Public transport is objectively a terrible place to be a woman in Mexico. In the country’s capital city, 65 percent of women revealed that they have been groped, catcalled or otherwise harassed on a bus or train, but that they are fearful of reporting the incidents to the (usually male) authorities.
The Mexican government has launched several campaigns to combat this. The first saw the establishment of an anonymous, all-female public transport police unit, whose sole task was to lurk in train carriages and capture gropers in flagrante, so to speak.
But this month’s campaign takes it up a notch, with the launch of male-only seats on trains, specifically designed to make men as uncomfortable as women on public transport. They achieve this lofty goal by making the seat anatomically correct, complete with chest, abs and, ahem, a penis.
And boy does it work. No man wanted to sit in the seat. The ones who sat down without glancing at the seat immediately leaped into the air as if they had been burned. The campaign video does make for hilarious viewing.
“It’s uncomfortable to sit here, but it doesn’t compare with the sexual violence that women suffer in their everyday lives,” is the motto of the movement, which has gone viral on Twitter.
