Attention Seeking

[ahunter3]

I have been told that people like me, who present gender in atypical ways, are attention whores. "You can just be whoever you are. No one's questioning that", they say, (contradicting my experience, because some people definitely question that). "But by dressing the way you are, you're drawing attention to yourself, so as far as I'm concerned,

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

I was physically assaulted a month ago on 14th street while wearing an orange skirt.

I am very sorry this happened to you.

Do you think you were attacked because you were wearing the skirt?

Was the person who attacked you a bully or a crazy person?

I will say the obvious, which is that women live with the possibility that they may be attacked at any second and for no real reason-except possibly the attacker's perception that women are "weak"-and that one of the ways some women deal with that is to tone down the femininity when they're in a public space. But I'm not suggesting that as a strategy for you, of course.

[ahunter3]

Thanks.

The event was described at the bottom of this previous blog post: https://ahunter3.livejournal.com/61888.html

I don't know if it was because I was wearing a skirt or *not*. Unless they say so, all a person can do is guess... but it's the first time in a long long time that I've been physically attacked. The person doing it did seem kind of weird (insisting that he had never hit me while in the process of hitting me).

And yeah, I'm in agreement with you. We adjust our behaviors like that but it isn't incumbent upon us to do so.