As a fat, visually disabled queer femme person, there’s lots of reasons for people to yell/spit at me. None legitimate, of course, but plenty of reasons.
I usually get someone maybe monthly, but in the last week I have:
- had someone deliberately run into me then spit at me while calling me a “bent cripple”
- Had multiple honks, most telling me to smile, and when I flipped one off he decided to yell “fat bastard” until the traffic began moving
- Had several leering men on buses, including one who sat close and kept moving his hand to my thigh
Granted, I’ve had a lot on this week, daring to leave the house every day, if not multiple times, but I’m always pretty busy, yet this week has just felt like abuse after abuse.
People feel empowered to exhibit these behaviours lately.
But I’m still so grateful because most of this has come due to the increased anti immigrant and increased racism. I’m white, I’m only getting the increased hate that comes alongside normalising racism. (Liberation for one group cannot come without liberation for all – just look at the rabbit hole transphobes go down!)
We need allyship more than ever. We need to call out all micro aggressions and offhand comments. We need to hold ourselves to a higher account and recognise we are all racist, misogynistic etc., and it’s only a moral failing if we ignore this.
As liberals, we need to recognise it has to start with us. We need to call friends and family out, we need to call ourselves out.
It starts with us, because we need to stop going down this dangerous road.
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