GirlGI | Girl Gone International Issue 9 | Page 58

WHILE OUT

in the busy city of
Mumbai, India, I was unfortunate enough
to be subjected to a man pull out his penis
and begin masturbating, using me as his
pornography. Frustratingly, this wasn’t the
first time and I doubt it will be the last.
In the past years, when I have witnessed this
sort of behaviour, I have felt empowered by
laughing at both the man and the situation,
usually labelling his genitals and actions
with some choice profanities. But on this
occasion, it was different, I was much closer
(we were about a metre from each other
in a dimly lit bus stop), it was dark and I was
extremely intimidated. I was in a foreign
country with little understanding of the legal
system, I couldn’t just jump in my car and
drive off, my knowledge of the city wasn’t
perfect – I was totally out of my depth.
Part of the upset came from the desire to
remind the man that here I was; a real
person with real feelings. Yes I am a female,
but I’m someone’s daughter, sister,
girlfriend. How would he feel if his sister,
mother, wife or daughter had experienced
the same behaviour from a stranger?
For three days that followed this incident,
I found myself deeply affected. Interestingly, when I started to analyse my own
feelings, I could see a pattern. I remembered from a psychology class years
before, what I was feeling was remarkably
similar to the Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth
Kübler-Ross’s model, or the Five Stages of
Grief. Although Kübler-Ross’s model
usually relates to the death of a friend, it
was alarmingly similar to what I was feeling.

The Five Stages
of Grief Involved
in Harassment
1 | Denial
When I first saw what was happening from
the corner of my eye, my first thought was
‘Surely not? It’s 2015, I’m in the cosmopolitan city of Mumbai, this is definitely not
happening.’ I was in disbelief. We were sat
in a bus stop at around 8pm and it was
dark, but there were people all around us,
across the street, in cars, on motorbikes.
We were by no means alone.