What motivates a stranger to push a woman in public? That’s a question I’ve been stuck on this week after a man shoved me out of his way on an empty pedestrian street. I didn’t even see him coming – well, I wouldn’t have, as he came up from behind me.

I had walked in his path, he barked at me. “What path?” I thought, baffled, as I took in the huge expanse of empty pavement around us. I was so stupefied by the encounter that I found myself frozen to the spot, watching him walk away in his blue anorak and technical rucksack. He could have been any man from anywhere on his way to work.

As far as street harassment goes, many will have suffered far, far worse. But what made the incident uniquely disturbing was that it was the third similar encounter in as many months. In December, a man verbally harassed me on the tube as I went down an escalator – for walking “too slowly” this time.

Last week, I was peering into a........

© The Guardian