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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Ordinary Violence |
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by Sarah Kanouse
Email: kanouse (nospam) uiuc.edu (unverified!) |
22 Aug 2002
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An essay about a sexual assault, being a bystander, and the violence of everyday life. |
The evening train from Chicago to Champaign buzzed with no more than the usual level of casual and ordinary violence: sexist jokes, sharp words to young boys to 'shut up crying like a little girl,' unwelcome flirting, exuberant commentary on which sports team crushed or destroyed which, or parental threats of spankings. Unsure of whether or how to intervene, I usually sit silent to control the anger and sadness that bubbles up inside me. I often survive public transportation by imagining myself collecting data on the behavior of men and women, adults and children at the beginning of the 21st century. I muse abstractly on the lines separating metaphoric from actual violence. I poke fun and shake my head in smug superiority at my cartoonish neighbors, confident in my own enlightenment.
But that night, the daily, unsurprising violence of words and gestures shook free of metaphor, eliminated all ambiguity, and became tears, depositions, and arrests.
She ran up the stairs from the car's lower level and tore down the aisle in tears. "He followed me into the bathroom. He just tried to rape me," she reported to her friends.
He was a young man who'd earlier invited himself to squeeze between her and her friend in the two-person row seat and begun
flirting aggressively. They were sitting right behind me. I heard it all. I heard his sudden appearance next to their seats: "You scared us,
sneaking up like that," they giggled. I heard his uninvited but uncontested invasion of their personal space. I heard his playful but
insistent demands to inspect the contents of their purses: "Uh, let me remove some feminine items," they asked as they nervously resisted. "Don't worry. I've seen it all before," he reassured while maintaining a firm grip. I heard the young women make small talk and flirt back, mentioning weekend adventures (left undescribed for maximum intrigue) and recent purchases at Victoria's Secret. I heard giggles of both nervousness and excitement and words of discomfort and engagement. I heard all the ambiguity and clumsiness of the average youthful flirtation. I heard all this and remained intentionally deaf to the voices exhorting me to say or do something: to ask if they were comfortable with his presence, to question his forcefulness, to stare to let him know I was watching, to look back to communicate my discomfort.
Her announcement to her friends jerked me into action. My companion located the conductor while I tried to be helpful. The conductor listened to her story and asked if she wanted to press charges. She hesitated, then, prompted by her friends, said 'yes.' The conductor disappeared, notified the train staff and state police, informed the young man that he would be arrested at the next station stop. The young man strode confidently back up the aisle and leaned angrily over her. She sat silent and terrified. My companion asked him sternly what he was doing; I yelled at him to get the hell away from her, to get away from all of us. He turned and ran down the aisle.
The police met the train at the next station. By now, some of the other passengers were interested. They peered out the windows, speculated on what happened, and complained about the delay. A man, whose sexist comments I had catalogued earlier in the trip, loudly began making fun of the situation. He got on his cell phone, joking with a friend about the silly irritation that was making him late. A dozen other passengers laughed. Hadn't they seen the look on her face when she ran through the aisles? Did they see him stride up the car, only to run off a few minutes later? How could they not see this was serious?
I found myself standing in the middle of the train telling him, "You don't know what's going on here. This is serious. Have a little sensitivity and respect."
"And now this lady is getting an attitude with me!" he complained into his cell phone.
"I'll show you an attitude," I began to shout. "Don't you have any decency? You have no idea what's going on here! This isn't funny--people's lives are on the line and you're turning it into a joke? What the hell is wrong with you? Try to be a fucking human being!"
He continued a bemused narration into the phone, my outrage just more material for a good joke. I walked into the next car and cried for awhile. The rest of the passengers peered out the window, played video solitaire, or stared blankly ahead.
An hour later, the police escorted the young man away (without handcuffs--if he weren't white, would he be granted that little dignity?). The young woman took her seat again, and we resumed the journey home.
She was 18, he was 16 years old. I knew this from my eavesdropping. Perhaps his age comforted her as it had comforted me into my inaction: he can't mean any harm, he's just a clumsy, rude boy. She's probably more experienced than he is. She knows how to take care of herself. When I saw her face I was shocked at how young she looked. I conveniently forgot who I'd been at 16, 17, 18, a young woman striving for whatever I perceived as adult, excited to have sexual attention, thrilled when I felt powerful within that attention, dismayed and confused when that power would vanish before my eyes like smoke from a match . And above all else, resolute in refusing to acknowledge when that power failed, when it was illusory, when I felt threatened--I wanted above all to be powerful and adult. Girls learn early that being an adult woman means being found attractive and being available to those who find them attractive. Girls learn early that their power is their allure.
The popular image of sexual assault rarely includes experiences as complex as what took place between the young man and young woman. I, a self-described feminist, have been unable to say definitively when the boy's inappropriate behavior started, what responsibility the young woman had, if any, to communicate her boundaries, what role gender roles play and whom can be blamed for perpetuating them, how much bystanders like me should be accountable for the violence we obseve without comment or intervention. I'm alarmed that I want to find the definitive answers to these nuanced questions. We like our victims virginal, weak-kneed, terrified, simpering. We like our perpetrators sleazy, grunting, dripping sweat like violence from bulging muscles. We like to imagine ourselves as noble bystanders: quick to the fray, chivalrous, and knightly in our rescue.
I've thought alot about what else I could have done. I berate myself for the lack of creativity in my two responses: complicit silence and angry, shouted insults. I was no more knightly than my inert or rubbernecking fellow passengers. Surely there must be interventions I could design that would be more elegant and effective, that play more than two flat notes. I work out scenarios in my mind. How would she have responded to my words of concern? Llikely dismissively--it isn't 'adult' to be scared. How would he have acted if he knew he was being watched? Possibly not differently at all--I'm not sure he knew he was doing anything wrong. How would the other passengers become involved? I feel powerless when I consider how many thousands of times per day men force themselves on women--physically, yes, but also verbally or spatially--and how many times it might have ended if a witness dared become an actor, how many times I might have been that actor if I'd only been more aware, more imaginative, more courageous.
I play other scenarios, more commonplace events, in my mind as well. When does the casual, metaphoric violence of words--threats of spanking, demeaning jokes, and bullying comments--become a physical threat? Is that the medium in which actual, physical violence gestates? What is our responsibility to oppose that? How can we oppose it respectfully, creatively, effectively? How can we create spaces where others are spurred to care or even act, especially when we can barely find the courage to act at all?
In the weeks that followed I told everyone I knew what happened on the train, desperate to find someone who held the key for performing active witness. I want to find a local group to practice "Theater of the Oppressed," a participatory theater form originating in Brazil in which people rehearse alternative, oppositional responses to the various forms of oppression they encounter in their daily lives. Most people agree to the need and, like me, don't have the time or experience to begin such a task. The scale of the problem is enormous, and it is difficult to believe that preparing tools for small interventions will do anything at all to reduce the pervasive physical and metaphorical violence. But an intervention--a few words, a gesture--may have altered what happened on a Sunday night train, may have shown young woman a new way of being powerful, may have changed the life of a 16 year old boy now facing prison somewhere in Illinois.
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