Badge Encounters Of The Theatre Kind

People on the tube are so ignorant, self centred and rude anyway, why would anyone in their right mind want to talk to them?

I always find it frustrating when there's these Buzzfeed type lists about not daring to talk to commuters etc etc & how miserable we are because we don't want to exchange with strangers on our commute but honestly, for me, my commute is either the last 30 minutes I have to myself for the rest of the day or the first after a long day at work & I don't really want to spend them in enforced conversation with a totally stranger! 

Then again, like someone else here has said, I'm also one of life's introverts so those kind of conversations fill me with dread!

Not all unwanted attention is of the sex pest variety. Also, "not all men" really isn't an argument that holds water, because we KNOW that 99 out of 100 men are perfectly pleasant and completely harmless, but we've been trained since before puberty to be on constant alert for the 1%, and the problem is far less "only some men harass women" and very much more "all women have been and/or will be harassed by men".

I've read enough articles about the general public's response to "baby on board" badges to know that the sweet pure idea of two friendly badge-wearing people enjoying a gentle exchange of pleasantries is almost guaranteed to backfire.

TheatreBoard badges, on the other hand, I can continue to get behind. No need for pleasantries among us lot, we can just get stuck straight into the nitty gritty of will Hamilton live up to the hype and will Broadway appreciate Imelda's Mama Rose.

No, indeed not. But the last guy who tried to start an unsolicited conversation with me on the tube (I ignored him - he had headphones in, I genuinely thought he was on the phone to someone the first time he spoke), ended up then following me down the platform, following me into the most distant (almost empty) carriage and sitting right next to me, and grabbing my knee/thigh. Fortunately a very loud 'Ugh, no!' and immediately moving to the other end of the carriage eventually stopped him, but I was looking back over my shoulder all the way up the escalators in case he reappeared.

It doesn't have to happen often to make you incredibly uncomfortable and wary.

This is an interesting article about London's politeness culture:

www.citymetric.com/horizons/tube-chat-badges-show-london-isnt-rude-it-has-negative-politeness-culture-2481

Unsolicited conversation with no good reason worries us because it breaks the polite social convention, which leads to anxieties about what other social conventions might be ignored.

Other people are very welcome to wear them to their hearts' content! The point is, I might pop on one of those badges with fresh, hopeful thoughts of meeting people from different countries and cultures and backgrounds, or sharing thoughts and nostalgic reminiscences with people just like me, who are also wearing badges. On the other hand, the other person wearing the badge might be a dodgy bloke just looking for his next, apparently 'willing' victim (ie a woman wearing a similar badge).

Most women (because, sadly, it has happened to most of us) will be able to tell you that when you're in a situation like that, telling the bloke you're not interested (and you usually have to do it repeatedly) generally leads to a quick escalation to unpleasant name-calling and threatening language. If you're wearing a badge saying, "I want to chat!", the obvious verbal weapon for said bloke is "But you're wearing a badge, you silly (expletive deleted)."  

So the fact that a lot of women might be reluctant to pin on such a badge is not entirely a huge surprise.

Nothing stopping those who want to, though. Or any blokes. I wish them many hours of charming conversation together. But unfortunately, I also know human nature!

(And, yes, I absolutely recognise it's a minority of blokes who behave unpleasantly. I know many wonderful men. I manage to walk around most of the time and make solid judgements within seconds about whether the bloke I'm about to encounter is a sleaze or not. But the fact is, you're always primed for the one that is a sleaze and, unfortunately, you act accordingly. Perhaps when society recognises just how often this happens, and just how serious an effect it can have, our daughters and granddaughters won't have to do it any more.)  
 

You can get up to 4 million people using the Tube in a day. Let's assume that most people are going to work and from work, so those 4 million journeys are actually only 2 million people. Now let's assume 1 million are men and 1 million are women. Assuming that 999,999 of those men are either not wearing badges, or are respectfully only approaching other people wearing badges, that leaves 1 man who'll be wearing his badge, and maybe he's seen a woman wearing headphones, so he's stood precisely 1.5 metres in front of her, attracted her attention, pantomimed "take your headphones off!" at her, and when she says she's really not interested in having conversation with him, he'll point to his badge and say something like "hey, I'm wearing a friendly Tube Chat badge, that means I'm a friendly guy!", and use that as an excuse to keep pursuing an unwanted conversation. And he's only 1 in a million, but he's out there, and I BET you he'll find me.

Also I find it disheartening that at least three of us have felt the need to clarify that we KNOW most men are nice but it's not the nice ones who are a problem. Proper nice men don't dismiss women's concerns by making the conversation about how *they'd* never do a thing like that, overlooking that there's still other people out there who *will* do a thing like that and *those* are the ones that mean these conversations still need to happen.

Anyway! Once again, this isn't really *all* about Tube Chat, it's just the latest splash from a tidal wave of Issues Women Face By Simply Having The Nerve To Put Themselves In A Public Place Even If They're Just Sitting Quietly.

In the department "tube encounters of the strange kind" I had a weird experience in Valencia last weekend. We were on the tube from the beach back into the city in the late afternoon when this chap sat down next to me. He was wearing headphones and held a phone in his hands... and half a minute after sitting starting singing at me and the young woman opposite us. We women exchanged a WTF look, so at least I knew that serenading strangers on a train is not a peculiar Spanish habit. I was glad when I could leave the train a station later though.

Wow!

For what it's worth DuchessConstance, I'm a nice guy (so everyone keeps telling me) and have NEVER done any of the things you have mentioned in the above post

Careful anthony, according to some people proper nice men don't defend themselves like this because it dismisses women's concerns. Yeah, go figure. 

Rule of thumb: if a woman complains about the things some men do to women, and you're a man and have never done that then, awesome, well done, we're not complaining about you. Don't take it personally.

Saying 'but I've never done that!' makes it sound like you don't believe us. Like you are trying to dismiss what we're saying. And there's a reason for that, too - it's not the first time most of us have mentioned this stuff online, and generally those responses don't lead to a pleasant conversation, to say the least.

Human beings are great at recognising patterns, you know? Pattern recognition is how we learn from past bad experiences to avoid future bad ones.

You don't prove you're not a weirdo by saying "BUT *I'M* A NICE GUYYYYY" when we're having a moan, you prove it by, y'know, NOT BEING A WEIRDO. But I don't know, apparently that's a really complicated concept, so by all means carry on complaining and not *actually* listening. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯