Fear

Adults terrify me. adults are relentlessly threatening to me. my peers or younger kids i can handle, but adults are a different kettle of fish. They are society at its finest; they are fully grown. As kids you are always told that adults know best. That adults are right, and that they know their right from wrong. They are sure of themselves and the way of the world. They have grown up and out of childishness, closed mindedness and the pettiness of bullying.why, then, is it alright for adults to shout dyke at me in the street? It says that they know that this is okay, because they are adults and they do so very freely, without hesitation, with so much anger and disdain in their eyes and across their face.  Whats worse is that it happens in public, and my peers, and more worryingly so, those younger than me are seeing this and how i react to it. I ignore it of course, like i do with most things i laugh it off or rise above it, but the simple fact is, i was happily minding my own business when someone atleast twenty years my senior was so disgusted by my existence they felt the need to shout at me. i hate confrontation, and believe it or not i do hate to be singled out, but most of all i hate to be victimized. Dyke is an awful word, and its a rare form of insult, its as though it is tailored to hurt just me, or atleast, a very very small minority group. But everyone in the highstreet can see that i am a young female woman, and he is an older, adult male ,showing all too public aggression. In that situation other males normally step in and act protective of me. that is comforting, to know i would be safe when out alone, especially when the incident happened in broad daylight. but men only ever protect me when i#m wearing a dress, which is something else which terrifies me about the world. Am i only worth saving if I am attractive? Its like when ‘ugly’ women are raped and people care less, or ‘slutty ’ girls are raped and people say its their fault. Is it my fault then, for getting shouted at? just because I am wearing male clothing? Well its a free country, these are my streets too, and what is even more sickening to me is that the same man that shouted might have held a door open for me had I still wore my hair long. The fact that he was my senior, and that absolutely no one asked me if I was okay afterwards all implies shouting at me is something that is right, and by logic, I myself am something very wrong.  but i am not a thing, I am a person, and I had to remind myself of that a lot more than i normally have to on that day. This is why I hate people.