On why stepping in over harrassment is often a dilemma

I speak from bitter experience when I say that even trying to take the lightest touch when a man is harrassing a woman can be insufficient to defuse the situation.

By the time you read this, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll have already seen the tweet, sent by a woman heading back to London following the match between Nottingham Forest and West Ham United and the point at which she attracted the attention of a small number of braying, Stone Island-clad little pricks.

I’ve actually just had a train journey from hell being harassed by West Ham fans travelling from Notts to London chanting at me to get my rack out and banging on the window as I got off.

Yet another disgusting experience being a female football fan.

Frey is a Watford supporter and was travelling back from her team’s 6-2 win at Sheffield Wednesday. She also has a following of over 20,000 people on Twitter, meaning that her experience was always likely to go viral. It should also go without saying that none of this really makes any difference to the substance of what happened on that train.

So here we all stand again, wondering what the absolute hell we can do about this sort of thing. And there’s an obvious answer that stands out from looking at the accompanying picture. Why didn’t anyone say anything? Why didn’t anyone step in for the safety of somebody else? It’s clearly a packed train, so it’s hardly as though there wasn’t a shortage of people who could have said or done anything.

Of course, the answer to that question is that it isn't quite as easy as ‘step in, make a difference, everyone learns a lesson’. The women watching this unfold will already be fully aware that men of this nature have a tendency to react very badly to being called them out on the worst of their behaviour. 

It makes perfect sense. If someone is prepared to shout and catcall in public like this–alcohol and cheap cocaine are nothing if not facilitators for the very worst of people–what else might they be prepared to do? In a spectrum with “learn a lesson about the error of their ways” or “turn on me”, which end would you expect this sort of scenario to lean toward?

And sadly, this is a question that doesn’t apply to women. It also applies to a good number of us men, too. At 5’8 tall, barely 11 stone, and having never really even been in a fight, the only likely outcome of me stepping in and ‘saying something’ in a situation like that would be me getting the tar kicked out of me. And in this respect, I can only speak from personal experience.

***

It happened just after my 18th birthday, in the late summer of 1990. I lived in St Albans at the time, and getting home at the end of a Friday evening involved crossing the railway bridge on Victoria Street, by the station. Between 11.30 and midnight on a Friday or Saturday night, it was usually pretty busy.

At the top of this bridge, there was a set of stone steps which offered a shortcut down to the station entrance, and I was walking on the other side of the road to these when I heard an argument on the other side of the road between a man and a woman. Glancing over, I vaguely recognised the woman, and my shoulders dropped. In that way that you do when you’re that age, I kinda sorta knew her from my broader social circle.

I’m not especially proud of this, but for a few seconds I hoped to myself that she wouldn’t recognise me, or that it wouldn’t be what it looked like from a distance, or something, anything. I really didn’t want to get involved. But I played the drums in a local band at the time and we had a bit of a following. She knew who I was and she needed something.

She called out my name, as though greeting an old friend, and I crossed, trying to think of an escape route which might sort this out while allowing me to retain my front teeth. As I got to within a few metres I uttered a cheery “Hi!” in the hope that this might somehow defuse what had sounded from thirty yards away a pretty unpleasant looking situation.

It didn’t work. He pushed me down the stone steps and, well, kicked the shit out of me. Because it was 1990 I was wearing one of those varsity jackets, which was black with white sleeves. By the time I’d finished wiping the blood from my nose on my right sleeve, the sleeve was red. Station staff chased this bloke through the station, but soon enough he was away.

I was left with cuts and bruises, including a scar that still sits on the right-hand corner of my chin to this day, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. In my 52 years on this planet, it might even be the closest that I’ve come to being killed. All it would have taken might have been one bump in the wrong place on the way down this flight of stairs and I might have been. I did at least get to keep my front teeth.

Neither this woman nor I knew this guy in any way, so talking to the police was going to be of no use. I can only hope that, almost three and half decades on from that, the perpetrator has at some point over the years recalled all of this and burned up with shame. But the truth of the matter is that it’s unlikely that he ever did.

***

That’s the dilemma that we face. Getting involved when we witness misogynistic behaviour is the right thing to do, but it isn’t always the best thing to do. Nothing gets solved if all that happens as a result of it is a third party getting an absolute shoeing. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything.

A good number of randos in the replies were keen to point out that she should be contacting the train conductor or texting British Transport Police, but while this again sounds appealing, it also might be difficult to achieve in the heat of the moment. Will the conductor care or be prepared to take on the inherent risk on ‘getting involved’ themself? Will the BTP actually do anything substantive?

But there is safety and strength in numbers. Perhaps the answer in such a situation is to quietly get a group of people together which is big enough to persuade the potential assailant that perhaps a physical reaction to being told to pipe the fuck down and reassess his life might not be in his own best interests. Perhaps we just need to be aware of the potential need to team up if something like this is happening in front of us.

Nothing about any of this is in any way perfect. It shouldn’t be necessary to have to get involved in the first place. This sort of thing shouldn’t be happening in the first place. Perhaps we need to take responsibility in numbers, if we can’t do it on our own. And sometimes, we might just have to face the possibility of a smack in the mouth to make our voice heard.