Is Street Harassment on a Bus Still Street Harassment?

I’d had a rather long and exhausting day, and was not in the best of moods.  But it was, at long last, time to get on some buses and make my way home, so I lumbered out of the school like a zombie, with my hood pulled up to make it easier to avoid eye contact with anyone.  I didn’t feel like listening to any music, I just wanted to get on my hour-long express bus after a connection, so I could read a bit and maybe even have a nap.

On the connecting bus, I stepped up, paid, and took a seat near the front, since it’s only a couple stops to where I transfer to the express bus.  On the next stop, an older man who was very loud got on the bus, and sat in the side-facing bench seats in front of the front-facing paired seats I was occupying.

He turned to me and said, “how you doing?”

I made an attempt at a smile, and gave him the time-honored Boba-Fett-in-Return-of-the-Jedi head nod, which I hoped he would accept as indicators that I had heard him, but I did not actually say anything in reply, which I hoped he would understand to mean that I did not feel like talking to anyone.  In response to this, he immediately said, much more loudly, “I SAID, HOW YOU DOING?”

Now, my face reflected mild annoyance and confusion.  I’d answered his greeting, and didn’t really understand why he wasn’t satisfied with that.  “Oh, no English?” he asked.  “I’m used to that.”

He then tried to express his displeasure with how I had responded to him by engaging a proxy, a hapless nearby bus rider.  “You ever seen a 24-carat vagina?” he bellowed.  The other man smiled sheepishly and shook his head, no.  “I ain’t never seen one, neither!” the first man continued, “but they all act like they got one!”

By this point, I was trying not to laugh.  I considered speaking at last, to tell this man that I’d honestly settle for a tin foil vagina right now, but I decided that anything that might agitate him further was probably a bad idea.

Just before the next stop (where I needed to get off), he walked up to the driver and asked to be let off on the near side of the intersection, saying something like, “I ain’t feelin’ the way she disrespectin’ me.”

Which was nice.  I’d been properly gendered, at least.