Japanese Men Object To Women-Only Railway Carriages

By Mike Buchanan: A piece in today’s Times:

They are supposed to be a safe haven in the rush hour, where women and girls can escape the “gropers” who haunt Japan’s trains. But women-only railway carriages are under assault from men who say that their human rights are being violated.
Women’s groups are calling for the provision of single-sex compartments to be written into law after protests by the Association Opposing Women-Only Carriages.
The men say that the carriages are discriminatory and imply that all men are potential sexual harassers.
Despite low crime rates in Japan, sexual assault is prevalent on public transport. In surveys, two in three young women have reported being groped. [BBC emphasis. Feminist BS.] The first women-only carriages were introduced in 2001. Polls show that three in four women and two in three men support the idea. Thirty-two railway companies now have women’s carriages on 87 individual lines.

There are no penalties for male passengers who ignore the notices, however, and police and station staff can only firmly ask them to leave. In Tokyo and Kyoto this year, trains were delayed by up to 15 minutes because of protests by men — a grave lapse by the standards of Japan’s punctual railways.
The association was founded in 2003 and claims to have 100 members. A spokesman, Hiroshi Fukuyama, said: “People say that all men are gropers, and that is a view created by the existence of these carriages.”
An online petition circulated by female activists calling for the single-sex carriages to be formalised in law has attracted 6,800 signatures.

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