According to the NYT article, this guy started doing this when he was a teen because he saw someone else doing it and that the guy *got away with it.*

So I guess he figured, “H*ll, why not?”

What I find most telling was that what the turning point was that he would not be punished. He, presumably, would not be doing this unless he *wanted to,* and what stopped him before wasn’t that it was demeaning to his victims, or frightening to them, but that he thought he would be *punished.*

Talk about “feelings of privilege.”

p.s.: I really have no sympathy about the job prospects, if he is having trouble keeping work.

Hoyt believes that if he and Nguyen [the woman he flashed and masturbated at in the subway] had only met under different circumstances, she might really like him. “You know, she’d go, ‘That guy’s pretty cool. He’s got this restaurant, and he’s fun,’ ” Hoyt says. “She’d probably want to go out with me.”

As you said, he may have gotten the message that he’ll be in legal trouble if he does something like this again, but he certainly has not gotten the message that what he did was wrong. Or why it was wrong.

It took me years to be comfortable riding public transportation, after two men, by their dress, independently of each other, decided to assault me. One rubbed against me from behind, while the other reached his hand up my skirt and raped me. This was on a subway during rush hour.

I was too shocked by the whole thing to say a word, and unable to push away from them through the crowd.

Yeah, life in prison seems a bit much (and highly unlikely when you look at rapists’ prison sentences), but how about a little more than a slap on the wrist for guys who think it’s okay to touch, grope, rub up on and ejaculate onto anyone who dares to ride the subway while female.

At 53 arrests, I think this guy’s behavior qualifies as pathological. While I sympathize with the sentiments expressed above, let’s try to keep in mind that this guy is probably mentally ill,

What if he had demonstrated other pathological behavior? This guy gets off on humiliating and dominating women. That is the motivating factor in his behavior. So what if he committed more violent acts of humiliation and domination, like rape? If he had committed 53 counts of rape, I guarantee that no one would be dismissing him as mentally ill.

Since no one is allegedly hurt by his behavior and since his behavior is merely weird, he’s mentally ill. No, sorry. Too many men in this society enjoy humiliating and dominating women. It’s not mental illness.

I’m not even saying he should be committed, just evaluated. It seems odd to me that he could rack up this many arrests and not have anyone question his mental state. Like it’s so normal for a man to be assaulting women on the subway that there’s no possible way that someone doing it so compulsively could be mentally ill.

If I remember correctly, the standard for commitment in NYC is some kind of disconnect from reality that poses a clear danger to self or others. So even if you got an evaluation of mental state, how many judges are there (not that that’s necessarily a good thing) who would be willing to put a man in indefinite confinement because he thinks there’s nothing wrong with rubbing himself against women on the subway?

This makes me think of those cases where they trank bears and other wild animals that have become too much of a nuisance to humans and release them hundreds of miles from where the problem occurred. Maybe this guy should be confined to a region without mass transit.

That’s my question — after arrest #30 or #40, wouldn’t a sensible judge send the guy to Bellevue for a 72-hour hold and evaluation? (It’s 72 hours here in California — not sure what the involuntary mental health hold is in New York.) It seems pretty bizarre that they could get to 50+ arrests for the same offense and no one has even considered having his mental state evaluated.

You’d have to be a pervert to…oh, wait…