outdoors until you’ve had to spend six months (or more, in the case of some of my friends) indoors, stuck in your bedroom with joints that refuse to work even enough to let you have a shower or visit the bathroom.

When my fiancé was living in this country, he was happy to give me a lift whenever he could. Currently, though, I am relying on myself. You get used to the fact that your journeys will take twice as long as the rest of the people in your workplace. You learn to allow for extra time if you miss your connection. Already I have altered so much to adapt to my progressing condition. After developing scoliosis I changed my job to something that avoided the London commuter trains. It’s incredibly hard to put your hip back in place when you’re squashed into the only seat you can find, and people stare at you doing the ‘sitting like a man’ thing, which unfortunately is the only way I can get the errant joint back in. It does look quite amusing, and I pretty much never wore a skirt as a result!

These days my journeys are not as stressful, although they are still long: I get a 45 minute train and then walk for a further 45 minutes, because the buses in this town are slow, late, expensive, and rattle my body to shreds. Long working hours and this long walk mean I catch the train back home at the ‘odd hour’, that period after rush hour and before most people go out for the night. The train rolls through some unsavoury towns which I would rather avoid, because I used to live in those places and memories of being a schoolkid and being attacked, chased, shouted at by fellow residents for either being a girl or quite simply for being on ‘their turf’ are still too prominent. I remember taking karate classes, doing everything I could do be as hardass as them, because I mistakenly thought it was the only way to survive. Naturally it never entered my head that my ‘growing pains’ were actually a medical condition and one day I might be vulnerable with no other option. I can’t take karate classes these days because impact sports are pretty much forbidden if you have severe hypermobility syndrome.

There is quite simply no other way for public transport to get me home, unless I shred my feet adding another 2 or 3 mile walk on to my daily commute to get a different line. And recently there have been quite a few incidents that have scared the living daylights out of me, and made me feel less-than-secure on public transport.

The first was the station guard who dislocated my elbow by slamming the gates closed on me. I was on the ground from the force of it, sobbing and being embarrassed and feeling my nerves rage with sharp pain all at once. I asked the guard for help but he didn’t bother. He didn’t believe that a girl as young as me could be disabled, and he thought I was just making a scene. The oddly shaped elbow didn’t even sway him. His fellow guards just stared. Other passengers stared. It took ten minutes for a kind passer-by to help me ease things back into place and get to my platform, shielding my elbow with his wide, angular frame.

The second was on a bad day when I was using the stick. A couple of men started following me home from the station, drinking beer and joking and laughing. The conversation was audibly unsavoury, and revolved mainly around women. You learn to pick up subtle signals from fellow passengers when you’ve been around it enough, and I wasn’t comfortable being alone around these guys. I cursed the fact that the stations in small towns are unmanned after seven at night, as my normal tactic would be to just hang around, pretend to play with my phone in full view of the attendant, and wait for them to leave. Instead I knew I could not risk stopping and waiting for them to pass. The memory of the pub groping incident, where I tried this tactic before and it ended in humiliation, flashes vividly before my eyes and I don’t want that to ever repeat. So I rushed home in the fastest hobbles I could manage. The men behind me didn’t stop at the local pubs. They didn’t stop at the fast food outlets. They didn’t stop at the only things worth visiting in my small town. They were following me.

Disbelief mounted in my chest. I even cursed the fact that it was a warm day and the curve of my breasts could be seen from my un-zipped-up hoody, my long hair flowing freely around me. You can’t change that while you’re walking with a stick, unless you stop, and I had already decided that was out of the question. And I hated myself for cursing that, because I am well aware that the ones who need to change are them, not me. But at that moment in time, I would take anything to feel less vulnerable. The next day I tied my hair back on the trains and on the way home, I hid the fact that I was female as much as I could. Stupid, isn’t it, really? I go home and read articles about how women are never to blame, and I fully agree, because I know full well that people take advantage of you no matter how you look or what you wear (and that’s a story from my childhood for another time), but I also know that my body is broken enough as it is, and I am scared, I am scared and if I can get past a group of people who are making my alarm bells ring without them noticing me at all, then I have won for that evening, I can go home and relax, and not worry.

I hate attracting attention. It’s something quite a few of my disabled friends can also relate to. We don’t want to make a fuss sometimes, not because we feel we don’t deserve it (because we totally do deserve to be heard and taken into account) but because some days having to defend ourselves, our condition, our feelings, from the unwanted scrutiny of others is just too much. We are already dealing with a lot due to our conditions, and the added stress of dealing with other human beings sometimes makes us reach tipping point.

It boils down to this, I think. I would never advise a fellow woman to try not to appear as a woman, the way I like to do, if she’s feeling insecure in public. That would make me as bad as those who blame the victim. But I would expect that any woman not be judged for how she prefers to dress in public, or how she personally likes to cope.

Anyway I walked faster than I should have and managed to lose them round the back of a car park. I know the village well, and I know secret ways through. But I paid dearly for my rushed escape in pain medication the following day, I can tell you. What scares me the most about it is what happens on the one day I’m not able to go fast enough. It’s a fear that’s hard to live with, because I just have to trust that my body will be okay while knowing it’s not always going to be. And it’s a fear that is hard to translate to others, especially those who cannot understand why I would want to rush home quickly. The main argument I come up against is that ‘it was unlikely to have been a genuinely scary situation, because that kind of thing, attacks, rapes and whatnot, is rare.’ It may seem rare to them, but it does happen, as the next experience will show. And when you have seen it happen, you know you have reason to rush home, reason to be wary.

The third time was the worst. It happened on a day when I was feeling particularly confident with myself, and was lounging out on the train seats, doing some knitting. The carriage was empty. I was in the big four-seater area right down the end.

A couple got on further up the carriage. They were loud, but I expected that, as we had reached the problem town, the one I used to live in. At first I assumed they were a drunken crowd, like the people that had intimidated me the previous night. So I made myself small, unnoticed, and put away my knitting. I tried to focus on my headphones, but there was a tone in their voices that rang alarm bells. I turned the headphones off, but kept one ear in. If they noticed me, they would assume I was not listening to them, and would be less likely to intimidate me.

They talked some more, and that was when I realised it was just two people. I realised that from a specific angle I could see them quite well reflected in the glass panels of the train, so I didn’t need to stretch my head out or make myself obvious. They were a couple. They were arguing.

The woman was distressed. She started shouting at him, and he shouted back. Then he hit her. Things went silent. Then she shouted some more, a reedy sobbing tone to her voice. She tried to hit him back and he held her hands down. A horrible sound like a cat mewling as she tried to prise herself free. He applied more force, she was fenced in between him, the chair and the window. Her keening continued, then, satisfied he stopped. They tried to talk again. It escalated quickly. Relationship troubles. Sounded like he had done something she wasn’t happy about earlier.

I am deathly scared at this point. My hip is half out and I am too terrified to relocate it. I’m scared he’ll be angry to discover I’m there, listening, and I’m scared he’ll hit me too. I can’t believe that my ability to hide myself, the one thing I rely on the most, has served as a disadvantage here. The problems only kicked off a fair few minutes after they left the station, long enough that if I move now it’s obvious I’ve been hiding. If he hits me I don’t think my bones can handle it. A simple whack from a ticket barrier can dislocate my elbow, as proved the previous few weeks, and even that led me unable to use my left hand for a long time. I don’t think I’m strong enough to confront him. But what else can I do? Something has to be done. The train is empty apart from the three of us.

Normally I would get up, pretend to be on the phone and slink away down to the other end of the train to fetch the guard, but this is the last carriage, the man is half spread out in the gangway, blocking my way and I am fenced in. I know that the train guard is due to walk through at any moment, so I decide to hold out until he comes through, that way I will have backup and I am sure the man will stop then. But the guard doesn’t show. I start to panic. Is it serious enough that I call the police? I honestly didn’t know. My experiences of being assaulted before had never ‘seemed’ serious enough to warrant official action, they were all just things that happened and I was expected to get on with it afterwards. But I tend to get angrier about other people’s pain than I do my own, and I thought that maybe calling the police was a good idea. The idea that this is stuff you have to just accept is one thing when it’s happening to yourself, but when you see someone else get hurt, I don’t know, at least for me it really riles me.

She shouted again, extremely upset, and that was when he held her down. Hands around the neck, then forcing her head down to her knees the way they do to prisoners on planes. She chokes. Silence. I wonder if they can hear my heart beating. She chokes again and I am about to get up because I know this is suddenly so very serious. My whole body is shaking. My skin is burning. I am trying to ignore the painful twisting in my hip. It’s starting to rotate out of the socket — will I even be able to stand up? I am trying not to think about the feeling of bones breaking, something I know all too well. Then he releases hold and she breathes in, ragged, heaving, sobbing. I can’t believe what has just happened. I hear her breathe and it does something to my mind and I remember being fourteen again and I freeze. I can’t say why, not right now. Even after twelve years it’s still too close and too painful. My mind just… goes away… which is the reaction I had cultivated since that time, the art of dissociation, which was, in my mind, the only thing that saved me back then. I hate this. I wish I could react like others say they would. But this learned behaviour hits me, as crippling as my physical disability is when it decides to randomly make my leg spasm. And this woman seems to do it too, just drift away, because she can do little else to make him stop.

The train rolls into the station and I partially snap out of the haze. I am going to do something. I am. I have to or I won’t forgive myself, ever. I steel myself. I’ll confront him, then dash off the train even though it’s not my stop and call the police. But as I get up so do they. It’s their stop. The man glances my way briefly, a dangerous look that says ‘Just try me, I dare you,’ and I try to hold my gaze but I falter. He causes a scene at the station, throwing her belongings around in a brazen show of dominance. He has little regard for the others at the station waiting to board the train, he is happy to push and shove his way.

I see the guard emerge from the far end of the train and try to run towards him, to tell him what happened and that he should’ve been walking through the train. But he steps back on the train before I reach him and it drives away. I curse and shake and call the police. They tell me I did the right thing by not getting involved, a sentiment my fiancé, who has seen me hospitalised from a single stumble before, echoes later, and they immediately send someone out to the station. I don’t know much more, I am told to get home safe and I’ll be called if they need more witness info. I get home, sort my damned hip out, and collapse into bed wracked with pain from the waist down and still shaking. It’s hours before I can even stomach phoning anyone, even my fiancé, to talk about it.

Since then I have had a complete breakdown after watching an altercation over a spare seat on a busy train which got a bit nasty. It was upsetting and at the same time deeply depressing; I was the only one on that busy train who fled to get the guard, telling him what the problem was before collapsing in the vestibule and turning my music up to full so I didn’t have to think. And just recently, I have had to deal with a man so beefy and tough he could easily have broken me, switching between accusing me of being foreign and trying to sweet-talk me. Again no guard walked through the train, and it was one of those awkward situations whereby my walking away would have been taken as an insult to him. And the worry that he would disembark at the same station as me was ever-present. You have to think ahead, plan for every eventuality. Don’t anger someone too much if there’s a risk they could follow you home. I put on my best casual southern English accent, smiled pleasantly, and survived.

The stress, the flashbacks of that man’s hands around his girlfriend’s neck, the constant anxiety, eventually seeped its way into work. It was after a bad joke someone made involving attacking hookers in the videogame GTAV and I quietly slipped away outside to stand in the rain for half an hour and get thoroughly drenched because my mind told me it was the only way to wash everything away and wouldn’t listen to any protestations the rational part of me had to say on the matter. Needless to say, people noticed something was up.

So when my workplace found out why this was going on, that I was being put in precarious situations trying to get into work, they were shocked, and very kindly offered to help me get an adapted car with hand controls so I could drive into work. The disbelief they showed at the fact that I have such a long journey to make daily confuses me, because I have been so used to this that it’s kind of normal now. But soon it looks like I will be driving again, albeit doing so with a hand control that looks like something lifted from an Xbox controller! The thrills rushed into me for the first time in years, the idea I could be behind the wheel once more! It was something that had previously been, quite simply, beyond my budget.

But concordant with that came a deep rage. Because I was thinking of that girl. She, presumably, still has no other option than to get the train. And there are many others, like me, like her, and on a million other configurations of living conditions too, who have no other choice than to get the train. No other choice than to put themselves at the mercy of people who think it’s okay to harass, to call names, to corner people, to sweet-talk, to make people uncomfortable. And on a less busy train line in that dead post-rush-hour time, travelling through a half-dozen small, relatively poor, largely working class towns and villages where drunkenness is a problem and resentment is high, on a less busy train line where the guard does not habitually walk through and check on people, they run this risk every day. I know it sounds bizarre, but I feel like I’m deserting them. I know for a fact that if I hadn’t been there when the woman was attacked, that nobody would’ve called the police.

You have to adapt to survive. It’s a lesson that is forced upon you whether you like it or not, when you have to live with a disability. The way things currently are with the world, the onus is on you, although it shouldn’t be. If you’re a woman, you end up having to take these extra precautions, doing everything you can to avoid sexual assault, because people blame you for it if you don’t. If you’re a disabled person, you end up having to use up your money on taxis and finding inevitably more expensive ways around things, and when you mention you were followed in the street, many people’s first reaction is ‘Well why on earth were you out on the street on your own, in the condition you’re in?’ Money is an issue here, we can’t pretend like it’s not, so any solution to solving things has to factor this in. We can’t just expect women and disabled people to spend more to solve the problem, as not everybody has the capital to do this, and it still means responsibility is shifted away from the perpetrator.

This is the way the world currently is. You are blamed if you are a woman and something happens, because you are expected to take extra precautions. You are blamed if you are disabled, because you are expected to take extra precautions.

This is not the way the world should be.

I don’t like the fact I’ve become used to this, I don’t like the fact that other women at similar disadvantages have become used to this, and I don’t like the fact that people who either don’t need to use public transport at precarious hours or who have not experienced this kind of thing are, as my colleagues showed, on the whole oblivious to it. People should care, because those who currently are not affected are just one accident or one redundancy away from having to live it. I want what I have written to be a signal, and I want things to change. It’s been tough writing this, because I usually stick to science, and there’s a lot more raw feelings here than I’m usually comfortable with. But at some point I shall have to let go of that fear and trust that people will treat my feelings as detailed here with respect. I’m sure things can change, and I’m determined to make it so, because I want a world where my wee sister doesn’t have to go through this. Sure it might sound like a fantasy, but I’ve become very adept at imagining fantasy worlds recently.