There are three ways to climb the Quezon Avenue Metro Rail Transit station, but unless you take the elevator, all three ways amount to scaling endless sets of stairs. I go up across McDonald’s, past the two men hawking FX rides to Ortigas and the bedraggled, skinny little girl who looks down at my offer of a partially eaten ice cream cone.
Once there, you climb, calves screaming, up the more-often-than-not broken escalator, past signs draped on the wall of the next building. There are offers of plastic surgery discounts, before-and-after pictures of broken yellow teeth, and training advertisements for those who seek a career in the call center industry. Learn to speak American from real Americans! Apply now! There’s a rhythm to the ascent, a 1-2-1-2 tapping of boot heels, pink flip-flops and grimy sneakers; an orchestra directed by clacking stilettos. When you hit the top, high above the slow crawl of morning traffic, a line snakes past two tables, where a listless pair of inspectors tap bags with wooden sticks. From there, it’s mechanical. Stick the card into the slot, whisper a quick prayer to the gods that there’s enough credit left for a return trip, push against the metal railing, and trudge down to the yellow arrow at the very end of the platform.
A year ago, when they first cordoned off this area with a guard standing on a blue box and printouts that proclaimed the first few cars were only for “female, elderly, children and handicapped,” I continued to ride with the men. I’m all for offering special privileges for the elderly and the handicapped, as well as those hauling along small children. But in the age of Oprah and mountain-climbing women, not to mention a female President who has proven she has just as much bullheaded machismo as all three of her male predecessors, this sort of legislated chauvinism seems backward.
Every time I shoved myself into the men’s section, I thought of it as a silent protest against segregation. Sometimes, it was not so silent, on the occasions I had to explain to the guards that I wasn’t illiterate, that I deliberately chose to sweat in the back cars, and that yes, I could shove an elbow into a harasser’s balls if I had to. I thought of it as my early morning crusade—what can I say, I was a 20-year-old college kid with angst to spare. It took a full month when I realized that by forcing my way in, I was depriving men of space, seats and oxygen.
So I packed up my indignation and resigned myself to the women’s section. Four days ago, I caught the MRT at the last stop, Taft. The women flooded the car, enough to fill seats on both sides. At Magallanes, the doors slid open, and a pregnant woman slipped in. She was thin, with bony wrists clutching the metal pole at the other end of the aisle. When I stood up to offer my seat, I had to walk over to the other side of the train to tap her on the shoulder. She smiled, moved toward the seat I vacated, just as a curly-haired girl in an orange T-shirt, black leggings and flat pink patent ballet shoes shoved her behind and leopard-print hobo bag into the empty blue seat. Then she looked at the pregnant woman, looked at me, then looked away and pretended to sleep.
The pregnant woman shrugged. I think she was used to it. Then the doors slid open again to let in another flood of females. I lost sight of the girl, but not my temper. And during all 10 stops to Quezon Avenue, not a single one of the sneakered, IPod carrying teenagers who had snared their seats from Taft Avenue stood up to let the pregnant woman sit. I felt the same way Jesus Christ probably felt when vendors sat chattering outside the temple doors. Pissed.
It used to be that when a man stood up to offer a woman his seat, it was because the woman he was standing up for might be his mother, his sister, his wife; and that by standing up, perhaps somewhere, sometime, some man might stand up for his own mother, sister or wife. Is this why women don’t stand up for other women, because they can’t see themselves in the pregnant woman barely able to keep her footing?
The standards for manners have evolved, of course. Fragility is no longer gender-based, so manners differ from one person to another. I like to think, however, that manners are something like human rights. Inasmuch as culture is negotiable, there are certain non-negotiables, like torture, like genocide, like child molestation. When it comes to manners, whether you’re man, woman, or teenager coming home from a shopping spree, you stand up for the old man or woman, for the handicapped boy, for the pregnant mother. You do not, for example, look up at her, then shove earphones into your ears and pretend not to see her. The privilege of anonymity is a wonderful thing in a world of cameras and cell phones and speed; that privilege, however, does not extend to callousness. One incident in a train may not seem like a big deal, but if you don’t stand up for the pregnant woman, you’re bound to sit back when the man gets run over on the side street, or when the child is kidnapped before your eyes.
I thought that the reason I was writing this column was indignation, some sort of righteous anger. I changed my mind when a friend asked me, when I was telling the story, why I didn’t speak up, why I didn’t ask one of the girls to make way for the pregnant woman. And that’s when I realized the reason I had to write this was to make up for that, to apologize, in a way, for being afraid to rock the boat and make a scene, or for simply not knowing how to.
I like to think those girls who sat with their eyes on their Adidas sneakers wanted to do something, only that they didn’t know how, or if they should. The darling girl with her leopard print bag will always stay in my head as someone whom I would love to meet in a back alley somewhere. As for the rest, maybe they were like me, recklessly passionate, but because of some sort of misplaced shyness, or lack of knowledge, became incapable of concrete action.
So I write this today, indignation deflated, in an attempt to make it up to a woman with thin wrists wearing a flowered shirt. I want her to know that yesterday, I stood up for an old lady with a grandson, and that after me, a girl in a nursing uniform stood up for someone’s mother.
