Patronising me to Death

The bus is a dangerous place for me. It's not unusual for me to be the recipient of a great deal of inappropriate behaviour aimed my direction because I'm disabled/transgender/a woman. I've had everything from people blatantly mocking my disability to asking me about my sex life out of the blue, to yelling slurs, to trying to buy sex, to following me off of the bus with intent to rape me. The list goes on. I'm not here to talk about any of those things today. Today I want to talk about what happens when people want to be "nice" to me and end up putting me in jeopardy.

I'll give you an example: Tonight somebody, after watching me convulse for a few minutes, caught my eye and winked at me.

Here's the thing: when someone pays attention to me in that way, when someone is unusually friendly towards me, when someone is patronising, I don't know what their intentions are. I don't know if they've just had a good day and are feeling like being very friendly to people around them. I don't know if they think I'm cute and just want to innocently let me know they find me attractive. More troubling, I don't know if they're interpreting my disability as cognitive disability, insanity, generalised "speshulness," or other some such category of people whom they like to look down on and feel that it would be a good idea to patronise me to make me feel good about myself.

More importantly: I don't know if they're a predator looking at me as a vulnerable person to take advantage of and potentially rape. It has happened, I have had people follow me off the bus, or try to follow me off the bus several times. Another time, I was almost raped by a predator who picked me up while riding the bus and followed me off. This is a very serious issue for myself and people like myself.

It doesn't matter if you're a good guy, I have no way of knowing you're a decent person. So yes, this does apply to you, too.

When someone winks at me, or pays excess attention to me, or keeps smiling at me, whatever: they make it more difficult for me to protect myself. I don't know when it's safe for me to get off the bus. I don't know if I need to feign an earlier bus stop and transfer buses or double back in order to keep a predator from knowing where I live. I don't know if someone wants to rape me or just thinks I'm oh so adorable. Add on to al of this the fact that I'm autistic. It makes it hard for me to spot the actual predators, the actual people who want to do me harm (and people do want to do me harm). It overwhelms me and forces me to overlook real danger just to be able to get though my day.

Patronisation removes my ability to assess me social environment and in doing so it removes my ability look out for my own safety and defend myself. This hurts me and causes me real harm.

STOP IT!

ps: it's condescending and insulting as well.