I did not wake up expecting to be fighting a racist on a train, but I’m glad I did it and would absolutely do it again. Racists should not be able to racially abuse people with zero resistance.
I’ve been taking a lot of trains recently due to personal circumstances many of you from my social media may already be aware of. Usually I take my headphones, slap on a playlist and settle into doing some kind of safe grind on Old School Runescape. On this particular journey however I had forgotten my headphones and so my ears would be soaking up train ambience instead of Kim Petras. It wasn’t too bad, at first.
I found myself a table seat in a mostly empty carriage to set up my game on and the only non-train noises to be heard was a woman with my home accent. In a groupchat with my friends I wrote about how much I was enjoying hearing the accent again. As she spoke about how crossing into Cornwall is like entering a whole new world, I even idly wondered what it would be like if I were the kind of social butterfly who could just flit on over to spark up a conversation about our shared origins.
But I didn’t and sadly, I wouldn’t need to. Instead I kept my head down and played my game while she had her very loud but harmless conversation. About half way into the journey an Asian man a couple rows behind me took a phonecall in a foreign language. To you and I this is just a normal thing people do on trains; they talk to people and sometimes they do it in different languages. But to the lady at the other end of the carriage it was intolerable.
She began stirring in her seat yelling things like “He’s doing my head in” and “it’s stressing me out”. She started playing a video about “the migrant crisis” really loudly from one of her devices. After which she lifted her phone above the seats with the camera facing backwards to record the Asian man. The Asian man, sitting on the same side of the train as her but very far back couldn’t see and didn’t really clock any of this happening and continued his conversation oblivious to it.
I had noticed and, naturally, when I saw the camera go up made sure to give her the finger. A fun little easter egg for when she racistly reviews the footage I guess. But her frothing racism wasn’t about to stop there and she got up from her seat and started to march down the carriage towards the Asian man. With the carriage so empty I was literally the only person between her and him and knew that if I didn’t say or do something then I would be simply watching a man be racially abused on a train.
In hindsight I wish I’d been more cool, collected and commanding in my approach. I wish I’d simply got up, blocked the gangway and quietly told her to get back in her seat and leave him alone to have his phone conversation in peace. Instead the adrenaline took over the moment she stepped into the gangway looking to come our way and I yelled “GET YOUR RACIST ASS BACK IN YOUR SEAT”.
The look on her face was priceless – like a racist deer caught in the headlights. She tried to give me attitude saying noone tells her what to do, but I simply repeated myself; “SIT THE FUCK DOWN. GET YOUR RACIST ASS BACK IN YOUR SEAT.”
A few repetitions later and she turned her attention away from the Asian man and began to attack me instead. She yelled incoherently about how immigrants were going to rape my daughters but that they wouldn’t rape me because I’m ugly and look like a tranny. She went off on a tirade about “the leftists” all while I continued to tell her to sit back down and shut up. After about 5 minutes of yelling, she finally did.
Her loud conversation with – I assume – a video call on her laptop continued in which she started talking about drag queen story hour, transvestites and how satanic reading stories to kids in a costume supposedly is. The Asian man’s conversation had come to an abrupt end and again here I wish I’d acted differently. Honestly shaking from the adrenaline of fighting a racist on a train I couldn’t think; but if I could I would have told him to go sit in the 1st Class carriage behind us and that I’d pay if the conductors complained.
A lady behind me and opposite the Asian man flagged down a conductor who then sat behind the racist lady to keep an eye on the situation. She was mostly quiet from this point on but did start piping up again a bit with very loud prayers about the farmer’s protest in London. The conductor told her that she’s entitled to her opinions but that she has to be respectful of other people using the train and she honest to god told this man that “all these leftists” had just started attacking her for no reason.
Thankfully she didn’t follow me or the Asian man when we reached our destinations. The last I saw of her and the last I hope to ever see of her was her shouting about how she couldn’t find the way out despite the many signs and the fact the station only has two platforms.
I spoke with friends and family after the fact and whereas most mirrored my pride in having stood up for this stranger and prevented him from being abused for having a phone conversation there was one who said something that has stuck with me. “Would he have done the same for you?”
It’s stuck with me because I am transgender and that abuse could just as easily have been directed at me had I been the one on the phone having a conversation. In fact that abuse did come for me because I stood up for this man. It is scary to think about whether or not other people in the carriage would have defended me with the same vigour I defended this man. It would have been all too easy to just keep out of it and not “make myself a target” as it were.
But here’s the kicker; I’m already the target. I wasn’t just fighting a racist on a train, I was fighting a bigot overall who already hated my guts for being transgender – even if she didn’t really know if I was or not.
Obviously I stood up for this man because it was the right thing to do; I don’t believe anyone should be racially abused, simple. But even if you absolutely must think of it in terms of transaction and utility; the short term benefit of me not being targeted now by not standing up for this man is massively outweighed by how thin the pack is going to look once the bigots have picked off everyone we refused or otherwise didn’t work to protect.
We are stronger together and the only way any of this is ever going to improve is if we work and fight together to put the bigots back in their boxes. I’m proud of myself for fighting a racist on a train, sure there are things that in hindsight I would have done differently. But I will never not be overjoyed with the knowledge that I’m not the kind of person to just let someone be abused, I love that that is who I am.