Originally published at: How Indian women use a safety pin to fight sexual harassment | Boing Boing
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Good on her/them.
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(As mentioned above) One is reminded of the popularity of the hatpin for similar reasins in Victorian times:
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I would be concerned over the potential of blood born diseases. Publicly shaming the guys seems like a more direct and effective method but there’s probably reasons why they aren’t doing so that i’m not thinking of?
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If you use a new pin every time, you can put each bloodied pin in its own ziploc bag labeled with identifying info like date, time, bus, description, etc. And then you can have a publicized annual day for all abuse/assault victims to show up at the local police department with their accumulation of these bags, each a testament to how often these crimes occur.
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Please don’t try telling women how to deal with those assholes.
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My wife, who is Japanese, used the hatpin method to defend herself from “chikan” (molestors/perverts) on the trains in Tokyo when she was a young woman.
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These men can act shamelessly because they live in a society where it’s more shameful to be the subject of sexual harassment than to be the perpetrator.
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And that is why stabbing is more effective at getting some shitbag pervert to leave you alone.
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Or – and I speak from experience here – if you’re coming home on the subway after a long day of construction work in your grimy coveralls with your backpack full of tools turned forward to both protect against breast-gropers and make it easier to fit in a crowded car without bumping into someone, all you have to do when they grab your crotch is drop the bag, HARD, on their arm. Works a charm!
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Work in pairs. One takes the video, getting the masher’s face in the frame (but not the mashee). Create a TikTok of the masher’s expression at the moment of truth, set to appropriate music. The videos with the most likes qualify for awards at the annual ceremony.
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In these days of “Stand Your Ground” laws, it would be nice to not have to worry about backlash for pinning molesters.
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I have a friend that was riding on a bus in Turkey and she said the guy in the seat behind her kept reaching between the seats and touching her. Swatting his hand away did no good so she (in her words) “turned around and poked him in the eyes like a scene out of The Three Stooges.” He left her alone after that. I’ve seen the things women deal with in India and it’s sickening.
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Not just India. In every corner of this fucking globe. There is not a safe public place for half of humanity…
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My Japanese professor in college said she would do this when riding the crowded trains in Tokyo, another place where sexual harassment on crowded public transport (chikan 痴漢 in Japanese) is rampant.
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Taking a quick look, I note that Etsy has many hatpins available in different styles. Average is about 10 cm long with a 1 mm diameter pin. I’m not sure if they’d stand up to more than one or two quick jabs, but if you need more than that hatpins aren’t going to help much anyway.
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@teknocholer and @Robert_Janca “The Hatpin Peril” thing extened right through the 1960s when American women gradual stopped wearing hats as an everyday accessory. Maybe even longer if you count nurses uniforms.
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I can’t find it now, but there’s a section in the old Irish Brehon laws about personal injuries and fines, and it states that the length of the pin on a penannular broach is important.
If your pin extends past your shoulder (like, if you’re showing off with a massive expensive bejewelled broach, with huge knitting-needle spikes poking out), and someone is stuck by it, then they get to demand a fine from you in recompense, depending on the seriousness of the injury and relative social ranks.
If, on the other hand, your cloak pin is modest in size and doesn’t extend past your shoulder, then they don’t get to demand squat from you if they’re injured by it. Because if they were injured by your pin in that case, then they were too close and it’s their own damn fault.
I don’t know if this is relevant, it’s just something random that leapt to mind, and refused to leave until I told someone.
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