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I tried the paint the situation honestly trick on one occasion when I was in Venice. I had been gazing through the large shopfront window of a beautiful paper and stationery store when the owner caught my eyes and gave me a smile. Naturally, I smiled back. He then starts waving his hand at me… me being at my core an Asian girl believe that he is waving to be friendly so I just smile again. Then I see him sort of bobbing his head and using his waving hand to gesture inwards, and click that more than being friendly he’s engaging me and asking me to come inside. Ahh, this is a salesman tactic, I think, he’s trying to lure me in ’cause he knows his fancy stationery will be even harder to resist from the inside. I went in anyway, curious about how he was going to continue proceedings.
Typical enough start. Where was I from? Was I travelling alone? What was my name? All routine questions I’d answered hundreds of times previously. What came next was the surprising twist. “I am an artist… I’d like to draw you naked… No sex. I just want to draw you naked.” Read the rest of this entry »
What I still wonder about
My remaining questions about the case studies seem to boil down to the question of whether I could have done more.
- Should I and could I have used more physical force against the Korean man in #1?
Although I was genuinely interested in getting him off me I didn’t go so far as attacking him. Instead my self-defense involved twisting my torso away, wriggling in some attempt to shake him off, and using my free left arm to alternately try to loosen one of the two hands that were gripping my right arm and to push against him to get space. Read the rest of this entry »
The first part of this discussion will look at what I learnt from these three experiences, while the second (the next post) will point out the weak spots that still give me pause for thought.
What I learnt
Don’t shrug off strange behaviour
What immediately strikes me when I review the first two case studies is that I clearly set myself up for both messes. I voluntarily interacted with these two guys for quite a long time. Even when they started to act strangely - as if it was equivocal whether he was from Japan or Korea in #1, and checking up on me repeatedly as I was walking through town in #2 - I kept engaging them.
Why?
I put it down to three things: naivete, openness and the desire to trust. Read the rest of this entry »
