Bioethicist Elizabeth Yuko tries to use her science training while reporting her sexual assault.
Elizabeth Yuko is a bioethicist and writer, specializing in the intersection of popular culture and ethics. She is an experienced communications strategist both for political campaigns and academic research, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the UN-affiliated NGO the Global Bioethics Initiative, and as an external expert for the European Research Council. She has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Ms. Magazine, The Establishment, Playboy, Racked and The Advocate, among others. Yuko also hosts a comedy lecture show called Let's Get Ethical! at Q.E.D. in Queens, New York.
This story originally aired on Jan. 20, 2017.
Story Transcript
About a year and a half ago, I was riding the train home on my daily commute, which was pretty long. It was from Queens to the Bronx, which in that time I came in contact, physical contact, with more people than I ever thought I would in my entire life, basically in my first commute. I was commuting to my job as a bioethicist. What that is, if you’re not super familiar with our work, we look at difficult ethical issues dealing with medicine and the human body. Basically anything that people don’t want to talk about is my job to talk about, like stem cell research, end-of-life issues, should you donate your kidney to your brother-in-law, abortion, any sort of reproductive things, that’s what I do. So I have a very popular seat next to me at dinner parties because people want to ask me all of their personal, ethical questions. I specialize in reproductive ethics and sexual health ethics so I spend a lot of time talking about particularly female genitalia. That, at this stage, is totally normal for me and not anything that I… it doesn’t sound strange at all.
Back to the train. I’m coming home from work one day with a friend of mine and it was rush hour. We’re on the seven train, in Queens. We were talking about… I remember exactly, we were talking about, how the PIX11 Seinfeld train, the seven train that was coded to look like Monk’s diner, was always going the opposite direction of rush hour and why that was. While that happened, I felt something brush up against my upper thigh and I was like, “Okay, well, whatever. It’s commuting time.”
Then, a few seconds later, I felt like a hand firmly and deliberately grab my vagina, and I was like, “That’s not good.” I turned to him, to the guy – shockingly, it was a man -- and I said, “Excuse me.” Not in like a sassy, assertive “excuse me” sort of way. It was tame and apologetic. He had a red T-shirt, pulled up over -- I can’t do that because I will break the microphone -- pulled up over his nose like a child who smelled something bad on a school bus. He just said sorry and scurried to the other side of the train.
My friend had no idea this had happened because none of it looked out of place for rush hour in New York. We were getting off the next stop anyway. We do have a lovely sushi dinner. I don’t mention it. Then I go home and start thinking about it and think, “Okay, well, if he does this to someone else, this is basically all your fault.” I felt guilty and ashamed. As a very outspoken feminist, I felt like I let my whole team down. How hard is it to find an MTA employee? Well, at my station, kind of hard, but I mean I should have done something.
I met the same friend for dinner, maybe two days later, and over a plate of beef brisket, lemon potatoes, and pickles, I told her what had happened while she was standing next to me. I don’t really remember what her reaction was because I was so concerned about the people around us because there were small children dining and I didn’t want to ruin their dining experience by them overhearing what had happened and my description of my own anatomy. So we cut that short.
She offered to go to the police with me because I decided to go to the police on the following day, on Saturday. No. I was like, “You know what, this is pretty easy. I have been watching a little Brooklyn 99, so I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a great time and meet a very handsome police officer who’s also funny. I’ve got this. It’s just a form. I’ll fill out the form.”
Next day, I go to my local precinct. Waltz in there. I go to the desk and explain to the person there and what looked like the rest of the precinct what had happened to me. They said, “Okay, just take a seat in the waiting room,” so I sat there for a while trying not to make eye contact because the other clientele I don’t think were also super into hearing about what happened. Eventually they lead me to a room. In this room, they sit me in a metal chair while the song “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” played in the background.
My first thought was, “Do they have a mix tape for sex crimes that they like pop in when you sit there?” I’m like, “No, don’t be ridiculous. No one does mix tapes anymore. There are CDs or playlists.” Like, whatever, this is not -- this is Queens. This is not somewhere else.
I sit down and a police officer comes in. He clearly did not want to be there. He sat down. His first question to me was, “Okay, what were you wearing?” I was like, “Okay, I was wearing a knee-length dress with a yellow cardigan. I was dressed like an old-timey secretary, like now. Also, it doesn’t matter if I was naked -- no one should be able to touch me.” He was like, “Right, but about that. You know, when you wear dresses, you just make your crotch a little bit more available to gropers.” I was like, “Oh, okay. Thank you, that’s a really good tip. Cool.”
Then we got into specifics, and he kept using words like between your legs or crotch. Just because I knew it annoyed him, I countered with vagina and labia. He got progressively more flustered and visibly upset by my use of the words and even called me out on it. He says, “Is there a reason you’re saying this?” I said, “Well, to be honest with you, it’s literally what I work with for a living. So yeah.” He’s like, “Okay, whatever, good for you.”
Then I learned a new term called “digital rape.” We went through this very explicitly. Apparently, if someone gets their hands up inside you, it’s digital rape. If they don’t, it is just forcible touching and they are two different crimes. We had a very extensive discussion about finger angling and everything you would never want to have on a Saturday afternoon with a police officer at your local precinct.
To which, after we discussed that, he just says, “Well, I hope at least your boyfriend gets to touch you like that.” Yes, so this is going really well. I guess I felt like I was there to do my civic duty and I listened to their weird soundtrack. I’m playing along and answering all their dumb questions. That I was like, “No, this is not right.” I should mention that, from the very beginning, I was taking notes on the back of an envelope because I could tell something was really weird from the minute I got there. I’m a writer, so I thought, “Worst case scenario, I’ll get a funny story out of it.” Wish granted!
We talked about -- he’s really concerned about the sexual gratification of my hypothetical non-existent boyfriend. Once we established that, there was an administrative assistant who was also in the office. She said, “Well, honey, I could also tell you why you were targeted. It’s because you’re a larger woman,” and then she left and the police officer picked up where she left off and said, “Well, actually yes, it’s true. Gropers tend to gravitate towards larger women.” I was wondering, is that like a logistical thing just because there’s more of us to grab, like there’s more surface area, or do you just assume that we have such low self-esteem that we’re delighted to be groped in the subway because that’s like as much as we’re going to get for the year?
So yeah, that was not great. He was very concerned about -- he was like, “Where were you sitting?” I was like, “I was standing, it was rush hour.” He’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, next time try sitting down. It will make it harder for them to grab your crotch.” I’m like, “Oh my God! Thank you so much. That is amazing. That is fantastic advice. Great.” Then he said, “Did you happen to get a photo of the guy?” I was like, “I did not. Should I have?” and he was like, “It just would have made our job a lot easier if you would have gotten a photo of the guy.” I was like, “Okay, it happened really fast.” He was like, “Your phone does have a camera, doesn’t it?” I was like, “Yes. It is not 1998. My phone does have a camera, but it doesn’t matter. I froze. I couldn’t do anything.
Yeah, so just to recap, things I was doing wrong: number one, wearing a dress. Number two, possessing female genitalia. Number three, being fat. Number four, standing up during rush hour. Number five, not taking a picture of this guy with my phone. As you could see, I was doing a lot of things wrong. Not a perfect victim, I guess.
Heends up being like, “Well, listen, because it happened in the subway, I actually can’t handle this for you. We have to give you the transit police.” I was like, “You mean I’ve been here for like two hours talking about my vagina with you for no reason?” and he was basically like yeah. But silver lining everybody, silver lining! He said that he has never had that much fun filling out a sexual assault report in his career, thank you, and he does not laugh that much at work regardless of the crime. Pretty great. Then he said he was finishing his shift then he said it was a shame that I had to continue the process with the transit police because he wanted to invite me to a barbecue at his mother’s house.
We’re now engaged. No, I’m just kidding. We’re not. Honey, stand up in the back! No.
He leaves and the transit cop comes and there are two of them to escort me to Regal Park, the transit police station. It was one of the first warm days of the year and they said, “Listen, our squad car’s air conditioning is broken. We have a van.” I said, “Oh, all right, okay.” I sat in the back of essentially a paddy wagon where the criminal sat in the back behind the little bars and they’re in the front, and I’m like yelling at them through the bars talking about what happened and what good restaurants to go to on Queens Boulevard. They like Ben’s Kosher Deli, should you want to know.
They drop me off at the police station, but I didn’t see a police station. They then explained to me that the transit police are located underground in a subway station. That means when you’re the victim of a crime on the subway, you must then return to a subway station to report the crime. They’re really into triggers, I guess, and making sure not to retraumatize people, because this was -- it was amazing. I was like, “Okay, fantastic.”
I go down there, and I told tell my story to two more police officers. I got my first empathetic one of the day. He said that he has a wife and two college-aged daughters, therefore he understands why this is not okay. I’m like, “Cool, okay, that’s great.” This shouldn’t be a prerequisite, but cool. I finish this up. I was late for my friend’s birthday, blah, blah, blah. The next day, I write up all my notes from my envelope and do nothing with this narrative for about a year and a half. Then I decided last year I wanted to publish it because I was starting to write a little bit more and one of the many nationally televised sexual assaults happened and I’m like, “I should say something.”
I publish an essay with Refinery 29, but before it came out, they said, “We’re contacting the NYPD for comment. Just to warn you, they’ll probably say something. I’m like, “Okay, I didn’t do anything wrong. They thought I did.” It was… as someone with anxiety, I did not -- this wasn’t great. Then they said, “We’re getting our legal team involved. We’re going to have you on media watch. People are probably going to want to talk to you. This will be a whole thing.” So that got me all worked up, and there’s no backing out now, it was going in.
It was published and nothing happened at all. The NYPD did not even give like a fake press release or like an insincere PR apology, nothing. They just declined to comment. I got a lot of really fun internet comments regarding my weight and my ability to attract men on the subway. Oh! Sorry, backtrack one second, the charmer -- my fiancé -- when we were having our little chat there, he asked -- I know you’re not supposed to go out of order in the story, but I just thought of this -- he said, “Is this the first time this has happened to you?” I said, “No, it’s actually happened a few different times.” He said, “Well, what are you doing to attract this sort of behavior?” We went over again the checklist of things I should and shouldn’t do. He said, “Well, I guess a lot of men just find you attractive,” and I was like, “Yes, but they’re sex offenders.” So hmm.
Anyway, now we’re back in the present thing. I publish the essay and there’s no comments. I start emailing it to everyone in the NYPD: the commissioner, the mayor, no responses. The responses I do get are unsolicited advice from everyone from my prom date from the late nineties who I have not seen since then to literally anyone else. The top three suggestions were: number one, carry pepper spray. Number two, purchase and carry a gun at all times, and number three, procure a hood and aviator sunglasses and wear them constantly ala the Unabomber.
If I did all of these things, in addition to not wearing a dress, not having a vagina, and not going on a subway during rush hour, sitting down, taking pictures, like I should be fine. Yes, and then I tried to publish another article, kind of a follow-up on things to say and not say to people who’ve been sexually assaulted -- this is this past summer -- and all these editors told me, “You know what, we’re actually finished with sexual assault as a conversation. We’ve sort of moved on as a society.”
Then, a few weeks later, a little video surfaced featuring our Republican nominee for president discussing one of his extracurricular hobbies of pussy grabbing, and all of a sudden I was a hot commodity and the spokesperson for vagina grabs. That was an unexpected twist and I went to all these people who told me it was over and they were like, “Now we want to talk to you.” Great. Just for good measure, I tweeted the NYPD this afternoon with the helpful tips of what to say and not to say to people who’ve been sexually assaulted, so maybe one day they will get back to me.