Objects in Rear-Facing Camera/Mirror Are Farther Than They Appear

 On the insidious creeping plague of strangers who think I should care about their opinion of my appearance and gender presentation

Twice in four days this week, a complete stranger followed me into a parking lot and screamed slurs at me over nothing.

I've written about this before, but I need to write something more complete. Not because these two incidents were unusual for me. Because they weren't. This has been happening my whole life, and I'm tired of treating each one like a weird one-off.

Saturday: Farmer Joe's

I exited 580 at 35th Ave, turned left from the left lane, then moved to the right lane to turn into the Farmer Joe's lot. The black Tesla in front of me stopped suddenly as I positioned myself on the right side of the lane. He sat there for about 30 seconds, with more than a car length of open road ahead of him. Then he put his blinker on and turned in.

He took the first open space. I drove around and parked a couple of spaces deeper, on the other side.

I hadn't even put my car in park when he was standing outside my closed passenger window, screaming "CUNT" at me. A woman in the lot called out right away: "That's not cool, what is wrong with you?"

I got out anyway. Probably a mistake. He kept going at full volume: every misogynist slur you can think of. I walked quickly toward the store, because there's usually a security guard at the door. He followed, walking sideways next to me, screaming about my driving, the speed limit, and everything under the sun.

I looked at him and said, "This is very undignified. Why are you screaming?"

I told him I wasn't speeding. He said I'd been 12 inches from his bumper and he had it all recorded. I said, "So call the police."

Then he accused me of following him, stalking him, and getting in his face. This from the man who had just screamed slurs at a stranger's car window.

The woman from the lot brought the security guard over, who told us both to just not talk to each other. By then the man had disappeared somewhere. I doubt he ever meant to shop there. I think he was looking for a reason to make a scene.

I'm 5'10", and he was smaller than me. I honestly had the feeling he was hoping for a fistfight.

I drive a 4Runner. It sits higher than a Tesla. I've had bigger vehicles than mine move in behind me plenty of times, and somehow I've managed not to take it personally.

Tuesday: Pet Food Express on Piedmont

I was leaving Sprouts on Broadway in Oakland, headed to Pet Food Express on Piedmont. I turned left onto Broadway and changed lanes to the right for the turn onto Piedmont. I did it safely: no speeding, no tailgating, no gestures, no flashing headlights. There was at least a car length between us at the turn.

After the turn, the driver in front of me started swerving and braking erratically. It was raining, so I assumed she'd dropped something or couldn't see well. I left more than two car lengths. At the red light she moved to the right lane and I went ahead. Then she pulled out and came up behind me. When the light changed I drove on (Piedmont is 20 mph) and turned into the Pet Food Express lot.

She followed me in and pulled up right behind my car, blocking me in. She rolled down all her windows and started shouting at the top of her lungs.

She didn't say a word about the lane change. She went straight for the stickers on my back window. "What do you think you were doing? Trying to run me off the road? What's with your sparkly rainbow?" And then, over and over: "FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT!"

The "sparkly rainbow" is a row of six tiny cat stickers, each about 2.5 inches tall, each a different color, each in a different pose. Over the years people have told me they're cute. One guy thought they were Grateful Dead bears.

She was loud enough that people came out of the pet store and the businesses next door to see what was going on. I locked my car and walked around the back of it toward the store. As I did, she tried to back her car into me. This was up close, just like the man at Farmer Joe's looking for a fistfight. The only thing I said back was, "You don't even know what that means!"

This isn't new

This started when I was a kid. Strangers would walk up and tell me, "What a shame, you'd be so pretty if it wasn't for your nose" (or chin, or face, or whatever they picked that day). Adults said that to a child.

As an adult, it's mostly "faggot," yelled at me from cars and sidewalks. Men walk up and feel entitled to ask, "Are you a woman or really a man?" I've been asked to leave women's bathrooms, in San Francisco, for supposedly being trans.

And it hasn't always stayed verbal:

• 2002. On 9th Street between Folsom and Howard in San Francisco, half a block from AsiaSF, four guys decided I was trans. They tripped me, and once I was on the ground they started kicking me, asking each other, "Dude, is that a dude, dude?" It could easily have ended with a broken jaw if one of them hadn't suddenly realized, "Dude, it's not a dude," and pulled me up by the hand. Then the ringleader had the nerve to ask me, "So what are you? A man or a woman?" I tried to slap him, but I was shaking too hard. I ran all the way to Market Street, got on the train, and went to my friends' house as planned, where they fed me cocktails and I slept on their sofa. I was lucky to get away with just a torn meniscus in my right knee.
• Safeway, Oakland, about five years ago. I was in my textile motorcycle jacket and pants. A woman ran at me with her metal shopping cart and rammed me into an open freezer door, then ran off. Later she came looking for me in the checkout line and tried to hit me again, screaming, "You're a lady trying to be a man!"
• 18th & Castro, San Francisco. I was waiting to cross with two friends, standing just behind them, off to the side of the crosswalk, in my riding gear with my helmet in a messenger bag. There was plenty of room to wait. A man shorter than me walked up anyway and started shoving me, deliberately trying to force his way between me and my friends: "You big fucking dyke, you're taking up too much space." My friends didn't even notice. I told him to stop touching me and back off. Three men nearby heard it and shamed him until he ran off into traffic.
• MacArthur Blvd, Oakland. I was walking my bike to the post office, steering with my right hand and holding a box to ship in my left arm. I was in the middle of the crosswalk, in morning light. A driver coming down Maybelle ran the stop sign and rolled right into my leg. He wasn't even looking forward; he was looking to his left and never stopped. I yelled "Hey!" but he wasn't looking or listening. Then he parked, got out, and screamed at me, "You don't touch a man's car!" With my bike and box on the ground, he chest-bumped me backward into oncoming traffic on MacArthur. He was about 6'6" and 350 pounds. Apparently it was my fault that he ran a stop sign without looking. The men inside Kragen Auto Parts heard him yelling and watched through the window. Not one came out.
• MacArthur at Maple, Oakland, 2020. I was driving home and approaching a red light where cars were already stopped. The driver behind me crossed the double yellow into oncoming traffic to pass me on the left, then cut to the far right lane, but couldn't turn because of traffic on Maple. I hadn't pulled all the way up; I'd left about two car lengths. For some reason that insulted them. The driver got out of the car with a handgun tucked in their pants, showing it, and kept saying, "Come on! Come on! Fight me!" I didn't make eye contact, didn't say a word, and drove off the moment the light changed.
• Franklin Street, August 2021. I was finishing crossing the street from my parking space. There were no other pedestrians and no other cars. A young Black man in an unusually big pickup with a lift kit (not the kind of truck you usually see in Oakland) turned right onto Franklin, where he had three driving lanes all to himself, just to yell at me that I had a "flat ass." I told him, "I don't care what you think." That made him furious. He threw the truck in reverse and kept shouting at me, and I kept saying, "Your opinion doesn't matter. I don't care what you think." The young Black woman in his passenger seat screamed and laughed, and threw her drink, ice and all, toward me as I walked up to people eating in a parklet. All I could think was: run, girl, you're next.
• On my bicycle, more times than I can count. Drivers swerve at me and throw things out their windows: water bottles, cups with their drinks and ice. Riding up Redwood Road, with two lanes and only one in use, someone yelled, "Get a job and pay some taxes!" Once, riding on MacArthur, I passed a line of cars stopped at the red light at High Street and went up on the curb to make my right turn onto High, because there's an awkward bulb-out there and the first car had no turn signal on. I never touched her car or interacted with her in any way. The woman driving one of those cars came after me anyway, down High Street, swerving around other people to get close enough to scream at me, and threw her iced coffee at me.
• My own street. A man I kept seeing in my neighborhood would swerve at me while I was on my bike. He drove up onto the sidewalk to do it, and once went around the whole block just to come back and swerve at me again. I finally got his license plate and called the police. Neighbors told me he was a regular speeder on our block. I never saw him again.

I've tried to find a pattern, and there isn't one, unless I'm just cursed. Mostly men, and mostly white men, though some women too. Young and old, drivers and pedestrians, people who seem unwell and people performing for their friends. I've been wearing a dress, motorcycle gear, bike shorts and a cycling jersey with cats on it, a T-shirt and cords on my way to work. None of these people knew a single thing about me. They looked at me, decided I was something they were allowed to attack, and acted on it. The insult changes. The entitlement doesn't.

It doesn't matter if I'm (not) trans

I'm a queer woman, and I'm not trans. But I've been knocked to the ground and kicked by a group of four men, shoved toward traffic, rammed with a shopping cart, and screamed at for being trans more times than I can count. When people talk about this, women like me usually get mentioned in passing, as allies who sometimes catch some of the heat. But none of the people who attacked me knew or cared whether I was an ally. They weren't reacting to my politics. They decided I was trans and that this made me fair game.

That's how this kind of hatred works: it doesn't check. It lands on whoever doesn't match a stranger's idea of what a woman should look like. Trans people carry the worst of it, and I'm not here to compare scars.

And this isn't about pronouns or etiquette. If someone misgenders me by mistake, fine. I'll correct them and move on. What's unreasonable is a complete stranger calling me a faggot, demanding to know if I'm "really a man," or telling me I don't belong in the women's bathroom, when I've done nothing to them and pose no threat to anyone. People are being verbally and physically assaulted in public, in some of the most "accepting" cities in the country. It reaches further than people think, and it's everyone's problem.

It doesn't matter if I'm (she/they/he)

I don't care what pronouns people use for me. That was never the point. I'm not trying to make a statement about gender in either direction. I wear T-shirts, joggers, shorts, and hoodies. I just don't care, and I don't take the time or trouble to conform. Honestly, I don't think about gender much at all. I get accused of being too logical and too sensitive at the same time, which tells me the whole thing is mostly made up anyway.

What I can't get past is this: a woman driving to the grocery store, or biking to work, or waiting at a crosswalk, gets screamed at, shoved, kicked, or rammed with a cart, by people who have never met her. Every time, the stranger seems completely sure they're the one who was wronged. A lane change becomes "stalking." Six cat stickers become a reason to block someone in, scream slurs at her, and try to back a car into her.

It doesn't matter whether I'm trans or not. It's none of your business. And if someone is trans, it's still none of your business. When a person is just minding their own business, there's no cause for any of this. Even the car incidents would have been an overreaction if I'd rear-ended both of those drivers, and I didn't.

What it really comes down to is people making their own insecurities and poor mental health someone else's problem. It isn't my problem. I don't care what you think. Leave me alone.