A Horrible Trip
- Train Compartment
There are plenty of examples of what can happen to a woman on the train. Ask around in your friend group or family. When I started asking, I realized that many of my friends and family didn’t even realize that they were allowed to name what they experienced as assault, harassment, or threatening. A lot of these experiences are so normalized that many people don’t even think twice about it, not even women themselves. A recent Dutch news item about a man who assaulted a young woman for forty minutes, without anyone there to help her, might have opened people’s eyes a bit more. This is the reality many girls and women have to live in.
This woman, or girl (she was just 19), was sitting in an empty train compartment traveling from Amsterdam to Alkmaar, when a man came in, and sat directly next to her. The rest of the compartment was completely empty. For forty minutes, this man was able to touch and assault her. The compartment stayed empty, no other travelers, no conductor, nobody to help her. She was vulnerable, and this man knew.
A tough thing about these situations is that the girl could hardly do anything herself. Apart from being frozen in fear, which makes you unable to do anything, it would not have helped even if she had been able to do something. Pushing back could only have resulted in a situation that would have been much worse. Walking away could also have escalated the situation, and would be hard with the assaulter sitting right next to her. I think it’s pathetic that these men think they are entitled to touching and scaring a 19- year-old girl.