My Trip to Madrid
He put his hand on my knee. I noticed but thought nothing of it... I realized something was wrong when he began rubbing his thumb against the inside of my leg.
The following essay discusses sexual harassment and assault — Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
During the fall semester of 2018 I was lucky enough to study abroad. My destination: Lisbon, Portugal. The country was beautiful. All of the sidewalks were a beautiful mosaic and the brisk ocean breeze permeated the city. Like many students studying abroad, I often travelled on the weekends. One weekend, I decided to visit Madrid. On the plane I dozed off and on. Once there, I toured landmarks by scooter and took hundreds of pictures. It was quite fun.
The following day I woke up feeling well-rested. The first thing I did after breakfast was scooter down to El Parque Del Oeste. I ambled around the park and the beautiful botanical gardens. Then I hitched a ride on the cable car. It floated over a small valley and landed me in Casa de Campo, an expansive park on the east side of the city. The park is five times the size of Central Park. The dirt was riddled with mountain bike trails. A few bikers zoomed by me, taking advantage of the gorgeous day. The scenery was an interesting combination of sandy floor, scattered trees, and assorted shrubbery. It felt like how I imagined the Australian outback to be. I wandered the paths, taking it all in. I was feeling zen and found a private shady spot where I could pause. Sitting uncomfortably cross-legged, I soaked in the sounds around me.
Shortly after sitting down, a man approached me. He had a friendly manner and I assumed that he, like me, was out for a weekend stroll. The man was a couple of inches shorter and many inches wider than me. His hairline was receding and rough white facial hair peppered his face. If I had to guess, he was probably in his early fifties. His shirt had only the bottom two or three buttons fastened; sun darkened beer belly filled the space between.
He began speaking in Spanish. I fumbled with my words since I did not have a strong enough comprehension of the language. I explained that I did not speak Spanish well. I’m sure that he could tell by my appearance that I was a tourist. The man was patient and kind while I struggled to understand his words and stumbled over my own. He asked me some light icebreaker questions. I warmed up to him and we began having a pleasant, albeit slow, conversation.
As we became more engaged in our interaction he squatted down so that he could comfortably meet my eye contact. I thought nothing of it. I was having a real conversation in Spanish with a native speaker! He put his hand on my knee. I noticed but thought nothing of it. I wasn’t very familiar with Spanish customs and figured it was another friendly gesture. It actually felt a little nice, fatherly almost. I realized something was wrong when he began rubbing his thumb against the inside of my leg.
“Oh shit,” I thought.
I continued the conversation politely and casually brushed his hand off my knee after about a minute. I didn’t know what to do and for some reason, I still didn’t want to be rude. After another minute or so of disjointed conversation, he placed his hand on my knee again. I pretty quickly brushed off his hand this time. During this entire interaction his demeanour never changed, just the location of his hand. He asked me, in Spanish, if I didn’t want his hand there. I affirmed and after some mild pushback, he acquiesced. At no point did I feel physically threatened in my interaction with him. We said goodbye and he sauntered off the way he came.
A couple moments after he departed, I noticed that there was a guy slightly farther down the hill waving his penis around in his hand. Normally, I think this kind of situation is amusing. I thought, “Oh he’s probably getting some fresh air down there. Nudity is more popular in Europe.” I came to my senses and realized that he had been watching me interact with the other man. I think he had been masturbating. I do not remember much about this man except that he was a little taller and only slightly younger than the man I met first. I shooed him off with my hand and looked away. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t work. I gathered my belongings and walked away.
As I left, I heard them starting to talk. I had no idea what they were saying but the fact that they were talking scared me. I am almost six feet tall and was reasonably confident that I could confront one man, but probably not two. I quickened my step trying to put distance between myself and them. I briefly considered exploring more of the park, but the thought was no longer appealing to me. I wondered how many other predators were lurking around. I high-tailed it to the cable car and got the hell out of there.
On that cable car ride back to the city my mind was flooded with thoughts. I questioned why I was so polite and not more forceful about my disinterest. I wondered if there was more I could have done to end the situation sooner. I also began to ask, “Why me?” Prior to this experience, I never really understood why survivors ask this question. I thought, “Logically, this immoral behavior is common and they were just unlucky”. After being harassed, I understood. I still can’t quite explain why I had this question. Maybe I was wondering what about my appearance made me a target or maybe I was wondering why my life had to be one in which I am harassed. I don’t know. I felt bewildered as I tried to process what had happened to me.
My mood for the rest of the day was understandably dampened. I met two friends and visited the Prado art museum. We had a pleasant time and parted ways after a delicious dinner, but I felt paranoid. I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to randomly see one of the men from the park. I knew that the odds of seeing them were negligible, but I was so nervous about it happening again that I stayed hyper aware of my surroundings.
I went to a movie after dinner. Unsurprisingly, Bradley Cooper’s version of A Star Is Born worsened my mood. I felt distraught and upset at all of the problems in the world, specifically, mental illness and sexual harassment. By this point of the day, I was numb from anxiety. I walked back to the apartment and went right to bed.
My trip to Madrid was, in a word, difficult.
The thing that makes life so scary is uncertainty. Is there a monster under my bed? Will this roller coaster kill me? Will I still have my job at the end of the month? But also, do those men know each other? Will they overpower me?
Are they going to rape me?
Before my trip to Madrid, I thought I understood the emotions of victims whose stories I read online or heard firsthand. Their trauma made sense to me. But now that I have been sexually harassed, I recognize their feelings more empathically because I have now felt them myself, even the puzzling feeling of “Why me?”.
Almost every single girl that I am friends with can point to multiple personal experiences of sexual harassment or assault. Girls and members of the LGBTQ+ community are sexually harassed and assaulted regularly. More than a third of all adult women have endured unwanted sexual contact. Every nonconsensual sexual encounter has the potential to cause trauma. My encounter was not traumatizing. It caused very uncomfortable feelings that gradually disappeared over the course of a month. I talked about it with my therapist and some friends and have not thought about it much since. That is often not the case.
A dear friend of mine lives with post-traumatic stress disorder. Certain unexpected moments cause panic attacks. The illness also magnifies the intensity of her depression and anxiety. She is twenty two. Her abuser began molesting her when she was seven. To steal someone’s happiness is the most selfish thing a person can do. My friend’s emotional health has improved as time has distanced her from the abuse but she still deals with lasting effects to this day, over one decade later. My friend’s experience is not unique.
41% of people in the United States were sexually abused as a child.
Two years ago, my family was on our annual December vacation and my fourteen year-old female cousin told me this story (which I have written about before). Earlier that week, a man in his early thirties approached her. It was normal. Everyone is sociable on vacation. He made up an excuse of having talked to her earlier that day, but she did not remember meeting him. She was polite and they continued conversing. Then, he asked for her phone number. He said that he wanted to “stay in contact.” A thirty-something year old man was asking MY little cousin for her phone number. He asked for her number twice. Later in our conversation, my cousin shared that after that encounter she would take six flights of stairs to avoid being caught alone in the elevator with an older man. My family, my friends, or any person should not have to change the way they live in order to avoid sexual violence.
When I was an underclassman at Tulane University, I frequented The Boot. It’s a bar that is really popular with younger Tulane students because it is less than a block off campus and they don’t really care about fake IDs (I never owned a fake ID). The inside of the bar at night is crowded, hot, and sweaty. It is dimly lit and full of wasted college students, and men that come to prey on them. I often would see a girl dancing with her friends when a guy would come up from behind and start grinding on her. The girl would dance on him because she was surprised and not quite sure what to do. Sometimes, the girl would look at her friends and inconspicuously gesture thumbs up or thumbs down, asking if the guy that she did not know and could not see was attractive. The question that I still have is: What in the world would make a guy think that a girl who could not see him would want to dance with him? His behaviour was predatory and fucking disgusting. I stopped going to The Boot sophomore year.
Sexual harassment and assault is endemic to our society. Not only is it a moral problem, but it is an economic one as well. The first report to calculate the economic costs of sexual harassment was published by Deloitte in March 2020. In their analysis of sexual harassment in corporate Australia, they found that sexual harassment led to $2.6 billion in lost productivity. Australia has only 1/13th the population of the United States so one can easily extrapolate the magnitude of economic loss that sexual harassment causes in our country.
I am not writing anything new or groundbreaking. Women and members of the LGBTQ+ community have been sharing these concerns for years. We (men) have slowly started to have a reckoning with our behavior. The takedown of high profile harassers and rapists such as Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Matt Lauer, Jeffrey Epstein, etc. has been a step in the right direction and an important spark in the conversation, but men are nowhere near close to treating women and LGBTQ+ equitably. Men are responsible for the victimization of the 92.5% of survivors of non-rape sexual violence. Even in instances when men are raped (1.4% of all men), the perpetrator is most often a guy.
Our society will not make progress on decreasing sexual violence if men do not recognize incorrect behaviors in themselves and others and fix them. I’m tired of living in a society where women have to always be cognizant for their safety. I want my cousin to be able to take the elevator without a second thought. I want my friends to feel safe enough to walk home alone at night. I want to live in a world where our ideals of equality are true because right now, we are failing miserably.
Men are the problem so men need to be the solution. Step the fuck up.