I don’t agree with women only carriages, I just think people need to stop touching people they don’t know!
I’ve been groped on a train in the UK and had some horrid man rub himself up and down me on a packed bus in Italy. So who do you report it to? The guard who was in the next carriage avoiding the coked up boys harrassing me? On a packed bus - who? If you say something people may think you are some crazy person making things up. Then if you do report it later what happens? Particularly if you didn’t see the face of the guy behind you on that packed bus.
We need to be able to report these things and know it will be taken seriously and hope fellow citizens would report it too nad say they witnessed it. A lot is not reported. Also maybe not so packed tubes and trains? More trains so we don’t all try to squeeze on all at once. If it’s packed it’s far easier for people to grope and rub and get away with it.
Yes, there’s definitely a thing about overcrowded trains that’s just not acceptable in terms of protecting women from nutters (never mind the million other reasons it’s unacceptable).
Giving women their own carriage sends out far too many negative messages. Opportunities for reporting, and encouraging bystanders to do so too, would be a first step in the right direction.
I’m not criticising Corbyn for thinking about these things, but it does seem an odd policy pledge to make that gains him nothing and opens him up for attack.
The over-riding message to me is, instead of making women feel at fault for being groped, resources should be directed at the sad inadequate fuckers who feel the need to grope / harrass / assault in the first place.
Definitely this, Ruth. Women are trainined from a young age on how to adapt their behaviour to avoid something bad happening to them (whether assault, pregnancy, rape, being called a slag, etc etc). I strongly believe there’s a chance that as a result, women’s modified behaviour means they act with greater caution in other aspects of their lives. Solving the problem by hiding women away in another carriage would be a considerable backward step in my opinion.
Just an observation. I’ve seen women-only compartments on public transport in many countries. In all of those countries, you hear the defence that it’s to ‘protect women’. Also in all of those countries, too, women exist in a sexual apartheid. They are second-class citizens (to put it mildly) to such an extent that in at least some of those countries, any woman who does not take her ‘appropriate’ place in the segregated compartment is subject to abuse and worse.
So actually segregation may be a catalyst for making things far worse, not better.
I’m not criticising Corbyn for thinking about these things, but it does seem an odd policy pledge to make that gains him nothing and opens him up for attack.
It’s not a pledge, but it is an example of how quickly something can be perceived as one.
OK, fair go. I’ve not deeper into it other than the first article I read - what was it if not a pledge? If just an opinion or thought, one that’s probably best kept quiet for now as I don’t see the gain.
Oh totally - I mean can you imagine it - women being treated as if a protected specifies. That’s not equality. I joked about the fine line between love and hate yesterday, but I also think there’s a fine line between putting women on pedestals and treating them as second class citizens.
Ain’t it that a loud + unequivocal “Oi stop touching my butt u Freak!” on a packed train will cause these bros significant embarrasment + mortification? That is what I would do! I would do that even if no-one is touching on me, I would do it just for the lols + pre-emptive strike! Or why not, right, before you get on a train, smear ur arse + boobs with i.e. faeces or i.e. anthrax or something like that, that would not get such immediate results but they would Learn Lesson i promise you!
Oh, and everyone seems to have conveniently missed the fact that the Tory Transport Minister, Claire Perry, suggested virtually the same thing last year:
Oh dear, Jeremy’s going to go into meltdown. This will be the first time in his long career of consequence-free posturing that he’s advocated a Tory idea.
It is a good read Pap. But I do wish that commentators would refer to the fact that it was actually the Tory government of the early to mid 90s that first mooted the idea of PFI. OK Labour took it on in 97 but its just plain wrong to assume they started it.
