Welcoming anonymous groping on the subway? I don’t think so.

A Boston Herald column by Margery Eagan yesterday caused me to sputter the “s” word – one I very rarely use. Stupid. More than that: stupid, stupid, stupid! I’ve never liked the word, believing that people are created more or less equal in potential, but suffer from vastly different options and opportunities. Unfortunately, this Eagan has more than her share of opportunities. She’s also a radio host (with the bright, witty Jim Braude) and has been a frequent guest on Fox News and Imus in the Morning. What? It’s not a meritocracy out there in mass media?

Here’s the backstory. This week Boston papers covered the arrest of a 60-year-old family-man from suburban Newton on charges of exposing himself to and committing indecent assault on teenage girls on the subway Green Line for a year. One 16-year-old he had (allegedly) groped caught his photo on her cellphone, hoping to stop his molesting behavior. The story broke on December 8.

Three days later, the Herald gives us Eagan’s astoundingly, well, stupid piece about the supposed practice of welcome sexual groping on the Boston public transportation system. She spoke to one chap (she calls him “non-pervert,” whatever that may be – probably white and professional) who particularly likes rubbing all over women in the summer, when they’re both sweaty and hot.

“But how do you know your groping/leaning/pressing will be well-received? That no one will scream and call the cops?” Eagan asks him, obviously concerned for the poor groper and the trouble he might unjustly encounter. His scientific answer? “Gropers and grope-ees sort of gravitate to each other. I can’t explain how. You just know.”

This non-consensual intimacy is a phenomenon Eagan calls “frodage” – giving readers a paraphrased definition from the urban dictionary. But here’s the dictionary’s exact wording:  “physical contact with the penis, testicles, vagina, breasts or buttocks, while passing another person in a crowd; inconspicuously copping a feel.” Their example, which Eagan quotes, is “I scored some wicked ‘frodage’ on that chick with the nose ring.”

It gets worse. She quotes two different commuting women, both of whom she describes as “of a certain age” (!) who find such attacks “flattering.” In a spasm of self-disrespect, one apparently says that she would’ve been offended by such behavior in the past, “But in this day of menopause when you’re turning into a dead moose… at first I’d be amazed. Then I’d be grateful.”

Finally, Eagan ends this stupid piece with an insistence that handsome hunks can do no wrong: “In a word, Brad Pitt can lean and press all he wants. And no woman will ever, ever, accuse him of harassment, either.” Has this Eagan lost her anchor?

I read through readers’ online comments and they were uniformly outraged. One thanked her for giving permission to every sexual harasser prowling the T. I added a comment which began:

I'm a writer and have been focusing on the topic of people over 50 and sexuality. I've got more criticisms of this offensive piece than space, so I'll be brief. The assumption that older women are somehow desperate for even the most anonymous and non-consensual male attention is pathetically off-base.

It took me back to the days when, as a professional martial arts instructor, I developed the first women’s self-defense courses. I always asked women where they felt most in danger and inevitably public transportation was high on the list. They unanimously hated sitting on buses and subways next to men who opened their legs much wider than their seats, rubbing their thighs against the women next to them. Usually the women felt they had to squash themselves into a corner of their own seats to try, often unsuccessfully, to escape this silent, relentless assault. They might try first to push back against his thigh, but this was conveniently taken as participation. Many women just gave up their seats.

I developed a set of self-defense techniques for this situation, by trying them out myself. My first idea had unanticipated negative consequences. First I asked the guy out loud if he had paid for two seats. If that didn’t shrivel his seated colonialism, I said loudly, “Quit rubbing your leg on me, now.” The backfire came from two directions: he’d guffaw that I was too ugly to touch and the men around us would become instantly insulting and hostile. Towards me, that is, not their “brother.”

I found the easiest and most effective technique was to dig up an old-fashioned hat pin, to keep it handy and to hold it pointing at his leg, but within the confines of my own seat. He spills into my seat? The prick pricks himself.

I tried to figure out who this Margery Eagan is and why, despite being born in 1954, she seemed to have missed the 60s and 70s. All I could find for free was her article about her face-lift, dripping in privilege and pathos. “Big breasts don’t always beat big brains anymore,” she ends her report. “In 2006, ladies, you’d best have both.”

In a time when Boomers are demolishing stereotypes about mature sexuality, expanding standards of beauty (“I am a tall, thin, blue-eyed, straight-haired dark blonde,” Eagan brags) and insisting on the primacy of consent in intimate contact, we are not surprised that it’s the Eagans who are given a platform (damn it, Newsweek has Karl Rove doing a column!) and not, well, me.

Comments

[Howard]

you pretty much cover it all, still hard to imagine someone, especially someone with access to the public can be so unenlightened, butt then that applies to so many that is a different arena

[jaya]

you are absolutely right on. liked the hatpin idea. probably a swiss army knife corkscrew would work also.

[C.S. Lewiston]

Hatpin? I was thinking along the lines of a .45 caliber automatic pistol! Or a baseball bat (only kidding, Homeland Security).

Seriously, I'm glad that 16-year-old kid had a phone-cam, and could, identify her violator to the police.

Digression - could the prevalence of sexual harassment on mass transit be part of the reason our streets and highways are clogged with dozens of cars with only one passenger in them?

The radio "personality" who glorifies this kind of bullshit is right down there with other enemies of sexuality like James Dobson, Pat Robertson and half the U.S. Supremist Court. This person makes Marabel Morgan look like Gloria Steinem! If this is targeted media marketing, who are her um, handlers marketing to? This is beyond "free speech", this sounds more like incitement to commit mayhem.

Oh yeah, I was lovers with a menopausal woman some time back. She was SO not a "dead moose"!

[Sue]

I always wonder about these people who seemed to have missed the 60s/70s and fantasize (nightmare-ize?) that older women are just gagging for the slightest whiff of attention from the testosterone brigade. Anyway, any woman carrying a Swiss army knife, Jaya, is bound to be one of those fabulous women you, CS, were referring to. And Howard, I agree that it's too frustrating to note who gets to air their "views" and who doesn't.

[C.S. Lewiston]

Not to hog the comment thread, but certain prevailing attitudes about women and aging are long overdue for the scrap heap of history. As is media monopolization.

[Rosa]

Perhaps if Eagan got groped or brushed up against on the subway herself she wouldn't write a bunch of nonsense as such. I was rubbed once and I can't explain how vulnerable, unsafe, violated even, it made me feel. That was almost 20 years ago and rarely need to use public transportation now, but I would still think twice before getting on a crowded train.
Thanks for linking to that article, I missed that in the paper.

[Sue]

C.S. - your comments are always highly welcome (although I never got notice of this one - sorry it took so long to get it up). And Rosa, you are probably completely right. The sad thing is that really a journalist shouldn't have to have the experience (famine? home run? war? sexual harassment?) to know that it's no bloody joke. Thanks for writing.