City Little People: Threatened and Pissed-Off
posted by on June 13 at 11:15 AM
This week’s Last Days brought the following eyewitness
FRIDAY, JUNE 6 “Dear Last Days,” writes Hot Tipper Bradford, placidly commencing the creepiest report of violent Metro-based bigotry since that psycho clocked that blind lady a couple weeks ago on the #18. “This afternoon I was waiting for the #8 Metro on Capitol Hill. Waiting with me was the homeless Native American transsexual I’ve seen around the neighborhood. I call her Two Spirits. She was engaged in her usual self-contained commotion when she spotted a midget and another gentleman waiting for the bus. ‘I hate midgets!’ she started yelling. ‘FUCKING MIDGET! I’LL SLIT YOUR FUCKING THROAT! I’M TRIBAL POLICE!’ The gentleman replied, ‘That’s fine, but it’d be great if you could make the bus come on time.’ Both man and midget entered the bus unscathed.” Dear Hot Tipper Bradford: Thank you for noticing and sharing. Also, I don’t mean to look a gift Hot Tip in the mouth, but “midget” isn’t really a word but a slur that’s gained currency due to pervasive use. Go with “little people,” which may sound odd and comparably insulting, but is the preferred term, no matter what Trapped in the Closet says.
Yesterday brought the following email from Hot Tipper Erin:
As a midget/dwarf/Little Person/whatever-you-want-to-call-me who lives (way too) close to Broadway, I was not at all surprised at this act of violent verbal assault placed upon my fellow LP at the #8 bus stop on friday, June 6th. I myself have been the subject of an array of insults being hurled at me out of car windows, impromptu camera phone photo-ops, and many other ridiculous, horrifying examples of ignorance and hatred for the larger portion of my adult life. (Though none has come so often as when I moved to Capitol Hill, which I have chronicled in my blog, thelowlifeseattle.)When you consider that this is no different than gay bashing, or calling a black person a nigger, I could only think that people like me have the same legal recourse as those being discriminated against for their ethnicity or sexual orientation. So out of curiosity, I called the Seattle Police Department and asked the on-duty police officer what actions I could take the next time something like this happened. Unfortunately, there’s not much. The most I could do was file a complaint (different and lesser than a report) in order to give the area’s unit a heads-up that there’s a crazy person out there verbally attacking innocent people on the street. If anything, the person may already have a warrants which could hasten any criminal proceedings and get them into the jail/nuthouse where they belong, but that’s it.
I am sorry for the person who had to go through that and I hope that they’ll do something about it next time. That kind of behavior is completely unacceptable, no matter how crazy, homeless and ‘helpless’ the person doing it is. By shrugging it off, victims are only saying to people that’s it’s ‘ok’ and gives the opportunity for more.
Thanks for the tip on the homeless Native American transvestite, I’ll have to watch out for that one…
And thank you, Erin. Everyone else: Please refrain from threatening to slit each other’s throats, no matter what size you may be.
Yeah, the group of homeless Native Americans on Capitol Hill is really depressing. At least twice a week I walk by on Bellevue/Olive/Broadway/Pine and one of the group is either sitting on the sidewalk snorting coke or passed out/getting revived by emergency medical professionals. Yet they seem to hang together - I almost always see them in groups of two or more.
@1. Wait, they're homeless but they can afford coke?
@2: It's all about priorities. Or meth.
#2 - This is America! "Afford" has nothing to do with it.
Man, the idea of people harassing little people the way that guy described (photo ops?!) kinda pisses me off. If I ever see that behavior being perpetrated by anyone less the 5'9" tall, I'm going to have a fucking field day on that person.
Erin has my sympathies. I think I saw her on the #8 bus a few weeks ago and I noticed this nerdy, late 20's guy just obviously and unabashedly STARING at her. I don't know if he was from the sticks and had never seen a little person up close, or if had a fetish for LP's or if he was just a clueless yutz but I had to resist the urge to poke him in the shoulder and mutter to him, "Dude, be cool; it's not nice to stare at someone."
But, I realized I do the same thing when a hot, 30/40something daddy wearing a suit and tie gets on the bus and stands in my line of vision...
Perhaps bus drivers should be allowed to order folks off the bus at their discretion.
Dealing with riffraff keeps many people off the bus.
Will drivers use this as tool to discriminate and oppress? They could but it's pretty weird to be advocating everyone to take the bus when we can't provide basic order.
Geesh! Everyone knows it's only cool to be an ignorant ranting jack-off on the internets. But, I suppose, until there's public access wi-fi we'll just have to put up with it.
"That's fine, but it'd be great if you could make the bus come on time."
Damn, that's suave.
Sorry to hear about the crappy way people treat Little People. If it's any consolation, in regard to this quote: "I could only think that people like me have the same legal recourse as those being discriminated against for their ethnicity or sexual orientation"-- in Texas at least you actually DO have the same legal recourse as people discriminated for their sexual orienation: none. So come on down to Austin!
I was not on the #8 bus. And if I do take the #8, I'd rather stick a pen in my eye than wait at that bus stop; a frequent stopping place of emergency vehicles who come to pick up the passed out junkies.
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