3 hours ago
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What motivates a stranger to push a woman in public? That’s a question I’ve been stuck on this week after a man shoved me out of his way on an empty pedestrian street. I didn’t even see him coming – well, I wouldn’t have, as he came up from behind me.
I had walked in his path, he barked at me. “What path?” I thought, baffled, as I took in the huge expanse of empty pavement around us. I was so stupefied by the encounter that I found myself frozen to the spot, watching him walk away in his blue anorak and technical rucksack. He could have been any man from anywhere on his way to work.
As far as street harassment goes, many will have suffered far, far worse. But what made the incident uniquely disturbing was that it was the third similar encounter in as many months. In December, a man verbally harassed me on the tube as I went down an escalator – for walking “too slowly” this time.
Last week, I was peering into a restaurant when I collided head-first with a man walking towards me. The pavement was empty and four metres wide. Why hadn’t he moved out of the way? I asked him. Because I should have been looking where I was going, he told me.
Perhaps I am a slow meanderer of the worst type and the story here is how unaware we have become in public spaces. Who doesn’t find other people annoying? Especially oblivious ones. “Am I oblivious?” I asked my husband. “No,” he told me, “but so what if you were?” He was right. Why, when someone bumps into me, is my reaction to say sorry, or move aside? Why was it the reaction of three men to shout or walk into me, to push me?
I spoke to some women in my life about what had happened, and many shared similar experiences. A colleague tells me a story that is eerily similar to mine. A man barged past her from behind on an empty street – only she had the chutzpah to chase after him in a rage.
Another colleague won’t run any more after a man tried to hit her with his lorry.
Another was told she needed to “shut the fuck up” because she was supposedly talking too loudly in a pub with friends.
Female black and brown friends describe experiencing casual racism on a scale they’ve never encountered before.
A tall friend says she gets shouted at all the time. A small friend says she has never been harassed as much in her life as she was this summer.
A man screamed “CUNT” in the face of an older friend.
And I can bet almost every woman reading this will have had a similar experience. Of men wanting to teach them a lesson – that sharing public space isn’t a man’s job, it’s a woman’s.
Somewhere along the way, the handbrake has come off. Feelings that were once contained now seem to be spilling over. After each encounter, I was left with a gnawing feeling disproportionate to the event itself, an overwhelming sense that something deeply sinister had happened. What thoughts do these men have about women if this is the stuff they are saying out loud? How do they treat the women in their lives if they are so angry they are capable of pushing a woman at 10.30am on a Friday?
“Don’t let that prick ruin your day,” a woman said, after the incident. She appeared – and it is always a woman – like an angel to offer support and solidarity. But it did ruin my day. I walked around feeling heavy, ruminating on how anyone could behave like that, how he could break the social contract so completely.
And the next time I go out alone, on a weekday morning, I assume the brace position. I feel the threat of violence just under the surface. I carry suspicion with me. I wonder what my next encounter with a stranger will look like.
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Lucy Pasha-Robinson is a Guardian assistant Opinion editor
