“Ignoring harassers will now be known as the Charlie Chaplin”

Yesterday was my last day at a job (that I loved) doing sexual assault and victim advocacy in the Washington, DC area. It was already a rough day because I really love the work that I do, but I am relocating and am planning on taking a break from that particular brand of advocacy because it starts to take its toll on you after a while. To celebrate/distract me from being upset, I had gone out to dinner with two good friends, and we got a couple of drinks afterwards.

I say goodbye to one friend headed in the opposite direction, and the other friend & I head back towards Virginia. We were fortunate to catch the last Orange line train towards Vienna, and my friend got off at Farragut West and knocked on the window after she exited so she can wave bye to me one last time. There were about 10-15 other people within hearing/viewing distance who smiled & laughed (because let’s admit it’s that’s not something you see every day). I said, “Well, that’s my friend for ya!” And folks nicely smiled, except for the guy sitting across the aisle from me who said, “That was funny. What’s your name?” I responded with a name, a fake one albeit, and he tells me his. He’s maybe about my height 5’6″ and looks mid to late twenties. I was texting on my phone and he says a few more things to me, and adds, “You look so serious.”

At this point, I knew he was going to just keep talking to me, so I politely turned to him and said, “I’m sorry, I’m just not interested in talking right now.”

Well, apparently he hadn’t learned to deal with minor rejection because he started muttering stupid stuff underneath his breath like, “Well I didn’t want to talk to you anyway.”

He continued reading his book and laughed out loud to himself. Then he got slightly louder so that pretty much everyone around him could hear, including me. He started calling me a crazy bitch, delirious in thinking I’m sexy, and that I needed to chill out and just go home, and other unstable ramblings.

None of it he ever actually said directly to me, but he was clearly talking about me. It continued to escalate and I began to feel extremely uncomfortable and I started to scope out other seats in the car I can move to. Pretty much everyone sitting ahead of me was avoiding making eye contact with me. We approached the Courthouse stop and I reached for my purse to move, and he said, “Oh fuck, you better not be getting off at my stop” and curses some more. I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

After he exited, people were looking in my general direction, and I said, “Oh thank god.”

The young woman sitting behind where the harasser had been talked about how she couldn’t believe what he was saying and that he was way out of line. Another woman across the car leaned over to look at me as if to make sure I’m okay, and she smiled at me. Two young guys sitting two rows behind me spoke up and said that they couldn’t believe it and didn’t know what was wrong with that guy. They told me that if anything else had happened, they “had my back” and I told them I appreciated that, that it’s nice to know that there are people out who are willing to be helpful because women get harassed all the damn time and it’s terrifying.

And while I meant every word I said, I couldn’t help but think back to the job I had just finished that day and how we talk about bystander intervention. My fear would have been so much less, heck, I would’ve been far less mortified if they had just spoken up, said anything while it was going on. But, I know all the reasons people don’t intervene, and I can’t fault them for not wanting to put themselves in the middle of an escalating interaction. I was so rattled by the experience, that I decided to catch a taxi for the half mile between the metro and my apartment. After the driver remarked that it was a short distance (not complaining), I explained that there had been some creep on the metro so it just made me feel better, and he nodded his head in understanding, as if he had heard that story before.

The only humor we were able to find in all of this was that, as the harasser left, he said to me, “See ya later, Charlie Fucking Chaplin.”

The two guys behind me and I talked about what he possibly meant with that. Finally, the only logical reason I could come up with was that I had given him the silent treatment! Now I know that’s ridiculous, but it sure gave me a good laugh. I propose we start coming up with catchy nicknames to street harassment responses. To start, ignoring harassers will now be known as the Charlie Chaplin. 🙂

– Emily R.

Location: Orange line train to Vienna, Washington, DC

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