Image source: Transport for London
Harassment on the train happens more frequent than you think. According to TLC, one in ten Londoners have experienced unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport, but 90 per cent of these incidents go unreported.
Whether it’s catcalling, rude remarks or physical contact, what would you do when it happens to you? Or a stranger beside you?
A Facebook post by Scott Sparrow has been making its rounds on social media, being shared 7,000+ times as I’m typing this.
It goes:
“I am having such a wonderful day on the tubes I can’t not share this story. Let me build the scene:
Central Line between Oxford Circus and Chancery Lane, possibly St Pauls.
To my right is sat a lady, 25-30, wearing a revealing dress.
To my left is an old lady, almost dead is how old she is.
Standing in front of us is a man, 50’s, suit and tie, eyeing revealing dress.
Suit leans over to the revealing dress lady and says “Have some self respect when you dress yourself”
Revealing dress lady blushes to the colour of her almost not there dress.
Old soon to be dead lady is having none of this and in a south london accent shouts out “She can wear or not wear whatever the fuck she likes, even if she was naked with a sign pointing to her fanny (she said fanny on the central line by St Pauls) and the sign pointed to her fanny which said …PARTY CITY ALL INVITED…then that would still be none of your bloody business now fuck off back to your bored wife!”
Red dress then hugs the walking dead and old suit walks off.
That old lady will be my hero for the rest of her life, even if the rest of her life is like only another week. She was so old.”
Image source: Reuters
Apparently this wasn’t his first post reporting an incident from a train ride. Just a few days before the post above, he delightfully shared another post on his Facebook feed with the World:
“Somewhere between Bank and London Bridge I accidentally grabbed a penis belonging to another gentleman in order to regain my balance. My intention was to grab the pole (the actual pole and not the stranger’s fun-gun) but in my panic I found his genitalia. Needless to say it worked, I mean I regained my balance. The interaction was completely non-sexual and accidental. However, if I had stayed there, just for a second longer, beyond the need to balance myself, then it would have been a romantic gesture. It got me to thinking of the precarious borders of love and how quickly our lives can turn around. Thank god he did not look me in the eye, he would have seen the pallidity of my embarrassed soul which hides like some dying gnome curled up like a fetus behind my cowboy exterior.
And then I smashed my phone so Facebook me in my inbox if you want to hear more.”
