Walking like a woman walking like a man.

This segment of This American Life really reminded me of the recent topic of women walking. There are a lot of generalizations, but it made me think about what it means to be feminine and masculine and how we perform gender whether we are concious of it or not.

I've been mistaken for a male a couple times - I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. The most poignant happened a few years ago while I was riding my bike home in the evening. A car full of 20-something year old guys pulled up behind me on the street, matched my speed and started yelling insults and variants of, 'Nice bike dude' lathered in sarcasm/hostility. It was very uncomfortable in that I wasn't sure if it would escalate into physical harm, and it was pretty clear they were drunk - which scared me for obvious reasons, being perched and unprotected on a bike. It wasn't until they drove past that one saw my face and shouted, 'Shit! That's a lady.'

To some extent, knowing that sometimes my mannerisms/dress come off as male or at least ambiguous makes me feel less vulnerable when I'm walking around, but at the same time, that event (and drawing from other experiences I've had or heard of) is that street harassment happens to males too, though it's not usually of the sexual nature that women are subject to (which from my experience is also scary and uncomfortable).