Introduction: Arrhythmia and Egg Yolk
Mind the Gender Gap: A Mobilities Perspective of Sexual Harassment on the London Underground
ISBN: 978-1-83753-029-8, eISBN: 978-1-83753-026-7
Publication date: 25 October 2024
Abstract
Using a mobilities framework, this book aims to tell the stories of sexual harassment on the London Underground not as a single, exceptional moment, but as part of women’s wider urban experiences and movements through public urban life. The way this book is structured attempts to mirror and portray this. As such, the chapters that follow this one take such an approach: the before, the during and the after. Prior to this, two chapters are dedicated to the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings that are employed to make sense of women’s experiences. In this introductory chapter, I overview the issue of sexual harassment on public transport more broadly. I situate the phenomenon in its social context of a global endemic of violence against women, before zooming in to ‘set the scene’ of the London Underground. I will briefly outline the conceptual framework I use to understand sexual harassment on the London Underground and summarise how situating the issue at the axis of mobilities, rhythms, space and time, allows new insights into how sexual harassment happens ‘on the move’. I then summarise the methodological approach taken for the research that constitutes this book, including a consideration of researcher positionality and ethics. I also make a case for the value of ‘messy’ qualitative, reflexive approaches, and how this is essential for disrupting normative and ‘taken for granted’ conceptions of sexual harassment. I argue that, by giving space to the complexity of women’s in-depth, kinetic stories, we are rewarded with a deeper understanding of the anticipation, manifestation and reaction to incidents of sexual harassment on public transport.
Keywords
Citation
Lewis, S. (2024), "Introduction: Arrhythmia and Egg Yolk", Mind the Gender Gap: A Mobilities Perspective of Sexual Harassment on the London Underground (Feminist Developments in Violence and Abuse), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83753-026-720241001
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024 Siân Lewis
License
This work is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this work (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
Early Autumn 2013, Istanbul, Turkey
The air on the Metrobus is dense and heavy. It’s only 8am but the sun is unseasonably warm as it glares into the carriage in slow interludes through the dusty windows. As we’re shuttled from the belly of the city towards its fringes, the intense smog seeps in through cracks and fuses with the odours of hasty bodies that occupy the early morning rush hours. The collective agitation on the carriage is palpable, as individual cadences are subsumed into the broader rhythms of the city. In a metropolis of over 15 million people, breathing space is a rare luxury, and, like every other working day, we’re crammed in like rigid Tetris blocks – thigh to hip, elbow to back, shoulder to armpit. We don’t know each other, we probably won’t see each other again, and the only thing we have in common is the direction of our commute. Yet in this moment I’m physically closer to the strangers on this bus than I have been to most people I know. I still find it unsettling, but over the past few months, instead of occupying a state of constant vigilance towards my surroundings, I’ve gradually developed the knack of zoning out from the overwhelming urban stimulus bubbling around me. This has the added benefit of perceptually speeding up the hour-long journey and taking my mind off my aching feet. I breathe in deeply and close my eyes, one arm stretched above my head, fingers tense and clasping the handrail, while the rest of me groggily sways back and forth in keeping with the rhythm of the static bodies around me ….
Back and forth
Back and forth
Back and forth
Back and forth
I’m dislodged from the metronomic motion, not suddenly, but gradually, like a morning alarm softly invading a dream before wrenching you from it. I become aware of a dull, hard, intermittent pressure against the small of my back, that feels…out of place somehow, even in the sardine crush of bodies. An inconsiderate elbow? Someone’s bag? Even before I force myself to steal a cautious glance behind me, I know what’s happening. My body knows what’s happening. My heart flips into arrhythmia, my stomach churns, and my muscles freeze. But when I turn my head slowly, I see that the man pressed up behind me is looking off to the side distractedly, rather than directly at me. This confuses me enough to make me question whether this is really happening. Is he really pushing his erection into my back, or am I imagining it? I know with certainty what is happening, and yet I am unsure. In this liminal state, I don’t move. I don’t react. I don’t make a scene. I don’t know how long I stand like this – time morphs, swells, and stretches until we pull into the next station and, amongst the flux of passengers alighting and arriving, I manage to shift my body away from him as the carriage reconfigures itself. He doesn’t look at me once. The queasiness lingers in the pit of my stomach, but as the indifferent Metrobus shuttles us on, it’s almost like nothing happened at all.
2018, London, UK
I’m riding on the top deck of the 176 bus to meet a friend on Lower Marsh, a market street nestled down to the side of Waterloo station. It’s a late spring morning and the bus is relatively empty, hosting only a scattering of people and an unusually calm ambiance that is entirely removed from the chaotic and jumbled medley of London rush hours. The 40-minute journey is a route I know like the back of my hand and a distracted glance out of the window is all I need to get my bearings. The pleasure in this is that I can daydream, read my book and actually enjoy the journey. In moments like these, travel becomes not time wasted and hurried along, but a time-space in which doing nothing is perfectly acceptable because, by travelling, you are already doing something.
In this relaxed state, I distantly register someone in my periphery moving from further back on the bus and sitting behind me. Strange, on an almost empty bus, but I don’t really think much of it. I check my phone absentmindedly for messages and get back to my book. Minutes later, I’m pulled back to the bus again when I sense shuffling behind me. The man who had moved from the back has changed seats again to sit directly across the aisle from me. My skin prickles and I feel myself shift from relaxed to wary and cautious. I can sense something’s not quite right. He’s looking at me. With my head down, I glance across to my left and as I do, he turns to look ahead, avoiding my gaze. But … I can see he’s touching himself, slowly, over the top of his khaki trousers, making no real attempt to disguise it. My stomach somersaults theatrically, as I quickly look away. As I do, I feel his gaze burn back towards me. When I look again, he’s staring straight forwards. Caught in a bizarre back and forth, I try to meet his eye, to give him a look that says, I see you, I’m furious and this is not ok. My heart thuds in my chest, my blood feels thick like egg yolk, whilst my brain whirs at a hundred miles an hour. I know that in a few minutes we’ll arrive at my stop. I’ll press the red square that will ping loudly, telling the driver in his booth that someone needs to get off the bus, and I’ll balance my way down the stairs, grabbing the handrail as it jerks forward, as if this stop is unexpected. I’ll alight through the middle doors. I’ll get on with my day… Or, I can say something now, confront him, express my inner outrage directly, an outrage that is not just about him, but built from an accumulation of experiences of men causing my skin to crawl and making me feel like my safety is precarious and my freedom restricted. This is what I want to do, I think. But in the moment, vocalising seems impossible, outside the realm of my options. I don’t feel scared, but stifled, restrained by the social norms of public transport (which is funny, I think, when a man is masturbating at me in broad daylight on the 176). I could point my phone at him, take a photo and say I’m going to report him to the police, scare him, so he doesn’t do this to another woman or girl. In a split second, I play out every possible chain of events triggered by every possible action I can take. It’s not reactive, it’s calculated. But at the same time, it’s automatic, enmeshed in my psyche and entangled in a web of experience, both personal and vicarious, that culminate in the ability (and necessity?) to instantaneously measure and weigh up how to react to unwanted sexual attention from men. Out of my window to the right, I notice The Old Vic theatre up ahead. It’s my stop. I press the red button, close my book and lift myself from my seat. As I leave, I try to catch his eye again, to win this game he’s forced me to play, but his avoidance is obstinate, and I pull my gaze away from him like stubborn blue tack, giving into the fact that I have chosen to ‘do nothing’.
*
In a biographical catalogue of experiences of unwanted, intrusive behaviour from men, these incidents have occupied a disproportionate amount of headspace and scrutiny. I felt guilty and confused by my lack of overt resistance, defiance or confrontation; things I had displayed many times in response to incidents of street harassment. I struggled to make sense of my own reactions, knowing only that labelling them as simple, carnal ‘fear’ responses felt like a reductive untruth. Confusion and apathy felt more fitting, but this jarred with my internalised script of how I should feel or act. Through the gradual development of a feminist, academic lens, I began to recognise that these incidents and my reactions could, in part, be understood within the broader context of fear and anxieties around gender-based violence in public space. Women are often told that our level of fear of sexual violence has no logical basis in the modern western world; that we are afforded equal rights, freedoms and security. And yet we are simultaneously subject to repeated interpersonal experiences and bombarded with prolific media reporting of gendered violence around the globe and across social contexts. Additionally, violence against women is commodified and ‘enjoyed’ through the avid consumption of crime dramas and true crime (Havas & Horeck, 2021; Slakoff, 2022). This imperceptible merging of fact and fiction, visceral and vicarious, culminates in a ubiquitous sense of danger, running like an electric current under a thin veneer of freedom, safety and security. Subsequently, in our unwanted interactions with men, we often fear the worst and act accordingly. Our underlying objective when negotiating experiences of sexual harassment and assault is often driven by the perceived need to avoid an escalation into violence (Fileborn & O’Neill, 2023). As such, it’s no surprise that the impact of fear dominates academic discussion around sexual harassment.
However, reflecting on my experiences on the Istanbul and London buses, I realised it wasn’t fear that entirely, or even predominantly dictated my reactions. It was more understated. Subtle. I felt uneasy and awkward speaking out on the quiet bus. I didn’t want to make a fuss or draw attention to myself. I also just wanted to get to where I was going. I didn’t want to be disrupted. I didn’t want these actions to leak into the day and beyond, inflate in prominence and consume my time and headspace. I wanted to keep it contained and get on with my journey and my day. As I began the research that constitutes this book and started speaking to women about their experiences of unwanted male attention on public transport, specifically the London Underground network, I heard versions of my own stories mirrored back to me time and time again. I found myself subconsciously nodding in understanding as the women I spoke to grappled to articulate the complexities and contradictions that seem to dominate these moments and their subsequent impact. This was particularly true when they deviated from the normative scripts of feisty, feminist responses, or inaction caused by a sense of female vulnerability and fear.
We spoke about incidents of harassment and assault on the London Underground that were various and multitudinous in form and perceived severity. In each of the stories I heard, it became clear that there was something particular about the way these incidents were perpetrated, experienced and reacted to that was unmistakeably linked with their taking place in a public transport environment and the social norms and regulations bound up in these spaces. Being ‘on the move’ was the thread of similarity that weaved lucidly through these stories, moulding how these behaviours were enacted, and warping women’s reactions and responses to them.
It bred the uncertainty, even as a hand moved between her legs, as to whether she was really being assaulted.
It meant he could put both of his hands on her hips from behind, squeezing her tightly as he moved her to the side so he could pass, innocuous and unnoticed by other passengers.
It allowed the man next her to lean forward and subtly place his smart phone to take a photo up her skirt.
It facilitated the man who, on a packed city tube, cupped his hand between her legs, moving back and forth on the outside of her trousers.
It meant that, when she got to the bottom of the escalator and realised the man who had been standing a bit too close behind her had ejaculated on her coat, he had already disappeared into the crowd.
It allowed the strange man next to her on an evening tube to silently take her hand from her lap and put it on his, holding it tightly, as she froze in shock.
It meant that on a packed morning rush hour tube, the businessman standing behind her could put both of his hands firmly on her bum and when confronted, simply remove them and act like it was an accident.
It impacted on why, when she rejected a man who was flirting with her on the night tube and he stood over her calling her a fucking bitch, no one else in the carriage said a word.
It meant the man wearing a thick coat on a hot day, who squeezed behind her on a busy carriage, could rub his erection against her leg, causing enough confusion that she didn’t speak out.
It permitted the man who masturbated at her in an empty carriage when she was on her way home from after school club, to do so for over five minutes, without her being able to leave.
These examples illustrate the variety of experiences of sexual harassment and assault on the London Underground that happened to some of the women I spoke to. Situated in a broader culture endemic of sexual and gender-based violence, these incidents on public transport deserve their own critique and understandings. The space, its physicality and design, its purpose, its rhythms and the social interactions and norms that occur within it, all coalesce to create an atmosphere and social space in which sexual harassment is perpetrated, experienced, negotiated and remembered in ways that are uniquely mitigated by the very nature of this mobile environment. It is these experiences and the specificity of the transport environment that are the focus of this book. In an attempt to portray the complexities of women’s subjective experiences of sexual harassment and assault within the context of the London Underground, I take a ‘whole journey’ approach (discussed further below in notes on methodology). In Chapter 4, I focus on the ‘before’ and explore how women experience and negotiate London and the Underground in everyday life. Chapter 5 addresses the ‘during’, going into detail about the incident of harassment or assault to understand the key features of women’s experiences in a transport environment. Chapter 6 looks at ‘after’ the event to understand how women negotiate the memory of sexual harassment, and how it impacts their mobilities over time.
Sexual Harassment ‘On the Move’: A Mobilities Perspective
Whilst this book focusses on how public transport shapes experiences of sexual harassment, it does not presume or intend to insinuate that the way transport is structured is the primary, underlying cause of this form of sexual violence. Underpinning this work is the acknowledgement and understanding that this harmful behaviour is located within a global endemic of gender-based violence (WHO, 2021), with an estimated one in three women experiencing at least one incident of physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. Predominantly perpetrated by men against women, feminist work has extensively theorised sexual harassment as a pervasive part of everyday gendered life, or as Liz Kelly (1987) suggests, as part of the continuum of sexual violence. A 2021 investigation by the United Nations Women UK found that in the UK, 97% of women aged 18−24 have experienced sexual harassment. Acknowledged in this way, sexual harassment can be understood as a widely normalised behaviour that exists on a continuum that connects these intrusions with intimate partner violence and ‘stranger’ rape. In this way, rather than focussing on and isolating experiences of extreme sexual violence as episodic and deviant, they can be understood as part of the everyday, normative context of women’s lives, located in patriarchal structures that permit their occurrence within society. The perpetration of sexual harassment across various social arenas has been widely explored: including private and public spaces such as the workplace (Spiliopoulou & Whitcomb, 2023), the streets (Fileborn & O’Neill, 2023), the night-time economy (Gunby et al., 2020) and music festivals (Bows et al., 2024). Research has identified that the extent and type of sexual harassment are significantly shaped by the context in which it occurs (Madan & Nalla, 2016) and that the way in which women react to harassment is, in part, influenced by the distinct nature of the environment in which it is experienced (Krasas & Henson, 1997).
Unsurprisingly, the perpetration and experience of sexual harassment on transport differ from other arenas, and yet, until relatively recently, had received little academic attention, particularly in the global West. Consequently, the uniqueness of experiences within these spaces has often been obfuscated by conflating them with public spaces such as the streets. As with other spaces, patriarchal socio-cultural norms and gender stereotypes underpin women’s use of transport systems and interactions that occur within them. Therefore, whilst sexual harassment occurs on transport around the globe, the scope and frequency of the issue varies, and is particularly prevalent in countries where gender equality remains disparate, and whose transport environments therefore remain hostile and less gender-responsive to the needs and experiences of women and girls (Noor & Iamtrakul, 2023). Exploring the specific nature of sexual harassment in different contexts exposes how the normative social interactions within that space impact how incidents of sexual violence are perpetrated and experienced. However, whilst space is important here, I contend that there are other aspects that have a significant influence, including mobility, temporality and rhythm. Significantly, by viewing this phenomenon through the lens of movement or mobility, new insights and deeper understandings of the experiences of sexual harassment on public transport can be established. Previously overlooked as a ‘neutral set of technologies and processes’ (Larsen et al., 2006, p. 3), encounters that occurred within a travel environment were omitted from analysis. As such, the ‘mobilities turn’ (Urry, 2000) connected social sciences with transport approaches, and through a focus on the collisions of time and space, drew attention to the complexity of the movement of people and things in the social world. Mobilities studies have focussed on the social interactions that are implicated by various forms of travel, including public transport in urban spaces (Bissell, 2018; Urry, 2007). A mobilities perspective urges us to acknowledge and confront the complexities of transport environments and the role they play in social interactions (including sexual harassment), rather than view them as an inert and neutral backdrop.
Forming part of the ontological fabric and functioning of a city, public transportation systems enable the movement of people and connect the various social spheres of urban life. And yet they are also liminal spaces, existing beyond the domains of work, leisure and home and the static streets. This liminality is at least in part due to their abundant mobility and ‘unfixed’ nature. Understanding the way in which these systems are perceived and experienced is fundamental to a deeper, clearer comprehension of instances of sexual violence that occur within them. As well as taking a mobilities approach to understand gendered experience, this also means it is essential to take a gendered approach to understanding mobilities, or in other words, to consider how mobility and the use of transport are gendered.
These dynamics will be further explored in Chapter 3, which outlines a mobilities perspective and its value. It also overviews the conceptual framework used to make sense of sexual harassment in a public transport environment. This framework consists of space, mobilities, rhythms and temporalities and throughout this book these concepts will be applied to understand women’s experiences of sexual harassment in transport: how they pre-empt these acts of gendered violence, experience and react to them ‘in the moment’, how they are remembered and negotiated over time, and how this impacts their urban mobilities. A mobilities perspective helps theorise and analyse the obvious (yet neglected) fact that these experiences are occurring in a transitory space and that this significantly influences how they are anticipated, perpetrated, experienced and responded to. This subsequently impacts women’s use of transport and broader urban mobilities. In short, this book aims to offer a much-needed explanation of the particularities and impact of sexual harassment happening on the move.
Setting the Scene: London and the London Underground
This book focusses on experiences of sexual harassment on the London Underground. The decision to focus on this city and network arose from a number of reasons. Academically, very few studies of sexual harassment on transport have focussed on Western cities. As highlighted below in more detail, Transport for London (TfL), the Underground’s governing body, and the British Transport Police had recently begun to show significant interest in the gendered experiences on their services, particularly the prevalence of unwanted sexual attention in the capital city. I recognised that there was both a need and appetite for qualitative research in this subject area. My geographical proximity to the city also influenced the decision. At the time I was living in the East Midlands and London was easily accessible by train. However, shortly after beginning the research I relocated to London in 2016. I wanted to immerse myself and be part of the city, to use the transport network I was writing about. The way a city is built and structured intimately guides the movements and interactions of those living within it and I wanted to be part of this, to feel and experience the flow, rhythms and sociabilities of the city. My early fieldnotes capture these sensations:
For the first few weeks in the capital city everything is wonderfully new and alarmingly frenzied. The tempo feels inconsistent, I repeatedly underestimate the vastness of the city and am constantly running late. The vivid visual chaos of the city distracts and enchants me, consuming my senses and filling up the camera roll on my phone with images of red buses and postcard historical landmarks. I feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, whose proximity and ambivalence makes me feel both exposed and anonymous.
Urban sociologists have recognised that there is a distinct way of being and moving through the city that is associated with dense urban populations (Urry, 2007). Hubbard (2012, p. 6) considers how individualism and indifference often dominate, and attitudes that are seen as characteristic of modern cities include anonymity, voyeurism, consumption and motion. As such, interactions with strangers are often fleeting and superficial, though this should not be understood as mere arrogance or rudeness, rather as an urbanite coping strategy to manage the intensity of the city environment. This description is incredibly fitting for London, and particularly the Underground where the social atmosphere of ‘civil inattention’ (Goffman, 1963) is both visible and palpable. Widely considered one of the greatest metropolises in the world with its historical and modern landmarks, London can be considered what Lynch (1960) describes as a ‘highly imageable city’; well-formed, distinct and remarkable, it occupies a space in the global imagination. With a population of approximately 8.9 million in 2022, and hosting 5,596 people per km2, it is 15 times denser than the rest of England (Trust for London, 2024). On top of this, in 2021 the city hosted 7.8 million tourists (significantly less than before the Covid-19 pandemic, where in 2019 the city saw 21 million visitors; cityoflondon.gov.uk). Experiences of the city are as diverse as the people who occupy and visit it, as are experiences of the city’s vast transport system, including its underground rail network.
Dating back to 1863, the London Underground, colloquially known as ‘the Tube’, is a vast public transport system that constitutes 11 different ‘lines’ covering 402 km and 272 stations and serving up to five million passenger journeys a day (Transport for London, 2024). The Tube occupies its own space in the global imagination, from congested rush hour carriages, to the famous ‘mind the gap’ announcements, to the roundel logo and Harry Beck’s iconic topological Tube map. As an essential part of the urban fabric of any city, transportation systems enable the movement of people and link activity across the city, connecting work, leisure and home. They have the potential to provide a glimpse into the culture of the city including interactions and risks, or as Ceccato and Uittenbogaard (2014) describe, transport has the capacity to reflect the dynamics of a city as a whole. The dyadic relationship between the city and the Underground is key to this work, and embodied and perceptual experiences of the city are the focus of Chapter 4. It further explores the everyday gendered mobilities in London above ground, understanding London not simply as a backdrop, but as a complex and active organism that impacts on experiences of sexual harassment in the transport network that runs beneath its surface. The research participant’s experiences and descriptions of London are textured and varied, filled with warmth, fondness, hatred, exhaustion and ambivalence. They set the scene and start the journey towards a rich and contextualised exploration of experiences on the Underground.
To an outsider or a visitor, the London Underground can be experienced as confusing and intimidating, possessing the physical and atmospheric sense of the urban rat race, particularly during peak travel or ‘rush hours’. It appears unrelenting and hostile, dominated by the rush and rhythm of unforgiving commuters (Bissell, 2010). So strong is this feeling that it does not take long before individual corporeal tempos are subsumed into the flow and pace of the Underground. My early fieldnotes describe this as an ‘inexplicable force’ or undercurrent that pulls you along with the wave of people. Yet despite this apparent stress and chaos, for those who know the rhythms of the city, it is a methodical, orderly and predictable part of the daily routine. After a few months in the city, I reflected on this in my fieldnotes:
[…] as the city slowly reveals itself and I become orientated in my new environment, patterns and rhythms become distinctive and legible, the chaos becomes more ordered and consistent. I adapt, and my own paces and movements become subsumed into the city’s haste. Headphones in, I hurry and jostle to and from places I am in no rush to get to, anxious urgency bubbling under my skin, pushing me through crowds and up escalators.
Women also spoke of ‘invisible rules’ and ‘Tube etiquette’, such as minimal eye contact, not talking to strangers, standing on the right side of the escalator and taking up as little space as possible in the carriages. One only has to take a single journey on the Tube to know these ‘rules’ apply and are largely self-governed by regular users. This can be seen as emblematic of modern urban society: strangers forced together in close proximity, acknowledgement of the other, without imposition, or to use Goffman’s (1963) terminology again, this is an example of ‘civil inattention’. These ‘unwritten’ social rules and the awareness of personal boundaries, largely facilitate the successful functioning of socio-spatial logistics. Yet there is a dark side to this functional apathy that risks breeding a lack of social responsibility towards others (Le Bon, 2004), or as we see later, a form of ‘moral minimalism’ (Baumgartner, 1988). Indeed, this metaphorical space and distance that civil inattention creates is highly functional in the perpetration of sexual harassment on the London Underground.
As discussed below, taking an ethnographic approach meant that I spent a significant amount of time travelling on the Underground, observing the space and taking detailed fieldnotes about often seemingly innocuous feelings and interactions, as well as exchanges with men that felt uncomfortable and intimidating. I remain steadfast in the view that, without engaging physically, sensorially, emotionally and intellectually with London and the Underground, much of the nuance and intricacies that existed in these spaces and in women’s stories would never have revealed themselves. Only through immersion into the seemingly mundane, normal and everyday motions of the space could I understand women’s experiences within it.
Notes on ‘Messy’ Methodologies
[…] disconnected and seemingly insignificant observations slowly add up and come together to form insightful thoughts and revealing themes. It’s almost like a maths puzzle: you can’t get the answer without doing the working out. (Excerpt from reflexive journal)
What constitutes this research is an amalgamation of a wealth of data gathered through interviews, informal story-sharing and conversations, and my own experiences and ethnographic observations of the London Underground. The way the data were gathered and presented is significantly influenced by feminist epistemologies, including the centring of women’s voices and visible incorporation of researcher reflexivity. The collection and collation of these data was, overall, an embodied, experiential and emotional engagement with the research topic and the process of knowledge production (Carroll, 2012). This approach may be considered ‘messy’ by those of a positivist disposition; however occupying an interpretivist stance allows space in research for how participants (and the researcher) subjectively interpret and make sense of the social world (Mason, 2002). At the axis of this book are the stories of women discussing, in detail, their lived experiences of sexual harassment or assault on the London Underground, drawing predominantly on in-depth, semi-structured interviews. These interviews mostly took place in cafes dotted around London (often in or next to train stations) over a few cups of overpriced coffee and lasted an hour or two. The style was fluid and conversational with a loose structure that encompassed the before, during and after of their experiences. This approach allowed incidents to be contextualised, avoiding reducing them to a single isolated moment or feeling and rather situating them as part of a personal biography, in broader gendered power relations and interactions with urban space. During many of the interviews, there were moments where interactions shifted into what felt like friendly and intimate conversation, taking diversions to briefly visit childhood dreams, family dynamics, ex-partners, health issues, and often, past incidents of sexual intrusions. What became apparent through this approach is the messiness, confusion and complexity that regularly accompany experiences of sexual harassment and assault. Indeed, many of the participants were seemingly reconfiguring and ‘making sense’ of their experiences as we spoke, memories reflecting and refracting through the lens of time passed and focussed conversation.
This ‘whole journey’ approach proffers not only to disrupt existing ‘academic’ knowledge of the dynamics of sexual harassment but also to challenge dominant approaches to understanding sexual harassment on transport in terms of methodologies. When I first began exploring existing work that focused on sexual violence on public transport, I noticed the absence of qualitative, particularly ethnographic, or observational approaches, a reflection that is mirrored by Ceccato et al. (2022). Instead, there has been a focus on understanding the prevalence of the issue and the proportion of women who have been victimised (Gekoski et al., 2015); understanding how many women report assaults to authorities; and the trajectory of these reports (Solymosi et al., 2017). This information seemed to be garnered largely through analysis of police data or quantitative surveys, analysed and presented in numerical form to offer a rapid assessment or a broad overview (Gekoski et al., 2015; Stringer, 2007). Whilst incredibly useful, particularly for practitioners, stakeholders and law enforcement to understand the scope of the issue, a statistical analysis cannot communicate the experiential subjectivity of an incident of sexual harassment or assault, or reflect the role of the social environment in which it occurred. Similarly, the meanings women place on these experiences and the subsequent impact they have on their mobilities and engagement with urban space are neglected or obscured in place of a simplified, macro, numerical perspective. Even when women’s stories are situated at the centre of research as the subject, quantitative methods (such as large-scale surveys) run the risk of sanitising complex experiences for the sake of a large sample size and more generalisable conclusions and recommendations that provide palatable and ‘valid’ outputs in the realm of administrative and policy-driven agendas. Useful as this can be to get a ‘bigger picture’, it can strip experiences of victimisation of their messiness and remove them from context. Engaging with semi-structured interviews provides insight into subjective interpretations, perceptions, beliefs and meanings that the women attach to their experiences, going beyond what is easily visible and observable.
In this book, the formal interviews constitute a relatively small sample size of 29 women. This, in conjunction with the fact that this book focusses on one mode of transport, in one city, may leave it open to critiques of a lack of generalisability. However, I contend that the insights this book offers, both in its theoretical and methodological approach, as well as its findings, can be transferred and related to understanding sexual harassment in contexts beyond this one, particularly in other transport systems around the globe. An important consideration is highlighting the demographics of women whose voices make up the majority of this book. Stanley (2013, p. 21) discusses how, whilst feminist work has focussed on showing women’s ‘experiences of oppression’, it is important to recognise that ‘women’ do not share an ontological existence or material reality, and their experiences are not unified. This has been particularly highlighted by black feminists who emphasise the need for feminist research to recognise difference in their analyses of women’s experiences (Hill Collins, 1986; Lorde, 1984). Welsh et al. (2006) considered this in their research on diverse groups of women in Canada, highlighting that women’s race and citizenship impacted how they defined their experiences of harassment. Therefore, it is necessary to take an intersectional approach and to consider gendered experiences interrelated with varying degrees of class, race, sexuality and other systems of oppression and privilege (Bilge, 2010; Carastathis, 2014; Hill Collins, 1986; Hooks, 1981).
This draws attention to the importance of being transparent with regard to who is speaking in this research: whose experiences are being represented, and whose are not. It is worth noting here that pseudonyms are used throughout this book when referring to women’s stories. Participants were between the age of 22 and 45. Twenty-four of the women were white, three were of Asian descent and two defined themselves as mixed race; twenty-three were British whilst six identified as non-British nationals; three identified as gay, two as bisexual and twenty-three as heterosexual. Whilst the study called for anyone who identified as a woman, all participants were cis women. Three women discussed having disabilities that impacted on their use of the Underground. As such, it perhaps goes without saying (but will be said anyway!) that the experiences presented in this book should not be considered as representative of how ‘all women’ perceive and react to sexual harassment. The class and age structure are also recognised as possible limitations of this study. The sample presented in this book mirrors TfL data that show the demographic of those who report experiencing sexual harassment on London public transport. The 2016 TfL Safety and Security report showed that women aged 16−34 were most likely to experience unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport. However, there is literature that suggests underreporting of sexual violence is more prevalent amongst the elderly (Bows & Westmarland, 2017), as well as women who are black and ethnic minority (Catalano et al., 2009), and migrant women (Rahmanipour et al., 2019). Therefore, the diversity in this study is limited, and taking a purposive intersectional approach to sampling participants is recommended for future research in order to forefront voices of women who embody a double-minority and potentially experience higher levels of vulnerability and are less likely to report to authorities.
Ethical Considerations
There are significant ethical concerns that must be considered when researching any form of gender-based violence. Recalling incidents of sexual harassment is potentially traumatising and painful for participants. Therefore, interviews were carried out within an ethical praxis relevant for researching sensitive issues, including establishing a lessened hierarchical form of interaction, prioritising the concern for the emotional well-being and rights of participants, and ensuring appropriate levels of anonymity to those taking part in the research (Carroll, 2012). This included emphasising informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity, the right to withdraw and taking a sensitive and flexible approach to interviews. There has been much methodological attention given to how best research sexual violence in an ethical manner. Interview methodology has been used in the field of violence against women since the 1980s and face-to-face semi-structured interviews were used by some of the early studies (Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Kelly, 1988). Campbell et al. (2009) offer useful guidelines in their article ‘Training Interviewers for Research on Sexual Violence: A Qualitative Study of Rape Survivors’ Recommendations for Interview Practice’. Though my research focusses on sexual harassment, there are numerous points that I found useful to consider in my own research when approaching interviews. The principles they highlight include: the emotional well-being of the participant always being the paramount concern; giving participants time to tell their story with open-ended questions; showing patience and respect as stories unfold; engaging in a dialogue and encouraging participants to ask questions; and finally, to be warm, compassionate and understanding (Campbell et al., 2009, p. 601).
Wolf (1996) discusses ‘intersubjectivity’ in interviews, when the researcher shares their own experiences with participants. The researcher relating their own experiences may create an environment that encourages sharing and an open dialogue, in comparison to a forced and unnatural format of question and response (Wolf, 1996). Oakley (1981, p. 49) describes this as ‘reciprocity’ and argues that intimacy and rapport between the interviewer and interviewee cannot be achieved without it. Also, as highlighted by Carroll (2012, p. 548), a common technique used to build rapport and trust is for the researcher to disclose personal experiences. Many of the interviews in this research involved what Oakley (1981) describes as being ‘asked back’ by research participants. When this happened, I engaged and answered honestly. Often, I was asked about my own experience(s) of harassment on the Underground or in general; why I decided to do this research and what I had found from interviews so far. Furthermore, several participants said how, as no one had asked them about this experience before, getting to finally speak about it made the interview itself feel cathartic or ‘like therapy’. Between us, we created a space where we could safely unwrap these neglected yet impactful experiences.
Researcher Reflexivity and Liminality
I realise that when I’m riding on the tube, I’m starting to picture the women I’ve interviewed and their stories of sexual harassment. And looking at the women around me, wondering if they all have their own experiences too. (Fieldnotes, 15 December 2016)
Early on when I started this research, I became aware of the impossibility of a clear distinction between active research time and formal data collection, and everyday life/leisure time away from the research. Rather than flitting between the dualistic positions of researcher−participant, listener−story-teller, observer−observed, and ‘working’– ‘not working’, a new liminal space opened up where I occupied these positions simultaneously. It was here that I existed for the duration of the research, and on reflection, significantly moulded the theoretical framework I adopted to make sense of women’s experiences on the Tube.
I only realised this due to the reflexive diary I kept throughout the research process, snippets of which are incorporated throughout the book. Feminist social scientists have drawn attention to the importance of reflexivity in research (Gelsthorpe & Morris, 1990) and feminist research principles have long recognised that research can never be entirely ‘objective’ or ‘hygienic’ (Oakley, 1981). Therefore, whilst not an exclusively feminist practice, reflexivity is regarded as a key theme of feminist research (DeVault, 1996; Ramazanoglu & Holland, 2002). Anderson (2006) describes reflexivity as ‘self-conscious introspection’ that is guided by the desire to better understand the self and others through the process of examining one’s own perceptions and actions. My reflexive journals were separate notebooks to my observational fieldnotes. I wrote how the city, and the Underground made me feel; how I felt before and after every interview and informal conversation; and how I was feeling about the research process as a whole. Keeping a self-reflective journal facilitated reflexivity throughout the research process, and indeed, as Ortlipp (2008) anticipates, revealed to me presuppositions and assumptions I held around the occurrence and impact of sexual violence on public transport. Thus, I was able to avoid moulding other’s experiences to fit my expectations/subconscious hypotheses.
As considered above, my reflexive journal also made me aware that I was occupying a liminal state for much of the research process. There was no seamless divide between being a researcher, participant or neither of these. Rather, the boundaries were blurred and leaky. I found myself submerged in the research and struggled (not for lack of trying) to find the off switch. Firstly, I experienced this through the accidental occurrence of ‘informal’ or ‘ethnographic’ interviews. Whether at a bar with friends, on a date with a Tinder stranger, or on a weekend away for a hen-do, I regularly found myself drawn into conversations in which people shared their own experiences or those of anonymous friends. It seemed that in a small way, word spread amongst my social circles that I was studying sexual harassment on public transport, and people had stories to share. Close friends, friends of friends, colleagues and relative strangers shared sometimes forgotten incidents, both of their own and people they knew. When small talk turned to ‘What do you do for work?’, my response (‘I’m researching sexual harassment on the Tube’) was often met with ‘Oh, wow yeah, something like that happened to me/my friend/partner/sister’. Like many incidents of ‘low level’ sexual harassment, they stayed hidden away, embedded and normalised in the fabric of women’s lives, revealed only when prompted by a very specific topic of conversation. Being privy to all these anecdotal stories was unexpected and added a certain depth to the research and my own understanding of the scope and everyday conceptualisation of the issue. However, it also meant that I felt I should be ‘on’ as a researcher at times when I didn’t feel mentally or emotionally able to ‘hold’ people’s stories. I was becoming hypersensitive and vigilant to behaviours I would normally shrug off. After experiencing two explicit incidents of verbal sexual harassment in the same day, I wrote this in my reflexive journal the next morning:
I feel … anger towards the city, the streets, my reaction, the people. I want to stay at home. I still feel angry and these emotions have made me exhausted. I want as little interaction with people as possible today, particularly strangers. I feel like the last few days in London have drained me. Today I want to hide away from the city. (Excerpt from reflexive journal, 16 December 2016)
My reflexive journal forced me to acknowledge the emotional impact the research (in its less explicit form) was having on me. A similar blurring of the lines happened with my observations of the London Underground. ‘Formal’ observations took place over a 9-month period and totalled approximately 200 hours, and are arguably what categorises this research as ethnographic, or more specifically an urban ethnography, an approach that can ‘convey the inner life and texture of the diverse social enclaves and personal circumstances of urban societies’ (Jackson, 1985, p. 157). Urban ethnographies recognise the importance of understanding the everyday context of the city through the immersion of the researcher into the urban setting (Dunier et al., 2014). The primary aim of these observations was to understand and record the nature (both physical and social) of the space of the Underground, to immerse myself in its rhythms and regulations, in order to contextualise experiences of sexual harassment in the space. Fieldnotes were kept in the form of writing, sketches and photographs, and I also kept notes in my reflexive diary throughout the process in order to keep track of the changes and developments in my own perceptions of the city and the Underground. These observations were intrinsically important to the research process. In the beginning, when everything was new, my fieldnotes were plentiful and detailed – the Underground and its quirks were visible and fascinating to me. Every journey on the Tube became an ethnographic observation. How was I supposed to stop watching, stop observing, when there was so much to see? Travel across the city to see friends became data, commuting to work became data. However, after a few months, this shifted and observing became challenging as I felt myself become immersed in the city and its rhythms. In my reflexive journal I wrote:
Doing observations has become difficult because now everything seems so normal and mundane. On my regular routes I’m on auto-pilot- I travel around the network with ease and don’t have to think before I move. I’ve moulded into the city, its tempo and pace, dancing in a very disciplined way with everyone around me.
I shifted from being a constantly alert observer, to being too immersed to be able to actively observe – everything was normal and boring! Yet again, on reflection, the experience of becoming and embodying the rhythms of the Underground contributed to the unique theoretical framework applied in this book. Despite finding all these blurred lines difficult to navigate at times, the ‘messiness’ of this methodological approach opened conceptual and theoretical avenues. Perhaps then, liminal state is a more appropriate expression than space, as it was in the epistemological state I occupied here, this betwixt, messy, intangible arena, where the personal and academic collided.
Book Outline
Incidents of sexual harassment are not static and contained in a single moment. They are mobile and fluid: they are anticipated, lurking in the background as a possibility before they even happen, part of women’s psyche and understanding of the world; they are viscerally experienced in an embodied, sensorial way that interrupts, disturbs and demands immediate attention and safety work (Vera-Gray, 2018); they are remembered as feelings of unease, fear or anger lingering long after his hands have left your body, taking the form of a memory that must be redefined and renegotiated, ignored and resisted in order to retain access and freedom to public space.
Using a mobilities framework, this book aims to tell the stories of sexual harassment on the London Underground not as a single, exceptional moment but as part of women’s wider urban experiences and movements through public life. The way this book is structured attempts to mirror and portray this. As such, the chapters that follow this one take such an approach: the before, the during and the after. Before this, two chapters are dedicated to the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings that are employed to make sense of women’s experiences. Chapter 2 focusses on our past and current understandings of sexual harassment as a form of gender-based violence and examines sociological theorisations of the issue, with a focus on feminist perspectives. I begin by exploring the varying definitions of sexual harassment over time paying particular attention to how these types of behaviour are understood across contexts, including organisational settings and workplaces, and public spaces like the streets. I will finish the chapter by exploring how the issue has been understood in transport settings thus far, acknowledging the developments and limitations of existing theorisations. This paves the way for the following chapter, that argues for the application of a new lens on an ‘old’ issue.
Chapter 3 introduces the conceptual framework that I use throughout the rest of the book. Taking a mobilities perspective and focussing on space, temporalities and rhythm, I use this framework to develop our understanding of the way in which sexual harassment is feared and anticipated, experienced, negotiated and remembered in the complex setting of public transport. It problematises the way in which these experiences are often viewed as static and contained (both literally and figuratively), despite happening on the move and blurring time-space boundaries. Applying this framework to women’s empirical accounts that are presented in subsequent chapters offers a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the before, during and after of a specific incident of sexual harassment.
Chapter 4 draws on empirical data from women’s stories as we start on the ‘journey’ of experiences of sexual harassment. This chapter focusses on the ‘before’, as I present women’s accounts of everyday life moving around London and participating in the rhythmic ensemble of the city. It demonstrates how the city remains a gendered environment that induces both fear and freedom and contextualises the (physical and mental) landscape in which incidents of sexual harassment occur. I will draw on theoretical approaches relating to the emergence of urban modernity in order to contextualise how the social, spatial and temporal conditions in the historical metropolis led to the advent of new sociabilities and modes of being in public life that still influence interactions today. Acknowledging that this remains gendered, I call on the literary character of the flâneur to critically analyse women’s past and present mobilities in the city. I simultaneously incorporate Lefebvre’s concept of rhythm to illustrate how the anticipation and expectation of sexual harassment impacts on women’s mobilities so intimately that it constitutes their normative urban rhythms. By exploring women’s wider lives in the context of movement and mobilities in the city, this chapter demonstrates the gendered nature of everyday life in the urban environment, including how the anticipation and perceived risk of sexual harassment are experienced and negotiated as an omnipresent possibility.
Chapter 5 focusses on the ‘during’, the actual corporeal experiences of sexual harassment on the London Underground. I explore these ‘moments’ in detail, the nitty gritty complexity of these experiences that often hold vulnerability, fear, resistance, anger and ambivalence all at once. As considered above, this complexity can be lost in quantitative work, to the detriment of a nuanced understanding of sexual harassment. In the vein of this book, I continue to explore and understand these moments through the lens of mobility, again operationalising Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis in order to draw out key conceptual observations that are specific to how sexual harassment manifests in a public transport environment. Using a mobilities framework, this chapter connects incidents of sexual harassment to general time-space structures of the city and the transport network, illustrating how the various rhythms come together to produce a circumstance where harassment is perpetrated and experienced in a particular way. The framework illustrates how harassment is, in part spatially implicated, facilitated or hindered by the spaces and paces of the city.
Chapter 6 focusses on what happens ‘after’ the incident of sexual harassment. It explores the impact that the memory of an encounter has on women and their mobilities in the city over time. By employing ‘memory’ as a sociological concept in order to link space, time and women’s embodied experiences, this chapter aims to understand the negotiations that women undertake in order to ‘deal with’ the incidents of sexual harassment and claim back their mobility and freedom. It pays attention to how the impact is not static, but rather shifts and morphs over time and space. Importantly this analysis moves beyond simply discussing women’s fear and vulnerability and makes space for a consideration of how sexual harassment on public transport is negotiated and resisted, and how the experiences or memories are also suppressed and can, at times, act to embolden women in their urban mobilities. Using the conceptual framework structured around mobilities, space and time this chapter offers a unique analysis of the impact of sexual harassment in a transport environment.
Chapter 7 draws this book to a close by returning to the overarching goal of this book – to understand women’s experiences of sexual harassment on the London Underground. It brings together the key findings from each chapter. At its core, this book is about deepening and expanding our understanding of sexual harassment on public transport. However, by following the continuous thread of gendered mobilities, we can depart from expected lines of enquiry, broadening our focus to conjoin seemingly disparate conceptual and theoretical approaches and draw out the nuances of these experiences. I also hope this book advocates for why we must not neglect the analysis of the spaces in which these experiences play out. As any ethnographer would contend, we simply cannot claim to understand social interactions without engaging with the cultures and spaces in which they occur and incorporating this into our analyses. So much is revealed through intimate observation of the seemingly mundane – an empty train carriage, the space between strangers, and the invisible rhythms that regulate and play out through our corporeal bodies. This is where we must look to further our enquiries and honour the complexity of these experiences. Along a similar vein, I hope this book demonstrates the continued need to offer space to women’s subjective and experiential stories as a form of rich empirical qualitative data. Many of the women I spoke to said they had never been asked about these experiences before and weren’t sure if they’d ‘remember much’ or ‘be of any use’. On my side, I expected simplicity, a story along the lines of: a man groped me, I was scared and I never wanted to use the Tube again. Oddly, I expected this despite my own experiences not following this script. And indeed, for most women I spoke to, this was far from the truth. Yes, there was fear, but also guilt, anger, and often, a sense of ambivalence. This does not make the perpetration of these incidents any less serious, but it does reveal the nuance and complexity present in experiences of victimisation and helps us to better understand them, women’s reactions to them, and the impact they have.
- Prelims
- Chapter 1. Introduction: Arrhythmia and Egg Yolk
- Chapter 2. Everyday, Everywhere: Theorising Sexual Harassment
- Chapter 3. Space, Time and Rhythms: Introducing a Mobilities Framework
- Chapter 4. ‘Before’: Gendered Experiences of Urban Space
- Chapter 5. ‘During’: Moments of Sexual Harassment on the London Underground
- Chapter 6. ‘After’: The Impact of Sexual Harassment – Remembering and Resisting Across Time and Space
- Chapter 7. Conclusions: Slowing Down
- References