gender relations, as observed in the metro

Now, most of my time here I spend with one of three groups of people: (1) the other American students in the program, (2) my host family, or (3) the girls from church and/or Cru. While this is awesome and very comfortable for me, it means that I don’t get a lot of time to observe standard, “normal” interactions between Russian men and Russian women. The time I do get for such an activity is pretty much exclusively in the metro. Here’s what I’ve gleaned:

1. chivalry lives. Yes, I sometimes have to stand in the metro. That’s fine. But I’ve very rarely seen an older woman standing, and, in fact, it’s uncommon to see many women at all standing if there are men sitting down. And if there is a group of Russian men and women travelling together, it is very normal for the men to let the women sit, and then stand in front of them, even if the metro is empty enough that they too could sit. (Note: this is immensely helpful to conversation.)
2. so does physical affection. The metro feels so very public to me—it’s strange to see couples cuddling for the duration of five stops on the metro line and apparently oblivious to the masses of society around them. And then there’s the escalator. In the course of riding from the bottom to the top, I once counted four couples making out on the escalator opposite me.
3. flowers are very serious business. I have actually gathered this other places, but it’s especially clear in the metro. Most metro stations in the city have at least one flower shop directly outside. Usually, it’s a 24-hour flower shop (who buys flowers at 3am, please tell me). On “International Women’s Day” (which is apparently not quite international to have made its way to America?), about 70% of the women I saw in the metro were carrying flowers they’d been given. That’s a lot of flowers.
4. why stop a woman? Considering the proportion of women-men in this country (I’ve heard as high as 3-1), the proportion of women-men who get “randomly” stopped and searched by the police in the metro is very very very low. I’d guess 1-8, at least. This is probably because…
5. women are automatically less sketchy than men. It’s not very common, but you will see people begging in the metro. Maybe this is not solely due to gender, but Russians are much more likely to give money to the babushka with an icon in a tupperware container or even the young woman sitting on a pillow than to the old man with a sign asking for help to buy medicine.

I probably could have included a point about the way people here dress, but (a) a list of 5 points is about 200% better than a list of 6, and (b) you definitely don’t need to go into the metro to notice something about that.