Subway
Along with every job and new opportunity comes new challenges. There are new team members to meet, there are new stories to learn, new perspectives to add to your already considerable life experiences and along with each one of these moments and experiences, there’s also the opportunity for growth.
You inevitably find that you are deficient in one area or another or that perhaps you are not the hot shit that you thought you were before. I appreciate these moments for the humility that they bring and the perspective that they add to an already crowded grandstand of spectators in my grey matter.
Today I got the experience of riding the subway into Boston. Now you wouldn’t think much of this as many of you are used to public transport. And truth be told, it’s been a few years since I last had to take such a journey. I remember the crowded cars, the incessant squeal of brakes and the smell of electrical substations, the sounds of the people milling about, headphones on, talking loudly as if nothing existed around them. It’s a menagerie of colour, of people, of humanity itself, all wrapped up in an insignificant metal tube hurtling through the underbelly of a big city.
Along the way, you meet interesting characters. Some that are suspicious, some that are happy, some that are sad. Stories that are yet untold to me, but can somehow worm their way into an imagination of possibility. It’s not every day that you get these stories to tell, but it’s also not every day that you want these stories to tell. For they inevitably revolve around stories that may approximate the different stages of your life. And sometimes, we want to leave those far, far behind.
Tonight, I was riding back to my car, which was five stops away from where I got on and was granted a perspective that I was not familiar with. During my ride home, a woman in the seat next to me leaned over and asked if I could accompany her to her stop because she was being made uncomfortable by the stares of a fellow passenger. Now, the fellow passenger was male, and the person who asked for the accompaniment was a female. Because I’ve learned over the years, especially being the father of two teenage girls, that humanity can sometimes be very, very shitty to the weak, the vulnerable, the marginalized, and those they find to be less than others, I accepted the request unequivocally.
I’m not experienced in the fear that comes from being marginalized. I am, after all, a man, and I have a certain privilege within society that is altogether foreign to many of the people who find themselves within the greater Boston community. I’m not a minority; I have white skin, I am male, and I am “different” or “normal” compared to what others may experience. As such, I enjoy a certain level of privilege within the spaces I go. Specifically in public, specifically in business, specifically in situations like the above and it’s not something I take for granted (and I have learned not to take for granted through the patient tutelage of my wife and others).
Tonight’s moment drove that message home.
I had to put myself in her shoes and try to understand how she was feeling vulnerable to somebody exerting their level of control, their posture of power within a very confined and inescapable space. I can’t fathom the fear that forced its way through her body. So I’m only too willing to stand in a gap for someone like that, using my power, my privilege, and my role and responsibility within society to do what she could not do for herself in that moment.
I would hope, as an egalitarian and as someone who wishes that my fellow gendered individuals in society join the same rights, responsibilities, joys, and successes that I do, I would be able to actualize that sometime in my lifetime. But I know, sadly, that given the way this nation has decided to frame itself, such equality is not only hard fought but in the far distance.
We exclaim loudly from time to time that women’s rights are equal to men’s rights, and yet we do everything possible within our sphere of influence as men to restrict their rights, enjoin free society to have control over their bodies, and do this in the most wicked of ways. We legislate out their right to choose. We legislate away their right to the pursuit of happiness, bodily autonomy, and agency. And to that, I have only this to say: there’s no balance, there’s no equality, there’s no equity in that model. There’s only conflict. This conflict then drives the nature of how we approach social systems. I wonder if we’re not ready to bear the ultimate consequences of our actions.
Dear reader, regardless of sex, gender, identity, or otherwise, we’re called to be better than what we once were. We’re called to defend the defenceless, love those who are unloved, and protect and guide where we can. We’re called to be active members of our community and be shelter during the storms of oppression as they blow over and through us. Tonight’s experience is hardly a drop in the bucket compared to what many people face. If it’s as galling to me as it is to you, we may have yet a chance to alter the course of our local community and spaces. But we have to try, we have to stand in the gap, we have to do more than be idle observers. Let’s purpose to do better, for ourselves and each other.
May it ever be so.
