Gender thoughts
Copy of a comment I left in my LJ. Saved for posterity.

For me, it's weird in that I can dress well and be confident, but then be placed in situations where my confident dress makes me more of a target. The most recent one (where I did feel unsafe) was at a police station. I was sitting in the room doing my job, getting I/O reports (basic police reports), while the all-male cops were arguing about a case. One cop was agitated at something else and grew increasingly so all the time I was here. By the time I was ready to leave, he was very close to yelling.

As I'm leaving, one cop says to me, joking, "Stick around ma'am. It's about to get interesting." I mumbled some kind of response and then got out of the room as fast as I could because I knew I was other and not welcome. Female other in what was a male fraternity moment, but also other as someone who looks to fit the butch lesbian stereotype (which is especially bad in the more gender-restrictive rural South).

All I remember thinking once I got in my car is that I was glad I hadn't made yesterday a sportcoat day.