Not All Women

[ayun]

There used to be a dive-y bar on the outskirts of Central Square that I didn't like to walk past. It wasn't a dive bar like the ones my friends and I liked, where the diviness was sort of cultivated and semi-ironic. It was a serious dive, for serious drinkers, and every time I passed it one of the patrons would say something to me that I didn't

Comments

[anonymous]

This is not a not-all-men defense, clearly it's enough men, and/or too many men

[rojagato]

Since my accident (and unable to competently apply makeup around the scars) I've been difficult to read, genderwise, on the street, so just get stares or a "Hey buddy, can you ... uh, nevermind." Actually, it's predated that, and I'm still threatened, a lot, by really drunk people. Not so much in Salem (small town, where I'm known), but when I'm downtown in Boston or Cambridge or in the evening in Dot when I don't look so much like the middle-aged lady I am

[silentq]

My first instinctual response was to say that I've never had a lot of cat calling, but now I'm wondering if I just forgot about it because it was never a surprise. I discount the calls from moving vehicles since I can never tell what they said anyway. The one time a man on the street tried to get me to smile I'd just been fired and I like to think that my glare withered a part of his soul.
Now I'm wondering if being short plays into the general lack of comments, we just sneak by under their lines of sight. :-) Granted androgynous dressing and a short hair cut probably help a whole lot as well as my middle aged lack of fucks to give.

I've been noticing that I've been getting bike-called now that I have a nicer bike, from male gear heads who are assuming that of course I need their opinions on my bike. Well, there was that one old guy who started to lecture me at a stop light... As a biker, I guess the comments tend to be more about my "right" to the road, either approving or disapproving.