I am traveling so I’m writing this in English. Had an interesting experience last night. At the hostel in Irkutsk I met three very friendly and partying Brits. They were so nice and we talked all evening about everything.
The two girls told that they had traveled third class on the train – not a wise move if you are a woman and want to feel safe. During the night they got scared of being molested by a Russian man. They talked openly about this and they had traveled a lot in Latin America so I thought they were tough persons. Their age was over 26 and they looked mature and easygoing.
After a while I brought up the topic again about rape and asked a philosophical question about it because I remembered a friend of mine, a man, who told me that he would prefer to suffer a horrible and painful injury instead of being forced down and being raped without hardly any physical pain. For him the pain of getting your bones broken was better than experiencing the shame and humiliation of rape. That says a lot about the power of this feeling of shame.
But I did not manage to finish the story before one of the girls and the man interrupted me and asked why I was scaring them by bringing up a topic they started in the first place. The girl I was having the conversation with did not mind, but the other two really had a reaction. Of course, we have had a lot of vodka, but this set off a chain of events.
I was called a weirdo, a nutter, and asked to move from my dormitory and sleep in another room so that the girls would not be scared of me when sleeping. I was drunk and wanting to be kind and empathetic I said I was really sorry about talking about this and that I would move out of the dormitory. Then we were having fun again and talked for a while until the man again called me a nutter. Then I said that I am not a weirdo and that I was studying the topic of sexual abuse and had for instance written an Op-Ed about it in the most respected conservative newspaper in Norway. They already knew about my academic background. But then the man wanted to protect the girls and went close up to my face and, looked angrily into my eyes and said I was a nutter and that he would attack me if I did not behave. I was a little intimated by this, but told him that I was not afraid and that a peaceful and pacifist man like him should really not threaten to use violence.
The girls said I should not analyze them, and it started to feel like an absurd Woody Allen movie. I had not analyzed anyone, but tried to get them to understand that I was not a molester. They answered that they where not scared, but asked me to leave the kitchen we sat in and go to bed! I slept in the other room, but when I went to the dormitory to get something from my backpack they had locked the door.
Being suspected of molesting women when they sleep is serious, but the next day they did not apologize for their strange and paranoid behavior. I guess the whole thing must have set off an avalanche of suppressed fear, enhanced by the vodka.
I am not mentioning their names here because that will not be proper on the Internet of course, but the event was so unusual that I want to share it with you and hear your opinion. It proves that sometimes one must be very careful when speaking to people. Imagine if they had been drunk Russian soldiers!
Alltid freidig når du går.....(nynner)
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