[ButlerianJihad]

Welp this week we in Phoenix are dealing with a report of a 17-year-old high school girl who boarded a light rail train (the one with security cameras and guards) and she was harassed and assaulted by a mob of boys on the train, presumably in front of human onlookers; she disembarked, and was assaulted some more.

She is now in a neck brace, and her mother is absolutely distraught, saying this is something she cannot fix for her beloved daughter. I am distraught as well that this could happen to anyone at all on the same train that I ride every week.

[ghaff]

That's a sad story though getting a bit far afield from young kids taking public transit or otherwise traveling away from their homes. At 17 I was in college and taking urban transportation (and flights) all the time.

[vel0city]

Multiple people died on the same stretch of road on the same afternoon that I drive on often about a month ago. One was just a teenager in a car that was following the law, it was the other car that was speeding.

I've seen lots of death on the roads around me.

But sure, it's the train that's unsafe.

[altairprime]

Someone and their gang pulled a knife on me as a kid when I was riding the bus forty years ago in a university town, but that doesn’t make what they did normalized, it just makes an anecdote. As it happens, though, that is quite normalized in the U.S., especially if you’re not white.

A lot of U.S. residents inure themselves to random acts of violence because they either feel helpless to change the societal contexts of that violence and/or because admitting that violence would require confronting the benefits of power exploitation vs. the drawbacks of racism, sexism, bullying, and bystanderism. That swarm of boys abusing a girl to enforce societal mores that benefit them to her detriment is a trope from Pleasantville. This isn’t some new or unknown thing. This is a standard-issue United States Lynch Mob that’s been known about for a century.

I’ve been upset about this for thirty years, which is when I first discovered this. Welcome to the shameful desert of the real. Sad that it took y’all so long to see it; but now you have a chance to decide a way forward. Circle the wagons and raise sheltered, and therefore weakened, children? Teach every family about this threat all the way down to the youngest that kids understand danger? Crossing guards that ride the buses and have safety whistles and self-defense training? Lobby your city government to shift policing dollars to transit safety officers? Lobby your regional government to shift road maintenance dollars to gang violence de-escalation efforts?

As you can see, it’s difficult to find a way forward that feels appropriately vengeful upon ‘those that hurt our budding flower’ while also having a meaningful impact on the quality of the future. Most regions would just try to defund bus service, which fucks over everyone except wealthy adults on time scales longer than ten years or so, because at least that ‘feels’ like an effective response.

Good luck.

[mmooss]

> I’ve been upset about this for thirty years

Completely normal. Trauma at a certain level, unlike other memories and emotions, doesn't seem impacted by time. I'm sorry to hear what happened to you.

> that is quite normalized in the U.S., especially if you’re not white. / A lot of U.S. residents inure themselves to random acts of violence

This part seems to universalize the experience, though. What is the basis for it? Crime is at generational lows. I've used public transit in cities uncounted times and I have never seen a crime; that's what is normal for me.

[altairprime]

> Trauma at a certain level

No, not traumatized for thirty years; that’s not a valid substitution here. Upset, in the way that people that want to effect societal change are upset at acceptance of the status quo. The alternative is apathy and hopelessness, and I refuse to adopt salves (such modern rationalism) that would let me stop caring about difficult ‘uphill’ battles.

> I'm sorry to hear

I refuse your apology; instead, exert your own form of societal pressure against, say, bullying. It’s a more approachable target than lynching and will help you switch your instincts from irrelevant sympathy to relevant action. (And if you already do, bully for you, pun intended :)

> I've used public transit in cities uncounted times and I have never seen a crime; that's what is normal for me.

Mixed-wealth U.S. cities, in daytime and at night? In exclusively downtown, college, and/or affluent neighborhoods? (So excluding for example Stanford, Palo Alto, and Mountain View, which are tilted quite high-wealth and thus low-crime, Brock Turners notwithstanding.)

Also: Are you a white man of middle-class or greater wealth? That generally matters greatly when evaluating anecdotes on this topic, independent of all other factors, and is strongly correlated with ‘I have no matching anecdotes from my own experience’ annotations.

[kjkjadksj]

This was of course the trains fault

[weakfish]

I’m also curious why you write “we in Phoenix are dealing with…”

I’ve noticed a trend of people attaching a sort of personal identification with headlines

[coldtea]

Perhaps they don't identify as a passive news consumer about irrelevant people, but as a resident with a bond to their city and wider community.

Imagine that!

[jMyles]

I don't think that was the crux of the inquiry / objection. It's wonderful to feel such a bond with one's _community_, but it's a different thing to bind oneself to such a dramatic statistical outlier and make decisions ("dealing with") as if it's a common occurrence.

[ButlerianJihad]

I mean, I don't know what "decisions" would be made but often people say we are "dealing with" emotions or stress related to something that comes out in the news.

The crux of my stress on this is that riding the light rail is a very common thing for me and millions of my neighbors. In fact we are shocked because we consider it so safe. The LRT should be the safest place in the city, given the cameras, the crowds, the security guards and the vigilant operators.

To think that a vulnerable, female high school student was attacked, broad daylight, onlookers looking, mob of boys (high school I would assume) is just beyond the pale. Nobody did nothing, and the attack continues after she disembarks? It's just unthinkable. There is a Jesuit Catholic boys' school just up the line from where she boarded. Were none of the Brophy boys on hand to step in, to say "stop it" or do anything about it?

And to watch the interview with the mother was just the last straw for me. How upset she is now. Her daughter means the world to her; she couldn't protect her, and she can't "fix this" for her. It's heartwrenching. It should've been safe, especially for a girl like her, so close to adulthood, but legally a child.