i know i’m not inventing the wheel by acknowledging and complaining about being slut shamed/micro-aggressions in public (if it would even be considered one of those, and regardless of whether it was just a drunk girl being “cheeky”/uninhibited), and nothing ended up happening so it’s not a big deal, but i have a bunch of racing thoughts that i just need to get out bc I’ve only started experiencing these types of incidents the past few months it feels (sorry about the length, this is more a braindump vent-post than a succinct-&-clear-headed-post, and i repeat myself attempting to find the right wording several times. you’ve been forewarned :p ):

tl;dr i got very mildly slut shamed in public tonight, by another woman, and really felt for the first time how even something as seemingly insignificant as that can drastically change how safe you feel depending on the context

2tl;2dr woman experiences sexism or misogyny, many such cases (but she’s still a little shook anyways 😪)

Context of what happened: it’s winter here but tonight it was in the 50s. I was downtown for something else and decided i’d go for a walk along the city’s main stretch with all the bars and the local college campus. it was pretty busy so i figured it would be good practice getting exposure to a situation i’m not as used to anymore: walking alone at night in busy locations, in this case one where drunk people are likely to be. since i’d just been running an errand i was only wearing a black hoodie, shorts, and boots. i hadn’t been downtown in a while, especially alone since transitioning, and i don’t drink anymore, so i was surprised by the large pickups with like 4 guys each driving up and down the street revving engines and yelling at other cars and people walking, and groups of guys look/feel so much more intimidating at night to me now so i was staying aware of my surroundings and had pepper spray on me.

Near the end of my walk I stopped to text someone on a side street when suddenly i heard some snow thud about 20 feet from me. I just stood there looking around, no idea where it could’ve fallen from, looked back at my phone, and another one hit maybe 6-10 feet from me. I looked up and saw someone’s outline duck down on the top of a parking ramp when I heard a guy up there start apologizing to me, say “you’re actually pretty cool” and keep apologizing. I say it’s fine and walk off. That was weird but laugh it off. I’m already almost done with my walk anyway when not two minutes later, half a block from my car, i hear a woman yell from approximately half a block behind me “It’s winter out, put some clothes on!” (yes these are the load-bearing 7-8 words holding up this whole post lol) In the moment i just threw up a peace sign without turning around and kept walking. The irony of nearly finishing a walk that had a partial purpose of getting exposure to and feeling safer/confident in that kind of scenario ending with a woman being the source of my safety feeling compromised was not lost on me 🫠

My thoughts/reactions, No specific order:

• All of the following thoughts feel overdramatic, non-generalizable, &/or possibly irrelevant because I can’t know for sure if “she was just teasing me for not dressing warmer but was drunk so it came off crass” or instead “she was using a joke about the weather and feigning care by telling me to dress warmer when the subtext was her calling me a slut for wearing too short of shorts during “winter”, i.e. 52 degrees downtown by all the bars on a Saturday…”.
• Yet I don’t need a why explanation for why she would do this, i’m old enough and have read enough to know it’s not anything inherently about me that triggered or caused it
• the dynamics of doing something even as seemingly trivial as this are so fucked regardless when you’re on the receiving end, which i understood in theory but hadn’t experienced directed at me while I’m alone in public in practice before… i’m usually pretty discerning and stay aware of my surroundings in public, so often i already avoid locations or situations like busy bar streets if i have no reason to be there. i used to go out -sober or drinking- all the time and would never feel unsafe unless some kind of fight happened to break out. walking alone at night was rarely if ever something i gave a second thought to, and i knew that was something i’d be giving up when transitioning. i was never especially imposing, instead simply comfortable and confident navigating public spaces.
• i do still feel pretty comfortable and confident navigating public spaces as long as I lock in, but now i’m realizing my body has changed enough that it’s considered “worthy”/in-need of policing if it’s not wearing whatever someone else deems the “correct” or “preferred” attire for it; for someone to go out of their way to comment on it even when they have to yell in front of a crowd of strangers to do so. i can no longer exist in them while maintaining a reasonable assumption that i’ll be left to my own devices
• knowing theory and that it’s not a flaw within me or even something i did (“should i have worn different pants…?”) doesn’t make the situation less scary while in it. i kept my cool and didn’t necessarily feel fear, but became acutely aware that the dynamic suddenly changed for me when she singled me out like that regardless of her reason or intent. It felt incredibly unfair when I’d done literally nothing other than exist in public dressed a way she deemed imprudence worthy of shaming via a micro spectacle
• knowing “women’s bodies” are policed “by society” is entirely different as a felt experience of “my body” being policed by “that woman and anybody with her potentially capable of and willing to hurt me if i speak up” than a written-about one (i don’t believe there was any transphobia in the comment and therefore the potential for violence emanating from that potential “revelation” is purely hypothetical on my part here; i personally took this as a form of sexism/misogyny rather than transphobia/transmisogyny, but unproveable regardless)
• doing this had the potential to immediately draw the attention of easily like 40-50 strangers or more to me who were in earshot or eyesight
• lots of those strangers were large men walking around in groups of only men, men shouting and whistling at passersby and other cars from loud large trucks, and this is a decidedly “purple” area at best…
• in the process of shaming me to be modest, that woman drew direct attention to a specific part of my body (my legs), sexualized that attention by insinuating they were currently unclothed and i was being immodest, all in the presence of presumably a number of drunken men when I was alone
• i can’t talk back bc i have a deep voice and can’t project without sounding very male, which i hate doing even when safety isn’t a factor
• all of this could be me catastrophizing but at the same time, that woman put me in this situation/mental space by shaming me loudly in public simply for wearing shorts when it was 52 degrees… thereby compromising a fellow woman’s sense of safety and peace of mind who was minding her own business
• i’m not sure how much of this i’m feeling vs intellectualizing or both, but the cause wasn’t me wearing a certain length of shorts. it was the sexism embedded in that woman’s brain, uncritically allowing it to bury in deep and damage both herself and others as it inevitably leaks back out. i’m glad i didn’t take it personally, but am upset at how insignificant yet unfair all this is over a pair of shorts and 7-8 spoken words >~< like i feel crazy and overdramatic now overthinking this so much when it literally lasted all of 10sec between her saying that and me turning a corner and being out of sight… yet now i’m home alone ruminating over it and she’s probably out having fun clubbing or getting laid by now >.<

she deemed my shorts an unacceptable length, and used that as a justification for designating me unclothed and immodest by telling me to “put some clothes on!” (implying i’m so un/underdressed that it justifies yelling about in public), and declaring a fellow woman unclothed and therefore culturally slut shaming her in front of rowdy, drunken groups of men while she was by herself at night in public. that’s the context that immediately swept over my brain in the split moment between her yelling at me and me turning that corner. it feels like i’m reading into it and taking waaaayyy too much from it, yet all of this has followed since it happened anyways and that was hours ago now.

(*disclaimer: don’t quote me verbatim on any of this lolll)