A couple of days ago Ariana Lenarsky was on a flight from Austin to Los Angeles. As she was walking down the aisle of the airplane, a guy reached out and stroked her calf. She reported this to the flight attendants, who nodded knowingly because other women had already complained about the guy. After a bit of back and forth, the captain radioed ahead and police met the plane when it landed. No one wanted to press charges because it would have been more trouble than it was worth, which led to this:
Police said they would “give him a talking to”& “it’s not the crime of the century.” True! I’m going to tweet his picture now since it’s nbd
— Ariana Lenarsky (@aardvarsk) October 23, 2016
You can’t grab women on a plane, guy. You can’t do it. Hope you get the help you need. pic.twitter.com/5A5nGqdx87
— Ariana Lenarsky (@aardvarsk) October 23, 2016
Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of calling out ordinary schmoes on big media platforms, but wouldn’t it be nice if there was a silver lining to the odious and repugnant Trump campaign? Maybe this could be it: If someone gropes you, haul out your phone, take his picture, and post it on your social media platform of choice. We’d need a hashtag for this. Maybe if it catches on, men will finally start paying a big enough social penalty for this crap that they’ll stop doing it.
OK, OK, that won’t happen. But maybe they’ll do less of it. Baby steps.