I was out with a friend, her 2 teens boy (15) and girl (13) and my teen girls (15 and 13) - all quite tall. My friend is average height but very slight build. I am tallish and large boned. 😝
Saturday night post-meal stroll along the main street of a small regional city and we were on the point of saying goodnight and going our separate ways. We pause in a widened pedestrian plaza type area at a junction with a side street. Lots of people around but lots of room to navigate around us too. We are standing as a loosely assembled group but obviously together as a group. I have my back to a large-ish civic bin and my friend’s chatting to me with our teens gathered loosely around us so we are obviously a cluster.
I become aware of a man walking quite quickly towards us from my left periphery with arms tight against his torso and a sense of purpose and tension in his upper body. He’s about 5’10/11, aged early 50’s to early 60’s, casual dress but an odd fixed expression on his face, not friendly. Rigid and hard. Quickly and sharply he jabs my friend in the breast with his elbow. He makes contact and she jumps, I’m unsure what has happened but I was more situationally aware in the moment and was aware of his approach so am wondering why this man has just cut through us so needlessly. Then I suddenly realise he’s made contact with my friend who’s holding her chest area and looking shocked. He was gone and up the busy Saturday street in no time.
To me, it felt targeted towards my companion. His elbow was at her chest height. He cut through us completely unnecessarily and jabbed his elbow out at her in a quick, aggressive manner, designed to hurt a vulnerable part of the body.
We finished saying our goodbyes and it was only afterwards I thought, we really should have reported that to the police. It was sly and underhand but it was deliberate. It was no accident and he radiated tightly-wound anger and tension.
A horrible experience that left me wondering since then whether it was pre-mediatated behaviour linked to manosphere/incel type misogyny, or MH induced? Low-level harm towards women in a way that’s so unexpected and easily described away as accident because it’s so random and plausibly deniable except that everything about the man’s energy was really intense and the way in which he aimed for and cut through us, rather than swerve our group and carry on, left me in no doubt that it was intentional, harmful contact with a woman not known to him, designed to frighten, undermine and shock. It really felt very unhinged and sinister, and yet the kind of thing that would be dismissed by police as simply carelessness by a passerby. I have been elbowed in the boob many times, all accidentally and women know the difference.