I'm not talking about onanism, but rather the idea that to protect women from sexual harassment and assault, we should just keep the sexes separate. Last week an article about a new single-sex bus service offered in Mexico City caught my attention.

According to The New York Times, groping and sexual harassment on Mexico City's public transportation systems are so severe that the government has resorted to setting aside subway cars and buses for women so that they can ride safely.


Women-only buses are the latest gambit, with even some men supporting the idea, although not in ways I believe will encourage long-term solutions:

"We have no respect," Adolfo Flores, 30, a law student, said of the unseemly way many men treat women.


Mr. Flores was getting his shoes shined as buses passed by behind him. The shoeshine man, Esteban Hernández, 57, piped in with his own theory about the groping.


"We have the animal instinct," he said smiling. Touching a woman, he said, "is a way of showing masculinity – it's very bad."

Sure, in the short term, preventing men from acting on their "animal instinct" will shelter women from groping and worse. However, it does nothing to address the idea that men are not animals and that it is unacceptable to behave like animals. Further, the idea that men can't control their sexual urges is a time-honored excuse for rape and other sexual crimes. I always find it fascinating that I am supposed to accept that men are in charge of their emotions enough to be world leaders, businessmen, etc. (unlike women, who succumb to our irrational hormones which prevent us from making sound decisions), yet when they do something bad sexually, I am supposed to forgive them for succumbing to their hormones and making immoral decisions. (I also happen to think it is utterly insulting to men to compare them to animals that can't control themselves when it comes to sex, but what do I know since I don't hear too many objections from men?)

The point is, separating women from men validates the unacceptable behavior of some men, while blaming women for provoking attacks on them. Under this logic, if a woman rides a co-ed bus, she knows what she's getting herself into - if she doesn't want to be groped, she'll just wait for a women-only bus - thus its her own fault she was groped. In some cultures, this logic is stretched so far that women aren't even allowed in public without a man to accompany her, lest her solo presence cause harm to befall her.

At the same time, cultural change happens slowly. How can women best be protected from men who continue to use double-standards to their advantage until it becomes commonly accepted that men are not merely dogs in heat and have no right to act that way? I don't have a good answer to that, but it is a critical question. It's very easy for me – a woman living in New York who can ride a crowded subway with a reasonable expectation that no one will grab my boobs, and if he does, he will be punished for it – to say that I don't like single-sex public transportation. It does appear that the Mexico City government is attempting to educate the public and enforcing laws against harassment at the same time they are phasing in single-sex buses and discriminating against men by refusing to let them ride certain buses. On the other hand, by calling it "positive discrimination that responds to the demands of women," as the director of the Institute of Women in Mexico City describes the single-sex bus system, I'm not sure it will do anything but make the men who embrace their inner animal even angrier while punishing the men who act like, well, humans.

For other thoughts on single-sex solutions to public transit harassment problems, check out:

Suzanne also blogs at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants and has witnessed various degrees of disturbing behavior while riding public transportation in cities across America