The office was a fairly large one in Sydney’s western suburbs and Michelle was the receptionist. She was a very attractive Vietnamese girl who looked eighteen or nineteen, but was in fact twenty-two.
“Have you been flashed?”
I expected some sort of reaction, surprise or something, but got no reaction at all. She replied, matter-of-factly, that she hadn’t been flashed. We might have been talking about the weather.
“OK,” I said. “What if you were walking down the street tomorrow and someone flashed you. What would be your reaction?”
“Shock,” she said.
The answer came too easily, so I tried to pin it down and make sure it wasn’t just an off-hand remark.
“Women react differently,” I explained. “Some women laugh, some get angry, some are offended, some are shocked, some don’t really care one way or another…”
“No, I’d feel shock, because it came out of nowhere.”
“OK, then. Would your report the incident?”
She replied that she wouldn’t.
I must have looked a bit puzzled.
She explained, “I wouldn’t report it because he wasn’t doing anything to me.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “In fact the overwhelming women don’t report these things. Let’s move on…do you know that it is a criminal offence?”
She did.
“Do you think that it should be?”
“No,” she said. “That’s a bit too much.”
She added, “It should only be criminal if it harmed you.”
