First episode: A black, foreign, middle-class woman at the helm
Although I have been driving for about five years, inside a car I have been much longer with a man driving. I have experienced the hobbies, the insults, the scares and also the accidents watching how two men take over the tracks by means of a rudder. Almost always the speed factor defines them. Also that of trickery, that of evaluating who is smarter and more skillful to violate traffic rules. And when faced with the latter, the “opposite” (it seems that everyone else driving is an opponent) insults and lashes out with the horn, with a shout or with a gesture of open hands and arms that denote anger. All fleeting, passenger.
As a companion, I have verified when it is the driver who is offended by some strange maneuver of his road adversary. A curse word, an intimidating brake, insults like gunshots; but, for them, life goes on. These furious encounters are truly short-lived.
However, the issue ceases to be temporary when the one who “confronts” from the helm is a woman. And not just any woman. Clearly, a foreign woman, marked by her blackness, fundamentally hers, assigned for this reason to a social imaginary in which young racialized women occupy more than one stigma and stereotype. Is my case.
In Mexico, there is a rule to give way to the right at a crossroads or intersection without signs. The car that comes from the right passes by, and then the one that comes from the left passes, “one by one”, and so on the rest of those waiting.
Recently, I was in my street to overcome the intersection of an avenue (four lanes, two-way and separator), waiting for the “one by one” that had been fulfilled perfectly. When my turn came, I crossed, but the “antagonistic” driver did not respect the code; He rushed at me, blew his whistle, raised my hands, rolled down his window and yelled “whore!” Stopped traffic and my son in the back seat asking me what was wrong with that man and what he meant by that word. We didn’t crash by a miracle.
He was left stranded in a bad place in the middle of the street for having gone ahead improperly. I kept my correct position to pass the second stage. Therefore, he kept shouting insults at me and honking the horn non-stop. Seeing that he had reached a point where I could continue on my way, I looked back, rolled down my window, rolled up my glasses to look him in the eye, whispered “idiot” with lips and gave him the middle finger. of my left hand as I continued my march. A really small and silent response compared to the rude paraphernalia of him.
To my surprise, the driver, who was accompanied by what appeared to be his family (boys and girls in the back seat, and a woman next to him), diverts his course and chases me. This time honking persistently and thoroughly, making demeaning signs to me that I saw in the rear-view mirror and hitting the front of his car to the back of mine. Another time my son asked what was wrong with that “cheater” man, he told me.
The Show It lasted about six long blocks until, due to so much absurdity and sterile harassment, I stopped, smiled in the mirror and made a sign with my hand for him to come forward. She didn’t do it right away; but, after a few endless seconds, he passed me while he yelled at me “you’re a bitch and a bitch.” The woman accompanying him nodded her head.
“Mom, why does that man tell you those things?” Because I’m a woman, son, I’m a woman she can insult without anything happening to her… and also because she’s in a hurry.
Second episode: Public masturbation and defense devices
I had finished a program in which I was discussing as a speaker, full of emotion because the dialogue had been powerful and hopeful, and I quickly left the house to find something to eat. The neighborhood store is very close. I am recording some voice notes, so I have my cell phone in my hand. Despite being distracted by the event that had just concluded, on the street the body (at least that of a woman) is always alert.
Indeed, I feel the noise of a car engine, which accelerates and slows down behind me. He barely stays level with me on the road, letting me take several steps and playing along with the acceleration. It’s not normal, I tell myself. I was in a cleared area and that’s where all my alarms went off.
I grabbed the screen of the turned off cell phone as a rear view mirror and, without turning my head, I realized that the car was actually a somewhat old truck, and that the driver was approaching me again. This time he stayed by my side with the engine still running.
In those thousandths of seconds you ask yourself everything and you answer nothing. The adrenaline takes over your body and the heart pumps; doesn’t let you breathe. As I try to turn off all the disturbing switches, he glanced at the man and there he was, sitting inside his truck, looking at me out of the corner of his eye and masturbating with his left hand. While everything is happening, the car stops and I keep moving at my pace.
I leave him behind a few meters, knowing that the episode would not end like this. I feel it speeding up again. we were alone It was late afternoon and hardly any cars passed by on the street. I only knew that I had to react and, having him on top of me again, I grabbed the cell phone, pretended that I was recording it and began to yell at him heatedly that I would hand over the video to the police and more: “I have your badge, pig, pig ” and other Cuban expletives.
The man was scared by my screams and, above all, by the cell phone. He took off suddenly and disappeared over the horizon. I didn’t look away until I felt “safe”. I spoke to a friend on the phone, looking for some company; I went into the store, took what I needed and came back with a thousand active antennae, not warning, but fear.
I tried to sedate myself, alone. It was the first time it had happened to me since I lived in Mexico. I thought about the sophisticated form of masturbation (inside a vehicle), unlike Cuba, where I have always seen them (by dozens) on foot or by bicycle. I also thought about my answer, maybe just as “sophisticated”. I couldn’t explain how I got that to be my immediate reaction.
The fact is that, once again, it is shown that women do not inhabit the public space on an equal footing. sexualized, feminized bodies, predatory. We are possible prey because in a sexist and misogynist sociopolitical order, women mean less (fewer people, fewer citizens, with fewer rights, with fewer guarantees, with less credibility, with less reputation, with less possibilities of being defended and heard). In addition, we are possible prey because in this field of gender violence impunity reigns. Neither socially nor in the community nor in the institutions do we find the necessary structures for protection and reparation.
The systematic predation worsens when, in addition, you are a foreign and racialized woman. The decline to which we are subjected is multiplied. The body of a young woman of color (and obviously a foreigner), the object of fetishism, becomes especially plunderable. It is a phenotype that embodies a subjectivity without any trace of power (of being able to defend oneself, of having credibility, of being able to seek and find help before the authorities or before society).
Therefore, being a black-migrant-woman means inhabiting the public space with exponential vulnerability, despite the fact that, in my case, I belong to a social class that preserves some levels of privilege and dignity in said space. The macho and misogynistic order is also very racist.
There are sexualized, feminized bodies that are not attacked in the same way, because they carry signs of privilege in their social interaction. For example, foreigners presumably from the Global North are not denigrated in public in the same situations. The so-called “privileges” (whiteness, high economic class, potential influence) can constitute signs of power against dispossessed men, be it because of their social class, their racial belonging, etc. I have verified it firsthand.
After the first episode of highway bullying, I adjusted the response I gave then to my son, according to his age: “That man treated mom like that because he is so full of problems and anger, and he acts enraged against people he doesn’t care about. he thinks they are inferior… Especially against women, because he doesn’t respect us”.
