Calculated Risks

Let me start by telling you a bit about myself that likely has not come up on this blog before–  I am a confident, independent woman in my early 40s. I travel on my own. As an undergrad, I would walk across campus, after dark, by myself. Occasionally, I would walk home at night through an unlit park. When I worked swing shift, getting off work at 2am, I would walk home or to my friends’ house, by myself. I have walked a mile from a bar back to a hotel, after dark, in a city in a different country. I have always done what I want, and not allowed myself to life my life in fear.

But that does not mean I have been stupid. I knew which buildings on campus were open late, and if they were likely to have people in them. My roommates knew what time to expect me home. My friends knew to expect me at their house. Every time I have made a decision to do something that might carry a risk because I was a woman, on my own, after dark (or whatever the circumstances), I have done it knowing there was a risk. I have never been oblivious; I have just chosen to take calculated risks when I was comfortable doing so. I have never been attacked. I have not even been pick pocketed.

I think this is important for people to know, to place what happened yesterday within a context of who I am and how I choose to behave, to understand that what I am going to talk about has nothing to do with being over reacting, or being “one of those women” who thinks all men are rapists, or something along those lines. This is a report of, sadly, a fairly regular thing on busses, and a completely unconscious reaction, that women, normal, every day women have, and what we think about because of the world we live in.

I take public transportation most days. Because I commute at commute hours, the busses are often quite packed, at least for certain parts of the ride, and all seats are full, and people are standing in the aisles, just to get home at a decent spot. Yesterday, when I got on my final bus, it was full, though not packed. There were a couple people standing, but one seat was open toward the back where someone had just gotten off. The people standing (all young men) indicated that I should go take the seat. I did. There is nothing remarkable about this part of the ride.

We eventually got to a park and ride. Lots of people get off at the park and ride, and fewer stay on for the second half of this bus’s route. Yesterday was like any other. Lots of people got off. Others got on, but we went from there being no seats left on the bus to there being enough seats for people to not sit directly next to another person if they were willing to sit in the back of the bus. I was seated by myself, against the window, in a row of two seats, the last row before the “back of the bus” section (where the majority of seats were open).

A younger than me man (probably 20s but I am not a great judge of age) at the park and ride. He caught my eye because of the slow way he was moving through the bus, scanning the seats. He seemed a little off, but not something I would have remembered without his further actions. It looked like he was going to stand, which seemed silly, given how many seats were open behind me, but whatever. And then he decided to squeeze into the seat next to me. (I am overweight, and he was not skinny, so it was kind of a squeeze.) It was silly to me, given that by taking two more steps, he could have sat without squeezing, but, whatever. I looked out the window.

And then he tried to talk to me. I do not talk to people on the bus (not even people I know, unless I am specifically traveling with them). I ignored him and just kept looking out the window. (This in itself can be a dangerous act, but again, a risk I am willing to take.) He kept shifting around in his seat, in way that felt like he was purposely bumping against me, trying to get me to look his way. I did not.

And then he got up, not at a stop, but while the bus was in motion, and moved up two seats to sit next to another woman. She had earbuds in, and also ignored him. He did not stay next to her very long, and finally moved to the seats behind me.

A few stops later, a woman who was sitting behind me gets up to get off the bus. She is young, (late teens would be my guess), blonde, and incredibly cute. She is standing at the back door, by herself. The creepy guy (as I have now started to think of him) gets up and walks past her, brushing against her. He says something, I do not know what, but maybe that she dropped something. She says thank you. He stays there for a minute, scanning the front of the bus. I am feeling a little concern for this young woman, should he get off the bus at the same stop. And the look on her face says she is not super comfortable, either. Another man comes to stand next to the young woman at the back door of the bus. Creepy guy goes back to his seat in the back of the bus behind me. Cute girl kneels down, but kind of keeps her eye on creepy guy. She gets off the bus. He stays on.

A few more stops. Three young women color get off the bus. This includes the last of the women sitting behind me, and all women in the back of the bus except me. Creepy guy gets up, squeezes past them. Again, I find myself a little concerned for these young women, should he get off at the same stop as them. But he does not. This time, he moves to the now fairly empty front of the bus. I find myself relieved that he can no longer see when I pull the cord to signal my bus stop.

And that is when I realize that I had been making a plan in my head for what I should do if he got off at the same stop as me – Should I start the long walk along the trail to my house? Should I go the much shorter path to my friend’s house, where I could at least duck into her back yard and call C to come pick me up? Should I pretend to need to retie my shoe and see which direction he would go, and then take whichever option was the opposite of what he was doing?

And I tried to chide myself. He was likely just a guy with poor social skills, not good at talking to women. And creepy or not, he probably was not dangerous. Probably.

He did not get off at my stop. And I got to take my normal walk home without worrying about the creepy guy. But it got me thinking – I do not know a single man who has ever worried about their own safety because they did not want to talk to a stranger on the bus. I do not know a single man who has ever noticed the other men on the bus and worried about their ability to safely get home if someone else got off the bus at the same stop.

While our society makes movies like Fatal Attraction, where it is the crazy female ex-partner who comes after the man and his new love, reality tells us that is rare. What is not rare is men who come after their ex-partners and kill them, on an astonishingly regular basis. No “nice woman” has ever gone on a killing rampage because the men she wanted to date did not want to date her.

This is the world women live in – even women who themselves have not been victims of violence already. This is normal for us. We have these responses subconsciously. And that is terrible. That is not the world we want our daughters to keep living in. It is not the world we want our granddaughters to inherit.

We teach kids not to talk to strangers, because talking to strangers could be dangerous. And yet, for a woman, not talking to a stranger can be dangerous. And that is a problem.