adrian_turtle

I like public transit. I grew up in a car-based world, where the only way to communicate with other travelers was turn signals and flashing high beams, and those were dangerous. [1] I'm one of those people who smiles at strangers and says "good morning." When somebody asks the world at large, "why are we stopping?" or "when is the bus coming?" I answer. Even when that means talking with a child I don't know.

I try to be polite. I listen to many many fascinating conversations without saying anything at all. I don't want to be an intrusive creep. And when I hear an angry person with bad boundaries, I know I shouldn't get involved in their conversation.

Except last Wednesday, when I met Mr. Emphatic.

Wednesday afternoon I settled onto the bus home from Cambridge. I had one of the sideways seats I prefer, and Mr. Emphatic sat down next to me and started telling me how dangerous my phone was. At first I thought he meant kids-these-day-get-off-my-lawn, because people using their phones aren't doing whatever imaginary wholesome things he imagines, but he was talking about the mind control rays coming through the back. He told me I needed to get an insulating cover, to protect myself. See? SHE has an insulating cover on HER phone. (He pointed to the very young and very distracted preschool teacher on his other side. Her phone had a pink plastic cover, but she had no time to discuss how well it protected her brain from being taken over by mind control rays hackers sent up her arm, as she was busy herding a class of 3 year olds onto the bus.[2]) I thanked Mr. Emphatic for his concern and read "Cold Comfort Farm" with my head down. It's an ebook, and I was reading it on my phone with no cover.

Mr. Emphatic turned his attention to one of the little kids sitting across from us. "Is that a tattoo on your arm?" The kid presumably nodded, and he started talking about how tattoos were ugly. And how they got uglier as the woman's body under it got older. Ugly, ugly, ugly. I was trying to think of what to say[3], if I should say anything, when the whole conversation wound down to silence. Peeking out from under the brim of my hat, I couldn't tell if the three children on the opposite seats were feeling hurt or frightened or what. Or if they were ignoring him. Or if they just believed him quietly, without any fuss.

A little while later, he started telling one of the little girls how terrible it was that he could look up her skirt. I don't remember his exact words, but the first thing he said wasn't that awful...if a woman had said it to another grown woman, it could have been useful information, not an attack. (A whisper about a wardrobe malfunction can be a courtesy.) But it feels different when a man is talking to a little girl so emphatically. He didn't just give her the bit of information, for her to use or not. He escalated quickly from "Here is useful information," to "This is a terrible mistake," to "How dare you make this mistake?" The child's legs were short enough to make it difficult to sit modestly on that bench, in that skirt. And as he scolded her about how wrong it was for her to sit with her legs out, she scooted back and drew her knees up to her chin. This, of course, exposed even more of her legs. He kept badgering her, going on about how terrible it was that he could see all the way up.

I finally told him to leave the kid alone. He argued with me. He didn't slink off, ashamed at being called out for bullying a 3-year-old. He argued with me, saying she wasn't listening to him, and it was really important that he teach her to sit properly and keep her legs covered. Somebody a few rows away turned around and told him he shouldn't be looking up a little girl's dress no matter what she was wearing. (I was very relieved to have an ally.) I tried to explain that he was being intrusive and inappropriate. She's just a little kid, you can't talk to her like that. Children are supposed to learn some things from their parents and teachers, not from strangers yelling at them. She'll learn to manage skirts when she's ready, and it wasn't really any of his business. No, being able to see her legs did not make it his business. No, she wasn't my daughter. No, my children weren't on the bus at all [4]. No, I would not appreciate his "help" at all, if he ever saw a daughter of mine with her skirt up like that--I would want him to leave my children alone.

The woman a few rows away was getting angrier, telling him he should just move where he wasn't looking up the skirt of somebody who was practically a baby. The little girl was chewing on the end of her hair solemnly. I couldn't tell if she was listening to us. In between arguing with the other person about it being the child's fault he was looking between her legs, he argued with me about his moral obligation to teach the child to behave modestly. And that I had no right to stop him, especially because the child was not mine, and I was not taking on the responsibility of teaching her to sit modestly.[5] It was horribly uncomfortable. I wanted to interfere. (I WAS interfering. I mean, I wanted to feel confident that it was right for me to interfere.) And yet my whole argument was that he should not be interfering with this child. That a decent person, even a halfway decent person, would stop intruding on this child even if the intrusion was intended to teach her something useful.

I'm glad I said something. The preschool teacher thanked me, after Mr. Emphatic flounced off. I don't know why she didn't say anything to him. Or to the child when he was there. Or even to the child after he left. I'm glad I said something, but I keep thinking I should have handled it better. I should have spoken up sooner. I should have stood up and gotten between them, so he wasn't looking up her dress for the whole argument. I shouldn't have kept telling him, "Don't say that to her because she's just a little kid." I don't want him thinking the bodies of teenage girls are fair game. Worse, I don't want the preschoolers growing up to think that.



1. When I learned to drive, I heard a lot of conflicting information about what it meant to flash high beams. Warning, there's a police car ahead; Warning, there's a moose ahead; You forgot to turn on your headlights; Pull over at the next intersection or my accomplice will kill you; Pull over at the next intersection AND my accomplice will kill you...

2. You've probably seen outings like this. All the kids in bright matching shirts over their clothes, with the name and phone number of the preschool to make it easy to find and return strays.

3. Leave her alone? He wasn't talking directly to any of the kids. People can do what they want with their own bodies--it's not their job to look exactly the way you prefer for their whole lives? Do 3 year olds even understand that? Stop that, you're scaring them? Was he scaring them enough to break the "none of my business" barrier? They looked unsettled, but none of them were crying, and their teacher didn't seem to think they needed rescue.

4. As most of you know, I have no children of my own. This didn't seem the time to say so. Nor to say that if I ever did have a 3-year-old daughter, I would put pants on her.

5. I am not responsible for this child, or no more responsible for her than for anybody (given that we are all of us responsible for each other.) But I don't care whether or not she learns to sit like a proper and modest young lady with her knees together. I care whether or not she learns to be ashamed of her body. I care whether or not she learns her body belongs to her, instead of whoever might like to look at her.

I read Black Beauty to Whitebird this winter, starting when she was almost 5. (Many, many, times. We made up stories about the characters. Do they count as fanfic if one acts them out with little plastic ponies instead of writing them down?) We read the abridged version by Robin McKinley, which simplifies the plot and makes it less racially specific (and leaves out the rape imagery), but keeps most of the rest. The pictures are great.

The book is so popular I expect everybody to be vaguely familiar with it, but it's often abridged or only regarded as suitable for horse-mad little girls (ie, fewer people are more than vaguely familiar with it.) It's a sentimental Victorian story of a horse who has a hard life despite his good looks and noble character. It's also a parable, preaching against animal cruelty, slavery, fox hunting, exploiting poor workers, drunkenness, laziness, and breaking the sabbath. I used to love it uncritically, seeing only the horses and a passionate general opposition to hurting the powerless. Now...I can see something cringeworthy in the equation of wage-slaves, slaves, and animals; even as I appreciate compassionate efforts to make powerful people stop hurting all of them through cruelty or irresponsibility. The ideal of social justice has changed so much since Anna Sewell died 130 years ago. Condescension and othering didn't used to be recognized as so problematic.

Anyhow, Whitebird *loved* it. She wanted to hear it over and over. The toy ponies became Black Beauty and Ginger, or Black Beauty and her mommy. ("Beauty" sounds like a girl's name to her, and "Ginger" like a boy's name. She reversed the pronouns so persistently I started doing it by accident. Confusing, when reading aloud.) Another point of confusion was that she very much wanted to see each bout of trouble as punishment for bad behavior, and each respite as reward. That's how stories work! But this story is about exploitation, so it didn't work that way. (Why did Black Beauty hurt her knees? What did she do wrong?) Then she asked if there was a movie, and we checked it out of the library. In my limited experience of movies...the horses are pretty. So are Sean Bean and David Thewlis, if one likes that sort of thing. The relationship between Black Beauty and Ginger looks a lot more like sexual pursuit than the friendship of the book. The child abruptly started calling BB "he" and Ginger "she."

A few days later, she asked if movies were always better than books. No. She meant when there was a movie and a book of the same story. I explained that even for those, I usually liked books better than movies because the book tells more of the story.

WB: But with a movie, you can see exactly what it's supposed to look like, with the people and everything. You don't have to imagine it for yourself.
A: Sometimes that's not so good. With a book, you can imagine it yourself, and see it the way YOU want it, not the way the movie-maker wanted it.
WB: How do you know which way is right?
A: Well, you're the one reading the book. If you like the story you imagine when you read it, you're ok, even if it's different from the movie. I mean, when somebody reads it to you.
WB: I mean, how do you know if the movie looks really right? Was the Black Beauty movie right?
A: Sometimes you can ask the author who wrote the book if the movie looks right. We can't do that with the Black Beauty movie, because the book was written a long time ago and the author died before they started making the movie.
WB: *shock* DIED?
A: She lived a very long time ago, before cars were invented. In the cities where she writes about horses and carriages everywhere, people drive cars now. I'm sure she'd be happy if she knew people were still reading her book after so many years.
WB: Do you think he would have liked the movie?
A: Probably. The movie-makers found some very pretty horses to play Beauty and Ginger. I'm sure they did the best they could. There's another author...do you know Harry Potter book your sister is reading, about the wizard school?
WB: Oh, sure.
A: When they made a movie of that book, the author helped them choose the actors and the scenery, so it would look exactly right.
WB: What's scenery?
A: All the background stuff in a movie or play. But authors don't usually have anything to do with making movies. Usually the movie-makers say, "We know how to do movies, so let us decide how it should look." There was another book about a wizard school, where the movie got it all wrong.
WB: What happened?
A: Well, the book was called "A Wizard of Earthsea," and a lot of the main characters had dark skin. When they made a movie of it, a few years ago, all the actors had light skin. The author, whose name is Ursula LeGuin, got very upset. She said it was an important part of the story that those characters had dark skin, and they should have African-American actors playing them.
(My mind was racing ahead, wondering if she would ask "What happened next?" or "Why does it matter?" or "How do you know?" What level of explanation should I give her?)
WB: What do you mean, girls can write books?!
A: *gasp* *sputter* *stay in lane* Yes, dear. Of course. Lots of girls do. Ursula LeGuin was a grown up woman when she wrote her books, but she used to be a girl. You could write books someday, if you wanted to, but you have to learn to read first.

How Do Dinosaurs Go To Boskone and convince children they exist and write children's books? It's hard to get back to Earthsea from there. I didn't try. Then again, I don't have a time fairy. *grin*