This past Friday, I emerged from my apartment for my first real Night Out in awhile - dinner with some friends, then on to a bar with another group of friends. I trained for it, essentially - getting lots of sleep every day this week, mentally pumping myself up for it every day, and listening to Lady Gaga super loud in the shower before I actually went out (and, um...Fergalicious. I definitely listened to that. She's all up in the gym just working on her fitness, didn't you know?). And then I went out and remembered one of the reasons I actually hate going out: groping. Girls - if your experience in D.C. has been anything like mine, you've been felt up in public by some random guy - whether at a bar, on the Metro, or while walking down the street in Adams Morgan.

I had somehow managed to forget, in my eternal desire to get home from school, watch some of my shows, and be in bed by 10 p.m., that going out to the bars inevitably means that some guy will get saucy and cop a feel. And by "get saucy" I mean "be a law-breaking jerk." Because yeah, that's actually sexual assault. It rarely gets reported, which, unfortunately, I understand. Even I would feel weird calling the cops and trying to report that some guy at a dirty Georgetown bar just blatantly grabbed me as he stood behind me on the dance floor. It's something that's just not considered that big a deal - which might explain why said guy looked absolutely dumbfounded when I forcibly removed his hands from my posterior and spent the next minute or so berating him. Or why some other guy looked insulted when the girl he had just groped declined to dance with him.

That "it's not a big deal" attitude is also probably why the instances of women being flashed by a bicyclist on GW's campus didn't get more attention, or why some guy thought it would be A-OK to openly grope a woman in Gelman on February 16th. I can see the logic - well, nothing REALLY bad happened - but unfortunately, the longer we wait to call incidents like this what they really are (sexual assault!), the more people get the message that unwanted groping is just the price women (and occasionally men too, but mostly women) pay for going out in public. A Washington Post columnist recently polled his readers to find out how many had experienced unwanted sexual contact while out and about: a stunning 84% of 1553 women reported being groped at least once, while 18% of those reported being groped so many times that they had "lost count". Seventy-eight percent of those women had never "officially complained" about the incidents, either to the perpetrator or to the appropriate authority. A separate poll, directed at men, found that 5% of respondents believed that groping is just "playful touching. If a woman complains, I'll stop, but otherwise, c'mon" (Who are these guys? I wish the survey had asked for names, social security numbers, and personal photos so I'd know whom to avoid.).

Unfortunately, 61% of women polled said that if they were being groped on public transportation, they would "quietly" try to leave, but "not make a scene". I understand the desire to not want to make a scene - and I'm definitely guilty of that on occasion as well - but more and more, I'm coming to believe that the solution IS to make a scene. Friends who have also attempted it have reported overwhelming success. Gropers grope because they are reasonably confident that they will be able to get away with it, and often, their victim's embarrassment and discomfort, coupled with women's socialization to not be loud and to not draw attention to themselves means that gropers are, in fact, able to escape undetected. Making a scene draws attention to you, which in turn, makes it more likely that someone else will step in to help you if necessary, and also makes it highly likely that the perpetrator will cease and desist. Some gross man whips it out on the Metro? Loudly tell him to "PUT THAT THING AWAY BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS TO SEE IT." A man starts grabbing at you on a crowded rush hour train? Announce to passengers around you that this guy, "YES, this guy next to you, with the blue suit and the red scarf, thinks that it's appropriate to grope women in public." This comes with a caveat, however - make sure you are somewhere where you are reasonably safe in case Mr. Groper turns out to be Mr. Totally Unhinged. Use your judgment. But do consider Making A Huge Dramatic Scene as a legitimate anti-street harassment/groping tactic.

Because public groping is such a pervasive problem, especially in large cities with public transportation, Holla Back D.C., a local anti-sexual harassment organization, has declared March to be Public Transit Sexual Assault Awareness Month. They aren't alone in seeking to raise awareness of this problem. New York City previously posted signs in their subway system encouraging victims to report instances of subway groping. Hopefully Holla Back D.C. will be able to convince Metro to do the same thing. But until public groping stops - and I'm not holding my breath - we need to remember that yes, it's against the law; yes, it is a big deal; and yeah, if you're going to try and cop a feel on the Metro or at the bar, we might just call you out on it in front of all our fellow commuters or inform the bouncer that the guy fist-pumping to Journey is also assaulting people on the dance floor.