Woman’s Interpretive Dance Protests Subway Ejaculation [Video]

So a guy just ejaculated on you in the subway. Who hasn’t been there, right? Kidding aside, one woman’s solution to the problem was simple: Interpretive dance.

It all started on August 4, 2011. Ellie Cosgrave was just hopping the train to work, and found herself “arse to groin” in an uncomfortably packed tube. A man standing behind her became aroused, and though she felt movement behind her, she didn’t think anything of it, hoping that the man had the decency to be embarrassed and would adjust himself at the next stop.

She ignored the strange looks she was getting and jumped off at her stop. When she got to work, she realized that the man had actually ejaculated on her.

Cosgrave explained in a lengthy blog post that she more or less ignored what had happened at the time, because she’d had experience with sexual harassment and assault in the past. But for International Women’s Day this year (it fell on March 8) she decided to deal with the assault by returning to the same tube station an performing an interpretive dance.

She explains her reasoning thus:

“Individual stories might not seem that traumatic, but when you live with it, or the fear of it, every day of your life, it becomes stressful and overwhelming. Let’s talk about this stuff openly, only then can we truly understand it and begin to make a change.”

So Why Is Her Story Just Now Trending?

Mostly because of a misleading title on Reddit. Cosgrave’s otherwise impressive and inspiring answer to sexual assault is front page news on the viral sharing site because community user ripscarspitstar posted the video under the title “Man ejaculates on woman on the London Underground, she responds with interpretative dance routine.”

Which gives, you know, a different impression of the story.

Many in the Reddit community feel pretty gypped by the whole thing, too.

“I thought in the video she was going to be ejaculated on and she bust out a sick dance immediately after he did it. Title got my hopes up,” wrote one user.

“In all fairness there is no way a video could live up to the title unless it was staged. This is one of the better headline titles I have read here. It reads like an Onion headline. It’s perfectly absurd. I am not going to ruin the headline by watching this. I will learn from you,” says another.

But it’s an important story that doesn’t need to be so easily ignored. Maybe ripscarspitstar posted it with just that in mind: Get your click and teach you something. I’m not sure, but I encourage you to watch the video and read Cosgrave’s blog post about being ejaculated on in the subway and responding with interpretive dance, and make up your own mind.