The Grope-O-Pedia

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a human being in possession of breasts will be groped the bejesus out of.

Human beings not in possession of breasts also get groped a lot, but in my experience there is something about breasts that attracts hands like honey attracts flies, or, I don’t know, like human flesh attracts those who disregard other people’s right to their bodies.

Just the other day I was getting my dance on at a pride party (November is gay month in Delhi, happy pride, bitches!) when a dude, who’d had his eyes on my shit all night, decided to implement the “just walking by” (consult below) as I was coming back from the bathroom. That sneaky bastard.

In the second it took me to process that the bastard had just groped me (motherfucker), a small coven of lesbians was on him like me on spaghetti. Not only did the culprit get a very stern talking to, he got kicked out of the party.

I stood there stunned: I didn’t know that you could say anything to gropers, let alone kick them out of parties! What a revelation!

Now, I have a lot of conceptual questions related to groping. Questions about privacy, the body, gender, and public and private space; questions about how we eroticize certain body parts, about how sex and shame and consent are culturally relative concepts; about how violence differs across racial and gendered experiences, across class situations, across sexualities.

Today, however, I feel too cranky for sustained analysis and would rather give you sarcasm. So in lieu of sober decoding, here is a handy-dandy resource — a field guide, if you will — to the wonders of unwanted touching. I give you…

Feministing’s First-Ever Handy-Dandy Grope-O-Pedia!

There is a whole universe of fun groping styles out there! In fact, there are as many gropes as there are gropers, and factors like race, class, gender, body type, and sexuality make each experience of unwanted touching in public (or private!) space unique! Isn’t gender special?

In light of this dizzying array of options, what’s a human to do? Never fear: I’m here with your guide to gropes.

See how many of these fun groping styles you recognize. Maybe you’ll even be able to add some fresh new groping styles of your own!

The “Just walking by”: You’re on the street or the train or in line, someone* strolls right on by and — lo and behold, what coincidence! — their hands happen to land all up on your junk. Sorry, ma’am — that’s just an occupational hazard of walking. You know what they say: When people walk, stand, sit, or otherwise exist around other people, someone’s bound to get groped.

The “Hit and run”: The Hit and Run groper sneaks up behind you and slips away as fast as Pikachu before you’ve even realized that he’s just taken a big fistful of your flesh. You stand there dumbstruck attempting to process, and by the time you snap to attention the groper is as far away as Jack from Titanic — you know, a tragic, beloved memory.

The “OOPS WHAT A CROWDED TRAIN”: “So sorry this super crowded rush hour train means I have to rub my boner on your ass/ elbow your boob in a strangely erotic manner/ grab a nice big chunk of belly. Maybe if this city fixed its public transportation system, you could ride the train grope-free. But as for now: Sorry, bitch, if your ass is in my hand space there’s really nothing I can do about it.”

The “Oh so sorry!!”: In which someone gropes you and then is super apologetic about how accidental it was. I’ve noticed people tend to grope you and then put their hands immediately in the air like, nope! No groping happening here! Look at my hands! They’re in an apologetic, palms-out gesture that absolves me from all responsibility for my totally intentional groping.

*Make no bones about it: When I say “people,” I overwhelmingly mean “dudes.” But gropers come in all genders, just like basically any other occupation. Just think of the ratio of male to non-male gropers as roughly that of male to non-male presidential candidates. So diverse!

The Post-Grope

Now here’s the real question: When the gropers strike, what do we do about it?

What and how we can respond to this kind of daily, all too daily, aggression is so dictated, and limited, by who and where and how we are. First, anyone at risk of unwanted touching is also at risk of not-being-believed, and has probably been socialized to doubt themselves. So at least for me, I always feel this moment of skepticism. Like: Maybe it was just an accident. Or: If he’s gay, can that have really been a grope? Or: Maybe I was asking for it by possessing an ass/hips/mammary glands/a body and gender.

Second, of course, there are lots of situations in which unwanted touching happens not on the street or at the club but in the home, at the workplace, in the bedroom. For many of us, violations of our physical space are an occupational hazard — a hazard of being in a family, a hazard of our jobs, a hazard of our living situations or our rides to work or our families — and sometimes it feels like, individually speaking, there is nothing we can do about it.

Changing the way we understand gender and bodily autonomy requires the continued long, slow slog of fabulous feminist warriors such as ourselves. It requires changing gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized narratives of bodily autonomy and what it means to have a right to space. That’s right, folks: Structural change.

Structural change takes a really fucking long time, however, so in the meantime I will probably just be the Amazon I am and invest in one of these. Just kidding, rape prevention strategies like this are bullshit and it’s gonna have to be structural change. But a girl can dream.