I reached out to you because I heard that you came up with the strategy to wear backpacks to avoid men rubbing up against you on the train. Could you speak on that?

Yeah. This is something I did when I took the train, but something that people still yell at me for.  People think it’s a selfish thing. Other women swore at me and said, you know, you’re selfish, how dare you. And I’m like, this is a thing I’m doing for my own self protection, which I started as a child. It was alarming to me to have other women be like “no , you’re rude and taking up too much space on the train.” 

So what’s your overall experience with catcalling? 

Okay, so what;s interesting is that I am not an attractive person. I’m very plain. Um, so catcalling you know, out windows or from streets was very rare my whole life. When I was young and lived in Massachusetts and took the train to work in Boston, I took the train from the suburbs. That’s when it would just be rubbing, like passed off as accidental. But clearly you knew, not accidental. Pressing up against you, rubbing up against you, almost always when you were standing on a train. So that’s when Operation Backpack went into effect.

So for eight years I worked in a nursing home that did a lot of private home health care. And so that’s me ages, you know, 14 to 21. And I’m doing very intimate things to patients, right? I’m bathing them, and I’m dealing with catheters. And, the language wasn’t, it wasn’t really like catcalling, but it was, inappropriate and you know. There’d be a hand on my breast or something while my hand is on your penis because I’m bathing you. Um, that was also very weird and, uh, again, not real catcalling, but a completely inappropriate interaction: with my end of it being medica, and their end of it was taking advantage.

Um, so then I came to grad school out here to California and it, and it changed. I took the bus for seven years here before I could afford a car. And again, I’m not, I’m a very plain looking woman. Many folks on the bus, particularly in the evening, as the bus was coming, the laborers and stuff getting in the bus would try to get me involved in catcalling other women. So there was watching, they would say something, you know, you’re pretty or whatever to girls on the street. And mostly the girls would ignore them and then they would then get mad. They’re like, Oh, you fucking bitch. You think you’re too cute for me? And then they would like to put their arm around me or like look at me and be like, come on, you try and tell her I’m a good guy. 

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And I’m like, wait a minute. I don’t know you at all. First of all, I’m not pretty enough for you to hit on. But if they wanted to somehow involve me, it would be for making them seem credible, that this girl should actually give them their time and attention, right? This happened two or three times a week and it  was just, ugh. And you have all the defense mechanisms in place, right? You have your headphones on, you’re looking at a book. This was long before cell phones and iPods. And so everything about your body language is closed off. But despite this, they try to get me to be their ally? To convince this girl you think is hot that you’re not the bad guy? And when it doesn’t work, you call her a fucking bitch. I’m like, has it ever worked? Have you ever called a woman a fucking bitch and she says, oh, I’m so sorry. You seem like a charm. No, that’s not going to happen. So, that’s just really frustrating, honestly. But it’s interesting because in none of those scenarios am I an object of desire, right? Like I’m kind of a third party to whatever’s going on, right. And, I do have many, many beautiful friends for whom life is very different. Everything from just being screamed at out a current window to being given free stuff in stores, which like I didn’t even know that was a thing, but because nobody gave me free stuff. So,  catcalling is a very specific behavior, right? But there’s lots of different, like little insidious ways that are either an attempt to woo affection or get attention. 

What do you say to catcallers?

Well, it’s interesting cause right now I’m much older, right? I’m 51 years old right now and I’m also a professor. Okay. And I’ve been a professor for about 30 years. Right now my mode is parents mode. It’s like trying to protect someone else that this might happen too. Yeah. I’ll just say things to them like, what is your end goal? One of the things I saw so often was young drunk men, right? Usually at a football game or some sporting event. I started saying “you know what, we can do better”. And they’re like, Oh yeah, we can. I think because I was saying us, like we, I was including myself in that group- and I wasn’t saying you’re a bad person. I was saying I know that you’re a better person, let’s just be better. And so that has worked quite a few times, for groups of men in the stadium catcalling the other team’s cheerleaders- “we can do better”, has worked to shut them down. On many occasions, boys approach very, very drunk girls  across campus, you know, I stop and say, you know, we can do better. Like, why don’t you let me help? And they’re like, okay. And, and it’s, it feels embarrassing not to just scream at them. Right? Like, what are you doing? Like it’s clear what you’re doing. You’re dragging a drunk girl to who knows what? But girls especially were so well-trained to de escalate, right?

Yeah. So “we can do better”  is my go to now when I see things like that in public. I will actually cross the street because I feel an obligation to help younger women.  I’ll say, “can I help? Can I want you to class?” We have this feeling in the pit of our tummy that rarely lies, right? You know, that feeling. Listen to that feeling. 

I’m from the tech community, right? Which were skew super high in social disorders and there’s a really good article called social awkward is not an excuse. It’s about men’s behaviors at conferences and whether they will try and inappropriately interact with women. Like they’ll try and give you a shoulder rub, they’ll try to grab a photo of you, and it’s immature, creepy, and lecherous. It’s just completely unacceptable behavior. But America has kind of said, Oh, well, they’re just guys. They don’t know how to behave. And that’s not an excuse. 

What would you say to girls who face this every day?

Well, I mean, it’s interesting, there’s a heck of a lot of research out there by people smarter than me on the topic. Um, and it’s a two pronged approach, right? One is how do you care for yourself, right? And it seems so frustrating to have to walk with someone or to have to approach a stranger and say, could you please pretend you know me, right? We are at a time that we’re in a massive shift right now where people are more aware. Um, like, and I wondered like if on a public train now, if I was a seventh grader, would I have the balls to say, sir, please stop touching me.  And you then get allies on the train with you. I don’t know. I can’t tell if I would or not at that age. And then the other half of the equation is why are we never, never, never talking to the boys?

All of these conversations about how we can protect ourselves. Is anybody’s mother telling their boys, don’t touch girls? Don’t grab them. Don’t hoot at them. Don’t  objectify them. I don’t know a single boy who’s had that conversation. That’s kind of the bigger part. Well, I see a lot of high schools who are always blaming a woman for wearing something, or saying something, or smiling, and distracting the boys. And you know, dress codes for sure are one of the biggest issues where it’s always the girl’s fault. I truly do believe that  boys and men have no idea. They have no idea how persistent it is. They’re like, Oh, come on and get over it. You should be flattered. Like one guy said something nice to you. It’s like, no, it’s not one guy. It’s every day. It’s the look that you feel as you walk by. Have you seen the video of the woman who walks through New York with the video camera? She got to track how often she got catcalled and, and she got trash talk for that. People were like, you know, could you take it as a compliment? 

Guys I travels with are like  why do you care about that? Cause it’s just words. Right? But it’s completely unacceptable words. And once this person has proven they’re willing to behave in a threatening manner, in an unacceptable, sociable way, who knows what they can do next. It’s like, why are you afraid of a dog barking at you? He’s given me every indication he will bite me.

So one of the things I started,  I think we can make a strategy. So,  when I was teaching at Carnegie Mellon, which is in Pittsburgh, the graduate students had teams of usually like five to 10 students. It’d be on teams and you’d see them fighting over nothing. One day I walked into a room and a team was fighting over whether or not something was at a right angle. 

So like these bombs are being thrown across each other. So I brought in soccer cards, you know, the yellow and the red cards that they throw in soccer games. So if somebody says something a little out of line, anybody else can just throw down your little card. And we keep going, right? We don’t stop the conversation. If you say something egregious that needs to be handled immediately, you throw down a red card. But just to see at the end of, you know, a 20 minute project update, how many passive aggressive comments there were just by the number of cards thrown. You realize, okay, we have a problem here. I wonder if we could do something similar with catcalling. Where somebody says something unacceptable and you just hand them a card. 

Maybe it says something on it, like be a gentleman or something that’s  totally passive aggressive. Right. Well or maybe just “you’re a creep”. But just like we’re a reminder that this behavior is not okay. A very subtle but also direct way to say like, stop, you know? I’m calling you on it non-verbally.