Woman stops sexist, abusive behavior (literally) in its tracks

BBCYou don't see this every day. Not the fact that a woman got off a train and stood on the tracks, but the fact that someone stood up so vocally and publicly to sexist, abusive behavior when others shrug it off.

That's basically what Lisa Robinson did when she and her husband and 5-year-old son were aboard a train and she told a rowdy group of football (soccer) fans to stop verbally abusing another woman passenger with obscene, sexist remarks. When they turned to heap verbal abuse on Robinson, she signaled for the train to stop and for a conductor to notify the police about the crowd's behavior. The train's conductor merely reset the handle and restarted the train.

"That's when I decided to slither down from the train on the tracks and stop it from going any further," Robinson says in the video accompanying this BBC piece. That's right, at the next station, she got off the train and stood on the tracks blocking the train until the police were called. The 30-or-so vociferous football fans got off and hoofed it from there. But the train company is awfully apologetic after the fact and is investigating with the British Transport Police, which also stated after the fact that the fans' behavior is not tolerated on trains.

Robinson's move may have been extreme, but when abusive behavior like the kind she encountered is increasingly shrugged off as a boys-will-be-boys, can't-you-take-a-joke incident, it's kind of cool to see a mom stand up in front of her 5-year-old son and say: This is not an acceptable way for men to treat women.

Couple this story with this look inside the Sam Zell-inspired culture at the once renowned Chicago Tribune by The New York Times, and you have to wonder, what the hey is happening??

"Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. (Randy) Michaels's and his executives' use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk."

They even changed the company handbook to say things like: "Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use," the new handbook warned. "You might experience an attitude you don't share. You might hear a joke that you don't consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process." It then added, "This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment."

It's an amazing, devastatingly sad read when you consider that 4,200 people lost jobs while these "fun" culture-changing guys reaped millions in bonuses as the paper plummeted into bankruptcy.

I could go on, but I'd rather think about Lisa Robinson standing up against one instance of sexist abuse, and hope she inspires us all.