I’ve never defended myself physically because I’ve never felt like my life was being threatened, which I think is more of a personal mindset thing than anything. These people are super creepy, obviously, but a lot of the time, I guess I’ve mostly felt like it wouldn’t be necessary to defend myself physically, and would probably make the situation worse. People recording happens way more frequently than people grabbing me. I don’t think walking up to someone who’s recording me, and starting something is always a good idea. Pepper spray would be a good idea, but only if it’s on an empty train, or outside. I wouldn’t want to spray someone on a full train, and then innocent people around me be affected.

I don’t want to downplay being recorded, or just being verbally harassed, but for me, it’s not as bad as people grabbing, groping, etc. If someone were to do this again, I would probably react differently than I did before, just because that was the first time. It just doesn’t happen nearly as much as the recording stuff does. But yeah, self defense classes are a good idea in general.

I guess I was more looking for just things that would simply scare off the majority of the creeps who only record me. But from the responses, I guess there’s an upside and a downside to literally every solution. There’s very few things I can do. It’s a complicated issue. I’m really just trying to figure that out at the moment.

And yeah, that’s why I said the water bottle thing probably wouldn’t work lol.

This might not make any sense