Solo Female Travels
Recently, I posted a personal essay called Someone Ran a Stop Sign… & I Smiled at Them. In it, I talk about how quickly I defaulted to reassuring someone after they had almost hurt me.
That post was still lingering in my mind, when I had another experience…
Earlier this week, I went to a neighbouring city on an inter-city coach bus. The ride was about an hour and a half long and I sat directly behind the bus driver.
When we almost reached our destination, I asked him if he could let me out early. He replied that he would wait for a safe spot, but yes. A lot of other people on the bus ended up getting off there too since that location was more central than the actual bus stop.
I walked in front of the bus during its red light and stopped in the middle of the street at (what I now know from writing this blog post is called) the pedestrian refuge island: that little sanctuary for pedestrians to wait in the middle of a busy road.
I was waiting for the crosswalk sign to turn green when the bus crossed behind me. The bus driver, who is probably 20 years older than me, blew me a big kiss.
And I smiled back at him.
Smiling Out of Both Sides of My Face
I thought the moment was a little weird, but chose to think nothing of it, as all women are encouraged to do. I then continued along my path.
At the end of the day, I was having dinner with a friend. It was late by the time we left the restaurant, about 8:30 pm. The sun had set hours ago.
She lives nearby and asked if I had a long journey home. I said yes, it would be about 2 hours.
She asked if I would be alright.
I said yes.
I switched a ring onto my wedding finger- a usual precaution I take. And I chastised myself for forgetting my personal safety alarm. Damn.
But I said I would be alright as long as I had a different bus driver than before.
We both laughed. It was part joke, part genuine concern.
Again, the moment caught me off-guard.
The man and the woman in this example got two very different reactions from me. The man got the glowing performative smile. The woman got the genuine concerned anxiety.
Female Emotions Are Confusing… But Are They Genuine?
Sometimes I hear men lamenting that female emotions are confusing. And in a way, I agree with them.
Even I am confused by my smile in these two examples.
But I think what those men are often receiving isn’t the woman’s genuine emotions. It is the emotions that the woman is allowed to have.
In these two instances, was I smiling because I was happy? No.
I wasn’t happy when a moped driver ran a stop sign in front of me, nor when a bus driver singled me out. He didn’t blow a kiss to any of the other passengers, after all.
My smile in those cases wasn’t genuine. It was communicative; meant to diffuse the situations.
I wonder how differently I would express myself if I didn’t need to manage anyone else- if I could simply communicate authentically.
That, I think, is what men often feel when they say women’s emotions are confusing. Because many men can simply express themselves authentically without this social calculation.
An exception to this is men who are in abusive relationships or power structures.
In those cases, the man would have to walk on eggshells all the same. They too would have to sideline their emotions to keep themselves safe.
Therefore, it seems these confusing emotions might be a symptom of imbalance, not an inherently female trait.
My Smile
Going forward, I want my smile to be a genuine expression of myself. I don’t want it to be a tool to deescalate men’s behaviour, or to mend the consequences of it.
I don’t want to be socially rewarded when I don’t make a big deal of things. I want everyone (including men) to know the pain and discomfort their actions cause. Not necessarily even out of blame, but out of responsibility.
Not telling men when they make us uncomfortable can underestimate their ability to change. And increase a snowball of miscommunication in their lives that is obvious to outsiders but not to them.
Every accommodating smile just gives men false feedback. And as they say in mathematics: “Garbage in, garbage out”. Inaccurate data will give you a useless and potentially misleading result.
Because with every smile they get from a woman, that just emboldens them and they think “It was alright! No harm done! She liked it! She would have said something if she didn’t.”
Then when women do say something, they aren’t believed. But that is partly because the accusation seemingly “comes out of nowhere”.
But it probably doesn’t.
It shoots out of the abyss of words left unsaid and into our reality, which is startling. But it doesn’t come from nowhere.
It comes from the impossible logic of the patriarchy, which simultaneously says to women: “Why didn’t you speak up if you were uncomfortable?” and “Why did you make a big deal of it?”
This contorted logic makes up the grey zone.
And it deserves to be talked about. Because that is the only way that clarity can come. And that benefits both men and women. Just not predators.
Messy Bun Book Lover