arleeshar's picture
Tue, 13/11/2007 - 11:11am — arleeshar

The Tele has undertaken a special investigation into pervy and sexual assaulty taxi drivers, which has elicited this statement from a defensive NSW Taxi Council rep:

“It’s a shame that in this day and age that women have got to do this but they should always sit in the back,” Mr Harrison said.

He conceded that a handful of taxi drivers still took a woman getting in the front as a virtual invitation to sex.

Now, as with many women who regularly catch taxis by themselves, I have my fair share of “sexy” taxi driver stories. Some are hilarious, some are disturbing and border on the violent. I’d like to think that they could be put down to the taxi driver behaving in a completely inappropriate and occasionally illegal manner, and not to any action that I’ve undertaken. It’s a constant struggle to believe this, to reconcile the knowledge that I am not responsible for some gross dude sexually harassing me, with the knowledge that risk minimisation is a legitimate and viable strategy for self preservation. In what other situation would I consider getting into a car with a stranger? Anyway, I choose now to tell one of the worse stories, in which I did indeed sit in the front seat of the taxi.

One midweek evening at about 8.30pm, after a sixteen hour day at work during a busy period, I snaffled a cab charge and got into the nearest cab. I, like most people I know, male or female, sit in the front seat of the taxi if I’m traveling alone - for one thing, it makes me feel safer if I can actually see the driver’s face. So I got in, had a brief chat about where I was going and how to get there, and then settled in to listen to an increasingly lurid set of stories about the driver’s sex life. This guy, who was a fat and sweaty anglo dude in a tracksuit, was apparently the King of the Back Seat. Going over the Anzac bridge, full speed ahead, I heard all about how his wife had been really angry at the weekend cos she had found a pair of rogue knickers in the side pocket. He let me know that he preferred the woman to be on top. He told me all about a conquest from the previous evening, right down to the most minute details. He let me know that he liked a woman in a suit. I was wearing a suit.

At this point I didn’t know how to react. I had started out by kind of nodding and smiling as I looked out the window, but then with the suit comment, I stopped smiling. We pulled off the highway into a quieter street, and the taxi slowed down. It pulled up, and the guy said, in what I thought of as a fairly husky voice, “I need to look at my street directory. Can you hand it to me? It’s in the glovebox”. I was freaking out a bit here. I said, very firmly, “I know exactly where I am. I am very close to home. If you’re lost, I can direct you. I’m just going to call my father and let him know I’m nearly home.” This was a lie; my father lives in Brisbane. At this, the guy backed off, said, “Oh, well you would know where we are - you direct me”. We pulled out, I got home safe, the end.

As with the other bad taxi driver experiences, afterwards I tried to think what I could have done differently – how could I have stood up for myself better - how could I have defused the situation earlier? I always feel ashamed when I am unable to handle situations that go this far without having some kind of looming, angry patriarchal figure in my corner - real or imaginary. I remember realising at the age of 16, really feeling it in my bones, that I wasn’t going to grow physically anymore and that the average guy could probably overpower me without much effort, and feeling so angry about it. It’s a world of mixed messages – on the one hand, young women are educated to know that they are the equal of their young male counterparts, and on the other women experience the shame of physical inferiority and the understanding that there are things they cannot do without placing themselves at heightened risk.

However what I do know is that the problem that needs to be addressed is not me, sitting in the front seat of the taxi. The problem is the men involved in these incidents being allowed to get away with this despite complaints – I complained, but didn’t hear any more about it – and the taxi council putting the onus on passengers to protect themselves from the drivers, rather than ensuring that driver behaviour is dealt with appropriately, is just outrageous.