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I have been made aware of two penises on trains recently. One on a train in England, and one on a train in Italy. I read about some of the experiences of women in Egypt on the BBC news site posted by SM last week, who had all been assaulted in the street. And it made me think of other brands of sexual insult, and the strange public presence of the penis.

It’s not that I don’t like penises – they’re quite charming – however I don’t like to see them in unexpected places, like trains. The first time, on a grey morning on my way to work in London, a young man got onto the train with his mobile phone playing rap music out loud, and with his hand down his boxers clutching what anyone would reasonably deduce to be his penis. As he was standing across from where I was sitting, I got a very good eye-level view of a substantial patch of penis and some pubic hair. Actually, what I saw was just an unhappy side effect of the fashion for jeans that defy gravity and sit below the buttocks – I don’t think he actually meant to show his penis.

But why go round actually holding your penis? It’s not going anywhere, it’s not going to get off at the wrong stop without you. Does it reassure you to know it’s still there, does it help you to remember that you’re a man? I wonder at the totemic symbolism of this act, I wonder if the palpable, reassuring presence of this teenager’s penis gave him the confidence to ask another male passenger on the train what the f**k he was looking at. I wonder if the ever-present penis had anything to do with the boy then calling the other passenger the last-taboo swear word in English which, happily for our theme here, refers to a woman’s reproductive organ. The boy’s torrent of abuse culminated in the threat ‘I’ll cut you up man, I’ll f**king cut you up’. We have a knife and gun problem in inner city London. A few months ago it was young men shooting one another, now every day in the paper you read of young men stabbing one another. Some people might say this is a penis problem – phallic symbols, masculinity, lack of male role models etc. Or maybe it was just me making connections between the aggression of the boy on the train and the way he was holding onto his penis? Am I reading too much into it? Am I just scared of penises?

I’m not scared of them, I’m just a little bored of how much influence they seem to have over events…

The second penis I encountered on a train recently was in Puglia, Italy. It was just me and a middle-aged and slightly podgy man in the carriage. I noticed he had his hand down his shorts. Another penis, I thought, I’m an old hand at penises on trains, and this isn’t as bad as the last one because I can’t actually see the penis and he’s not behaving aggressively, so I’ll just ignore it and look out of the window. Don’t be scared, I thought, noting the lack of immediate exit on a moving train, that there was indeed no one else in the carriage, that there was no CCTV (this was the slow train to Lecce, not the London Underground), that the noise of the train could easily mask the noise of any kind of disturbance. At the next station the man swapped seats so that he was sitting opposite me on the other side of the carriage, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was now actively masturbating. I could see the rapid motion of his hand beneath his little blue shorts, and I could feel him looking across at me, masturbating. I left the carriage with a glare, or perhaps a glance, or maybe just a subtle air of haughty disgust that I hoped would make both the man and his penis feel small and pathetic.

When I got upstairs to my hastily-chosen new seat in the hottest part of the train, uncomfortable and suddenly less enamoured with the views and olive groves passing by, I got really annoyed. Why hadn’t I said something? I went from a kind of quiet Victorian sense of superiority as an affronted-but-dignified young lady, to just being really pissed off that a few men, be it for sexual gratification or the assertion of a hyper-masculine identity, insist on putting their penises before politeness. I have every right as an equal citizen to travel on trains without having to see penises all the time. You stupid, silly little man, I thought, You don’t deserve to have a penis. Because penises are extraordinary things, and there are many men who conduct themselves and their penises with great care and respect. But a penis comes with responsibility, and some men are too weak and feeble to handle it properly.

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