1. The MP, Chris Williamson, who brought up the subject of women only carriages, as a potential response to an alarming increase in sexual assaults and harassment of women on public transport, made it perfectly clear that it was merely a discussion point.
He did not indicate any suggestions of enforcement, he did not say talk about regulations, he did not produce a white paper in preparation of legislation.
All he wanted was a public discussion on the issue.
Because it had been brought up two years ago, and the idea was dropped, and yet the behaviour has increased, the situation has worsened and that cannot happen. It is happening, and it cannot be allowed to continue.
The issue is not separate carriages for women.
The issue is safety from harassment for women. And not just on Public Transport.
Every where.
I see his effort as an institutional cry for help.
An attempt, a tactic, to bring the subject to light.
Let us talk about this, honestly.
Deal with it.
Fair enough.
The subject is sexual assault and harassment. Not Carriages.
2. The first I heard of it Mr Williamson's cry for help was when Majiid Nawaz on LBC during his sit-in for the lovely and logical, evidence based yet (sometimes infuriatingly in denial) James O' Brien, a seat
he does not fill well, on the mid morning show.
Nawaz used this topic to attack the Labour Party and lefties in general.
Two women challenged him on this and he dismissed those challenges by asking them what would it be like if a woman did not use the carriage and was harassed, she'd be asked why she did not use the carriage set aside - with the implication that is was in some way as if it were her own fault, and a defence could be made on that grounds, and he said that would be crazy if separate carriages led to that.
He implied that separate carriages would lead down that path. Gaslighting. On public air waves. How
arrogant, how repugnant.
He also likened the idea to Saudi Arabian segregation of women.
He did not address the harassment of women in any detail, or with much sensitivity to the subject, or for the women who disagreed with his tactic of using this subject to attack the Labour Party.
Those who agreed with him were praised.
He used this issue to score political points, and the media have been doing that all day.
You have no idea how angry I am at this. I have no idea how angry I am with all this.
What he was doing was gaslighting. Bullying.
He was deliberately missing the point and he was using women's distress (and many men's distress at this) to score political points.
3. In the past 8 months I have intervened on public transport to stop men harassing women, groping them, sneering at them, in obviously sexualised harassment. Thrice. Twice on the Bus, once on a late night tube. Going north..
On the last occasion, I got into a busy late night train, full of people emptying out fo the pubs, and I witnessed three drunken men, one sitting beside a woman, the other across from her, and the third in the aisle. The man in the aisle was groping the women, pawing at her, jeering at her in an obvioulsy lewd manner; the others were laughing, egging him on. She was clearly distressed.
It looked like it hand been going on for a few minutes.
I stepped up and stood up to him and told him to back off, that what he was doing was sexual harassment. Which is an offence.
He backed off, and then started to insult me.
I checked in with the lady, nd looked around behind me and saw everyone was watching, witnessing.
Fine. I did not rise to his bait, and I continued saying that what he was doing was an offence.
"The way you were behaving was the issue."
His friends got just a little bit angrier. I stood my ground. I kept repeating that, hold their gazes... looking at each one in turn
I stared and he stared and then I turned to look back down the carriage, and everyone was still watching.
One or Two stops later she got off the train, muttering thank you to me; she had to walk past all three, including the harasser whom she had to pass really close by. She was intimidated. Scared. She moved rapidly. I watched the drunk trio.
They then started to have a go at me, and the harasser called me a faggot, and then, out of nowhere one of them said.
"Well maybe your daughter was raped..." he smirked, his friends laughed. Their little joke.
These three guys were Asian. But more importantly, they were men.
It was a trolling dig, a trigger statement, a deliberate knock me off guard, and it probably had some connection to the coverage around the Rotherham case, and he was implying my opposition to his action was racist.
It was not.
I made it clear that his skin tone, his ethnicity were not the issue, and not an issue here.
** Note : In my view, the ethnicity of people who harass and assault women or children, their background, their justifications or rationalisations, their explanations is all irrelevant. All the is relevant is the behaviour. That's the issue. If the behaviour was not there, there'd be no issue. In cases like this, ethnicity is a distraction, a side issue. It always is.
"The way you were behaving was the issue. The behaviour, That's it."
Then he stepped towards me, in an intimidating drunken way... muttered another insult. I do not recall what he said.
I was about to respond to that, when some men behind me motioned to me, and asked me to 'move back here, m8!" Nobody said anything, they just slowly filled the space between me and the three harassers,
For me, skin tone, ethnicity, language, belief system, religion, club memberships, favourite egg dish, bath or shower? It is all wholly irrelevant.
It was the behaviour that I was addressing. I made no negative comments about them at any stage of this interaction. I did not use insult at any time. I remained polite. We can do it.
- moral of the story - if we healthy men see such harassment in public, then we all need to say it - ZERO TOLERANCE - TOGETHER and then act to impede the abuser. And if needs be, if a serious offence occurs, then it's a police matter, and then a court and sentencing matter.
We need to film the harassment as we move in. We need to stand together.
Because it is a problem of some men, that becomes a problem for many, many women. Too many women endure this behaviour.
As men we cannot stand by simply because we would never behave in that manner. And we cannot rest on the laurels of "It's not all men!"
It is, as it happens, a problem all men need to confront.
Sexual abuse and bullying does happen either way, that is true. The bulk of sexual abuse is perpetrated by men, against women and children and other men. There is also a wider cultural context of bullying.
Sexual harassment is not banter, it is is bullying.
It is unacceptable anywhere, on this Earth. really.
Nonetheless that cannot be used as a way to deflect from the issue of men harassing women in a lewd and intimidating manner.
4. Often many of us men are scared of getting involved, for lots of different reasons, personal and social, we can become timid, feel deeply un-nerved when threatened by intimidation, aware of an inability to fight, and that is a genuine fear, a real risk and I get that.
But it is not good enough. We got to get together, stop the harassment and talk the harassers down. It can be done if we work together. It did this time, and other times.
We have to acknowledge we do not have this issue where it needs to be, now!
5. Zero Tolerance. Every time. It is an offence, and offensive, and not in the way of ‘taking offence’ which is another matter altogether.
This quote is pure wisdom, based on common sense and available scientific evidence. It has something to say on this issue.
"Because of the physiological unity of mind/body, because of the physiological unity of the brain's emotional centers, the immune system, the hormonal and nervous systems, when you suppress something in one area you are risking suppressing it in another area, so when you suppress your anger and boundaries emotionally, you are also suppressing your immune responses. And therefore your body is not as able to fight back against malignancy or, just as anger can turn against the self, so can the immune system
Anger is a necessary boundary protection. If something or somebody transgresses your boundaries, you express anger, not necessarily to hurt them, but simply to keep them out of your space. That's a healthy response. More generally, the role of emotion is to keep out that which is dangerous or threatening, and to permit that which is nurturing and helpful. So we have anger, we have love, we have attraction, we have revulsion, the whole thing. But that's exactly the role of the immune system. It's to keep out that which is noxious and unhealthy, and to attack it if necessary, and to allow in that which is nurturing and supportive.”
-Dr Gabor Maté
That means, to me, that sentencing is focussed on the community's health and safety, rather than punishment.
Health and Safety of the community, and ultimately the Society, rather than punishment, where everyone loses out.
Health and Safety says a person who cannot be trusted, cannot be trusted.
Keep them safe. Not in Society. And. Importantly, education and honesty, as in listening to the people who have been hurt, harmed, on all sides of this issue. This is abut childhood and men and women.
This is about looking at how people learn to be bullies.... looking at the neuroscience, psychology, biology and environment to see that is happening at the physiology. How all these elements orchestrate in to influencing behaviour, Good or bad. The research understanding at present has much to offer by way of insight, Survivors have even more wisdom to offer, if anyone was to really listen to hear it No more assumptions about people in distress.
Why some bullies choose racism, another will choose misogyny, others attempt objectification of some 'othered' group, yet others strut as neo-nazi's, or parade and throw bricks as antifa... who cares? I think that is part of what happens when lots of people who want to be offensive, and I mean genuinely offensive, harmful find each other and bond. Football Hooligans. A culture of violence.
Their justification's or rationale are invalid. Reason is a nothing. An empty space, with a narrative wrapped around it that is meaningless. The behaviour and the outcomes, that is the issue.
6. We healthy men have to be the immune system that ejects the virus of sexual harassment. Of both men and women, by whomever.
Leaving it to Government, or guards, is neglect of our shared response ability.
7. When media personalities use this story to undermine Labour's standing, they are avoiding the first point, and using the trauma of women as a political device, to make a secondary point. Labour bad!
8. There is a need for an education led approach to prevention - not talking at children, not a curriculum to be tested on, but talking with children, parents and anyone else, and most of all, children in schools listening to the survivors. They were there. First hand accounts of what it feels like.
you know that joke :
"How many Vietnam Vets does it take to change a light bulb?"
- I don't know, man
"You don't know, maaan! 'Cuz you weren't there, maaan, you were not THERE!"
9. Another point regarding placing more officials on the trains and stations - the profit lost, or the extra labour cost, which ever way you look at it, is not worth more than the feeling for women of the harassment that women are subjected to, the risk they feel, the lack of ease...
That said, someone passed me this comment from facebook:
"One gentleman said if we were all train guards and made sure people didn't feel vulnerable and step up when needed we would not need these carriages/ seats.”
Absolutely spot on, and so few words, not one wasted, makes me sound like a verbose ranter. But I know that of myself, anyways. I am a writer of polemics.
There's a lot more to be said on this... it ties in bullying and abusive behaviour in general.
10. So here’s another way of putting it.
An issue is raised. For discussion.
Sexual Harassment of Women on Public transport.
Are separate women only carriages a solution?
The media set the narrative.
Pundits scream "going back to segregation!"
Gaslighting and deflection.
Then they use it to attack the Labour Party and J. Corbyn. They use it to attack 'woke'. They use it to attack Feminists. They use it to attack.
“Labour are utterly bonkers!”
Utterly repugnant, manipulative and puerile/immature. Bullying.
11. Healthy people must declare as a collective that there is no tolerance, for this kind of behaviour, none, and we must make it so.
Both the sexual harassment, and the punditry gaslighting. And quite a lot other obviously dysfunctional behaviour, such as the
DWP Work Capability Assessment regime, which kills vulnerable people via unyielding bureaucracy.
That’s another posting.
And remember, sexual harassment of women : it is a problem of some men, that becomes a problem for way too many women. To the extent that it is a cultural problem.
Let us end it, together.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
