Overhearing homophobia made me wonder when it's ok to interrupt strangers' chats
What is it about public transport that forces us into these sometimes frustrating, sometimes downright awful situations?
inews.co.uk
“Can you try and say goodbye without touching me?” says a man on the train to one of his friends. Others in their group laugh as if they’ve just heard something genuinely funny. The joke – I untangle from the past twenty minutes or so of their homophobic banter – is that if a man touches another man… that’s the kind of thing a homosexual might do. Get it? It’s pretty highbrow stuff, so don’t feel too bad if it’s gone right over your head.
One of the few things I have in common with these guys – the fact we’re all getting off at the London tube stop of Vauxhall – has been a source of hilarity for them for some time. Because Vauxhall, you know Gay? The area has a lot of gay night life, and the lads have been doing lispy impressions of the gay men they might encounter in Vauxhall.
It’s around ten in the evening, and they’re drunk. I’m painfully sober. For as long as they’ve been laughing about the existence of gays, I’ve been clamping my jaw, agonising over whether or not to confront them about it.
A much lower stakes version of this had arisen the other day, when I overheard a couple on the tube having a conversation about the Oscars. The man was trying to come up with the name of “that actress, whatshername – you know, the one from The Crown. She’s in everything. She’s in Peep Show!”
I held the name “Oliva Colman” in my mouth, behind clenched teeth.
“Ooh, ooh, ooh,” said the woman, flapping her arms slightly, “Yeah, whatshername.”
I wondered whether to just pipe up - whether it would be creepy, or citizenly.
They ended up getting there on their own, all the while my pulse sky rocketing. Had I said something, they probably wouldn’t have hurled abuse at me or threatened violence. But now, on this train, these guys might. If I pipe up, that is. What is it about public transport that forces us into these sometimes frustrating, sometimes downright awful situations? Being in close proximity to people who are wrong… well it’s a bit like Twitter brought to life.
But it’s not just about piping up or piping down. So often now, in these politically toxic times, we’re forced to pick our battles. We’re placed in situations where we can either stand up for what we believe in and most likely achieve nothing, or stay quiet and feel ashamed. It’s hard enough to tell an acquaintance they have spinach in their teeth, let alone confront somebody about a part of their behaviour that degrades you as a human. And it seems disjointed somehow that – when it comes to confronting strangers - I’d allow someone to walk around all day with toilet paper stuck to their shoe, while willingly putting myself in danger by calling a large, aggressive man a c**t (as I had actually done earlier in the day, when a man barged past my girlfriend in the street).
The train stops at Vauxhall and I get off with the homophobes. We go our separate ways, me fuming, and them laughing uproariously at the mere concept of same-sex attraction. But hey, perhaps a lifetime of going around in bootcut jeans and loafers is punishment enough for them.
Plus, I’d already picked my battle for that day, and it wasn’t justifying my existence to idiots.
