a response more than 20 years in the making

Like virtually every other fat person on the planet, I am the occasional target of fat-related street harassment.  Sorry to burst the bubble of anyone who thinks that someone like me, what with the activism and the working against embodiment-based bias of all kinds, is magically immune to this.  Sadly, I’m not.

So earlier today I was walking down the street of my small north-central Massachusetts town with my dog, on my way to the post office, and the driver of a pickup truck stopped at an intersection rolled down his window as I walked past his truck and bellowed “Hey, ugly fat bitch!  I hope you die!”

I turned around just as he sped off with a squeal of rubber and a belch of exhaust, and did not even see his face, and had two simultaneous thoughts.

One was “I see you’ve chosen this special time to be an asshole in public.”

The other was “Don’t worry, eventually you will get your wish, and I will die.  And so will you.”

In another half-second or so the dog and I were continuing on our merry way, and my only lingering reaction was to shake my head and think that really, I kinda feel sorry for people who live in brains where there’s so much free-floating hatred and loathing that it bubbles over and runs right out their mouth like that without them having any apparent ability to control it, but they still need to learn some damn manners.

It was another half mile or so before it dawned on me that this was an awfully long way from the kinds of reactions I might’ve had to similar situations years ago.

I didn’t take it personally.  I didn’t take it seriously.  I didn’t feel threatened or endangered.  I barely stopped walking.  Even though it was definitely a toxic spill on Pickup Truck Guy’s part, I didn’t actually feel like I’d been slimed.

I just heard it for what it was — essentially a big loud fart from a gigantic uncontrolled ass — and carried on.  I didn’t take any of it on myself, I didn’t make any excuses for the person who’d behaved badly, I didn’t assume that Pickup Truck Guy would’ve behaved differently if only I were thinner… I just let it evaporate, as all farts will.

It felt remarkably good to realize that I was unruffled.   Not invulnerable, certainly.  (I wish I ever felt invulnerable!)  I simply felt unruffled.  Which is as it should be, I suspect.   I have not asked Miss Manners about this, but I suspect that a big loud fart from a gigantic uncontrolled ass is not something that should ruffle one.  I mean, there are just some things that one does not stoop to notice.

You’ll forgive me for congratulating myself, I hope.  It’s just that I’m pleased for my own sake that it seems that at least sometimes, that’s the kind of response I spontaneously have to this sort of thing.  It’s a response that was easily 20 years in the making.  Maybe more like 30-plus.

Like many people I know, I got teased as a kid for a lot of things, and I started learning to cope with it then and there simply because I had to.  With time and age and a bit of perspective, it got easier to recognize that most of the teasing, most of the bullying that came my way was actually not about me, it was about the person dishing it out.   Fear, misplaced or merely tactically rerouted anger or resentment, frustration, whatever it might be, sneaking out in the form of an attack on a stranger.

It’s ugly, yes, that urge to attack others.  It is also deeply human, so far as I can tell.

This doesn’t make it right to give in to the urge.  I can feel some compassion about the urge itself and still not condone people letting it lead them to behave badly.

I recognize similar impulses in myself, and though I do my best not to let them lead me to behave badly, I know I’m not perfect.  (And so does everyone who’s ever been in the car with me in heavy traffic.)

Recognizing the impulse, though, lets me recognize how impersonal it is.  I know exactly how much it isn’t about the person I’m hurling four-letter words at in traffic because I’m running late and I’m anxious so now it gets to be their fault…

It wasn’t really anything to do with me, in other words, that Pickup Truck Guy decided the time had come for him to vent his obviously considerable spleen.

It wasn’t my fault.  It wasn’t my responsibility.  It was just another person behaving badly.

They do that sometimes.  Oh well.