...As a topical follow-up, I just confirmed with my wife her Seattle bus experiences, and discovered a few points: * She has seen issues, but "only" had a few

...As a topical follow-up, I just confirmed with my wife her Seattle bus experiences, and discovered a few points: * She has seen issues, but "only" had a few herself. "I'm not pretty enough to be harassed" is a crushing one sentence summary of the existence of harassment, the objectification of women, and what we've done to womens' self-confidence. * She reminded me of an issue I was present for - a guy was loudly declaring how horrible women (he used a number of other terms too) were. For me it was just extremely awkward, and I never registered how a woman would feel about her safety in the future after seeing that. My wife said that she wasn't afraid at the time, because I was present and several other men on the bus were telling him to sit down and shut up, but that she would definitely be influenced by this if she were boarding a bus that was only lightly occupied. This tells me how much men miss about the atmosphere for women even when present. * She mentioned that she usually doesn't take the bus downtown when traveling alone anymore because of regularly feeling too tense when she did. I hadn't really registered that. (in my partial defense, doing this when alone meant I wasn't around to see it, but it still seems a huge thing for me to miss). * She validates that some routes are more problematic than others. Heading to Harborview is worse than heading to Convention Place, as an example.