City Et Tu Madison Park?
posted by on September 22 at 10:35 AM
This report of a very unpleasant evening stroll in Madison Park came to me last week, but the details were just confirmed by the Seattle Police Department this morning.
The incident is not quite as bad as some of the other gay-bashings that have happened on Capitol Hill this year, but for Sarah, 28, and her partner Whitley, 27, it was still an unhappy night.
Here’s the email I received from Sarah about the incident:
my (female) partner and i live on howell st. not far from mlk (madison valley? madrona? the cd?) and decided to take a walk to the lake last night via madison park.we reached the end of madison, turned around, and were heading back home—engrossed in conversation and holding hands—when we heard a woman who we had just passed mumble something like, “get that out of here.”
we both stopped, turned around, and very non-aggressively asked her if she had said something to us. she proceeded to raise her voice and ask us if we were both women. when we said yes, she repeated that we were both women and stated that we were holding hands. she then proclaimed that we were lesbians and that lesbians were not wanted in madison park.
she continued to become escalated despite the little resistance she got from us (we were both shocked) and screamed on the sidewalk that madison park was her neighborhood and that lesbians weren’t wanted there and that we should “go back to capitol hill.”
we didn’t say much but we did ask her if she was serious and if she was really talking to other human beings that way. she replied (still yelling) that she was “goddamn serious” and to get out of her neighborhood. i asked her if she was drunk to try to embarrass her in front of her friend who stood silently by her side. she yelled that she wasn’t drunk and that “this is america and america doesn’t tolerate lesbians.”
she then pulled a male passerby into the conversation by yelling, “he’ll tell you. we don’t want lesbians in our neighborhood, do we?” the man quickly took our side, standing with us and apologizing on behalf of madison park (he said he’d lived there for 20 years and had never seen anything like this). he told her she was wrong and then left.
in hindsight, of course i wish i had reacted with anger and quick words. instead, my state of shock at being singled out and yelled at on a relatively quiet night in the middle of the sidewalk turned into sobbing in the middle of the sidewalk. the woman stood and watched with her arms crossed as i broke down right then and there—still waiting for us to leave her neighborhood.
my partner put her arm around me and brought me to a bench half a block away, and all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, the bartender from bing’s came up to us and said he had heard me crying. he didn’t know what was wrong but said he brought a sprite to make me feel better. we told him the story and he asked what she looked like (in case she’s a customer) and consoled us and gave just the kind of compassion we both needed.
our family/roommates came to pick us up, we thanked the bartender, and are now processing the fact that our romantic walk culminated in a 60-year-old woman (seemingly not mentally ill, per se) spewing hate and bigotry and trying to rally a passerby to gang up on us.
thank you to the bing’s bartender and to the man who stood with us and told her she was wrong. this was the first time i was harassed by a woman and the first time i was harassed in seattle. luckily we weren’t physically injured but it was shocking and completely devastating. thank you for reading this and maybe even spreading the word.
Because there was no physical violence involved, the police have classified the incident as a disturbance—and not, for example, as malicious harassment, the common designation for violent hate crimes.
But Sarah and her partner were told the incident will be added to the police department’s list of gay-related disturbances this year.
sounds like the rantings of crazy woman.
Face it folks, there is a conservative backlash growing in Seattle. And we are all fucked when it hits the fan.....
All this gentrification and growth is going to bite us in the ass. Afterall, do you think all the newcomers to Seattle come from nice liberal places?
Hey old lady: you're going to die soon and most of us won't miss you at all.
and now you are venting on the internet. how brave. maybe we can hold a vigil at Madison Park for the Great Granny Berating of 08. Here's a tip: next time, tell her to STFU unless she wants to get knocked out or just walk away. Don't be such a hopeless victim. I hope the 7-up made your tum-tum feel better.
@2 Wow! You must have set a new Internet record for a "backlash" post! Congratulations!
Every time I see one of the many, many, many posts over the many, many, many years from scaredy-cat alarmist homosexuals that something that the queers have done now is "creating" a "backlash" -- and therefor THE QUEERS MUST STOP BEING QUEER RIGHT NOW!!1! -- I just sigh. Somehow, the queers keep being queers and, somehow, the world goes on. Until the warnings of the next "backlash", of course.
Even if every "backlash" was real, who cares??? Gee, the whole world doesn't love you! You must cease to exist right now!!!
*sigh*
You violated rule #1: Don't engage these people, just pick up your pace and ignore them. She could have had a knife or mace.
Happens to me every other blue moon or so. (No not becaue I'm right-of-center, because I'm gay.)
I'm with #4. Grow up. One crazy old lady yelling insults does not a hate-crime make. Tell her to STFU (or here's a thought: IGNORE HER) and continue on with your walk.
That old woman was clearly a Barack Obama supporter and represents Democrats everywhere.
She probably lives in Broadmoor; Madison Park's security-gated enclave of 1960's era upper middle-class exclusivity.
rule #1 is actually to take a cameraphone picture of the harasser and send it to slog.
What #4 said. Sarah please for your own sake visit New York. Everyone here has to deal with street crazies all the time. A visit might desensitize you.
@9 is right. I do believe Broadmoor was the only precinct in Seattle to vote for Bush in 2004. Critical Mass should ride through there on Friday. Naked.
jesus suck it up. its not worth crying over - it was one person who's going to die miserable. her emotions aren't your problem.
this so fucking seattle: mountains from molehills.
#2 blames outsiders, #4 blames the victim, and #5 crazily overreacts to some slight in #2 which only he/she/it can perceive.
This woman sounds crazy - the kind of crazy that eventually leads to her attacking random strangers with her fists. Hopefully the incident that leads to her being court-ordered to go to counseling and take meds will not be as spectacular as this one.
I think the old lady was nuts.
I'm sorry she upset the writer - stuff happens.
Better to ignore people who are bats. They are out there, and they aren't going away.
What @7 said. Welcome to the world. Neither Seattle nor Madison Park nor any block in any city is free of hate-filled idiots. Develop a thick skin and move on.
@11: Dude, I lived in New York for 8 years. The street crazies (and bus crazies) here are ten times worse. Everyone generally minds their own business in NYC -- the way people get in your face here is a pretty West coast phenomenon.
sounds to me like there needs to be a big gay make out party at Madison Park tonight...
Re: Madison Park -- My partner and I were eating Mexican food there next to an older couple -- I don't think we ever touched or were "overtly gay" but she kept looking over at us and whispering in her husband's ear. I wanted to say "Excuse me -- Is there a problem?" but my guy pointed out that they were leaving and I should let it go.
They spent the rest of their time there discussing if a 10% tip was too much for the "horrible service," (we had the same waitress. she was awesome.) so it was pretty clear they were horrible people, but it had been a really long time since anyone had behaved like that towards me.
The woman was also wearing a terrible bright knit cardigan with cats appliqued on it. She was truly evil on so many levels.
That's awful. But feeling bad because of that crazy B gave her exactly what she wanted. I say you walk through that park every single day hand in hand. Stage a lesbian love in. Be in her park as often as possible. And if you see her again and she starts in, immediately call the police. They will have to take round 2 of harrassment at least a little bit more seriously. Fuck that old woman. She will go back to the country if she can't take it.
it was, in all likelihood, a severely mentally ill old woman. if her companion didn't say anything or back her up, then yeah, she's fucking crazy. don't let her stop you from walking down to madison park. next time, don't be so nice. do tell her to shut the fuck up, and leave. and DO NOT TAKE IT PERSONALLY! it's not about you, it's about her dementia/borderline personality disorder/bi-polar disorder. there wasn't anything you could have said or done to change her mind or stop her anger.
After reading this post all I could think about was that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry dates Bette Midler's emotionally incompetent understudy.
@14 You may not have paid attention to the Internet for the past decade, but, unfortunately, I have and 2's post is par for the course. If you must mistake your own ignorance for that of others and be an ass about it, please at least be an entertaining ass. Or, at the very least, try.
The crazy old lady in this story throws better shade than you, sister.
Turns out two precincts voted for Bush in 2004. Broadmoor and Madison Park.
Nasty old lady needs to be ignored or treated with contempt. But why the sobbing breakdown? The proper response is: "Old lady. Shut the fuck up. We have as much right to walk on this public sidewalk as you do. If you don't like it, piss off and go hide in your house." No blubbering required.
Sound like an awful situation. It's always discouraging to see that kind of bigotry on display. However, I'm going to chime in with some of the others and say that, if it happens again, ignore it or tell her to shut up and walk away. People like that, whether mentally-disabled and bigoted or just plain bigoted, are not deserving of attention.
Andrew, you should be encouraging more californians to relocate cause pretty much homosexuality is status quo for many parts of it.
Help! A 60+ year old woman is pummeling me to death! Oh wait, that didn't nor couldn't happen either. Devastating? Really?
Come on. You are physically/mentally stronger than that and if not, then work on it. It sucks that it happened, but this not worthy of tears, a ride home from family, etc...
I think the correct response would have been, "No, this is MY neighborhood. YOU go back to fucking Pierce county if you don't like, it!"
this is sarah, the one who wrote the email to eli. #4, thanks for the completely a-holish advice. just because you think you would have reacted in a different way than i did doesn't make homophobia and hate any less real--and shitty. it's important to talk about this stuff when it happens, which is the only reason i wrote the email. i certainly didn't write it to get your sympathy. #11, i'm from new york and i'm very aware of how much worse gay-bashing can be. i'm also well aware of "street crazies," which i'm assuming means mentally ill people who you've encountered on the streets. this woman was not one of those - she was a hateful, entitled, resident of an exclusive seattle neighborhood. #20, thanks.
Your welcome. And I still think the lesbian love in is the way to go! Your best defense is a good offense. Go be in that park AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE.
even hateful, entitled residents of exclusive seattle neighborhoods can be batshit crazy. the mentally ill are not all homeless and disheveled. and yeah, lesbian love-in is needed. the more the better. i wanna watch this woman's head explode.
@17,
Well then, you were very lucky. I lived in NYC for five years and got endless amounts of shit from New Yorkers. Seattle has far fewer crazies and all-around assholes. One fundamental difference is that there are more New Yorkers who will fight back, but most are still sheep who try to pretend nothing's happening, like almost all Seattlites.
from reading these posts one would think that only mentally ill people can be homophobic. flawed logic: woman screams hateful things at lesbians in the middle of the sidewalk on a quiet night in madison park, so she must be mentally ill. that line of thinking is incredibly unhelpful to the equal rights movement, as is judging my response to an unprovoked verbal assault. when you're assaulted on the street, #25, you can respond however you see fit. and, fyi, you don't know how you'll respond until it happens. playing armchair quarterback on the slog just makes it worse.
#32, NEWS FLASH! mentally ill people are not all angry homophobes and it's not an excuse to be cruel! there are a lot more people with mental illness in seattle than homosexuals, and far fewer homophobes. your mentally ill-bashing is just as bad as gay bashing, if not worse.
Weird. I live in big happy gay San Francisco, but you still can't go a hundred yards here without running into some shitbag with something to say about ya. You should hear the onslaught of epithets when school gets out and MUNI rolls the kids through the Castro. It's not about the bad people in your town, it's about the good ones.
You're day goes much better when you don't engage the crazies.
Are they that thin skinned? It's an annoying old woman mouthing off. Would this had been worthy of writing if she'd snapped at the women for being fat or foul-smelling instead?
I'm sure Matthew Shepherd wishes he could have gotten off so easy.
@33: Did you live there in the last ten years? I'm not trying to start a fight, just say the city's changed a lot -- I lived there for a bit in the mid 90's and it was a much scarier place than it is now.
Come on Sarah. You have to be better than this.
@37: Just because she wasn't hurt doesn't mean it wasn't a stressful, painful situation.
Tolerating small incidents creates a safe breeding ground for larger assault to happen.
Obviously Matthew Shepherd suffered more. I don't think anything is gained from comparing victimization like this.
Lesbians fly under the radar better than anyone I know. I lived next to a couple for years before I figured it out. Roommates, that's all, a couple of "gals" stretching their housing dollar. I don't think I've ever seen any lesbian pda, either.
@Sarah, fuck you, go back to New York. Damn transplants.
You should have stood there and kissed your partner agin and again while she yelled. Or you could have raised your middle finger and told her to fuck herself. But no, you cried. Oh boo hoo.
#41: lesbians get a lot more gawking and rude comments with public pda. but, i'm shocked that you've never seen any if you live in seattle.
Sarah, you are going to encounter much worse in your lifetime; I guarantee it. If an old lady spewing her homophobe opinions reduces you to a blubbering mess on the park bench, how are you ever going to cope with anything worse than that in life? I was once in military uniform and had a middle-aged white guy tell me I needed to be at home making white babies rather than going off to war. When I told him my fiance was black so any babies I had were certainly not going to be white, his lovely and enlightened wife turned to me with disgust in her face and said, "what did you do that for?" and then turned away mumbling, "well, I guess that's the 'style' nowadays." This was four years ago. I didn't cry. I told him that Americans of every different race were defending his right to say such bigoted crap. Then I walked away. That's how you handle idiots. She wanted to make you cry and she succeeded. You-0, Ignorant Old Woman-1.
uh, Madison Park SUCKS...it's full of rude, nasty, rich old white people and ironically, quite a few fags live down there as well, though they tend to be of the elderly, big glasses and ascot variety.
wow. you are some harsh motherfuckers. not everybody is as in-your-face as you might want them to be.
I'm sorry that awful woman ruined your day. Hearing about the guy in the park and the bartender, though, made me feel a little better about humanity. Kudos to them - if I lived in Seattle I'd be sure to stop at Bing's whenever I could.
Homophobes bring to my mind what Thomas Jefferson said: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever." He may have been talking about slavery and I may be an atheist, but it still warms my heart.
Wow. Reading comments top to bottom, not much acknowledgement of the simple human pain Sarah suffered. An awful lot of coulda, woulda, shoulda. Hugs to Sarah and her partner. I'd be more inclined to hang with people whose FIRST response to an attack is to express their hurt, rather than to lash out.
Revenge can wait for another day, when the dish can be served cold with curdled cream.
@47,48: You chimed in while I was still typing what became 49. Good on ya.
Sarah, thanks for reporting this to the police.
Sarah, I live in Madison Park and you and your girlfriend are welcome to walk in my neighborhood any time you feel like it. Its embarrassing that one of my neighbors treated you so badly, but she's one of a tiny minority.
Also, ignore these cynical bitches on the Slog. Anonymity brings out the worst in people - I'm sure that, in person, at least some of them are tolerable. Maybe.
@47: Everyone is much tougher on the Internet than in real life. And if you don't believe me I'll sock you in the eye.
Almost everyone on this thread makes me ashamed. Does anyone believe in empathy anymore?
Bigotry is never pleasant, whether its a random sidewalk yelling match or a physical assault. You don't have to hold a ruler up to the incident to decide whether you should care. If Sarah had been physically assaulted, half of you wouldn't have written your above posts. Thank god she wasn't.
Sarah, I live on your block (we call it Madronacentralvalley or "MadVal") and I'm appalled by your treatment in Mad Park and the reactions of so many here on Slog. If you, your girlfriend and housemates want to stage a protest in Madison Park, have Eli advertise it and we'll be there.
Dear Small-Minded in Seattle – I am the step-mother of one of the young ladies you accosted in Madison Park on Wednesday evening. Do you feel better? Did your ranting provide you with some measure of relief? I can’t imagine what would possess a grown woman to spew her hatred at two individuals you don’t even know. I suspect you might have grown up in a household of intolerants – I can only hope you don’t have any children – intolerance breeds intolerance and I fervently hope we were spared in your case. These beautiful, well-loved, educated, kind and creative women do not deserve your wrath – if your legacy in this short life is to spew hatred than I am sorry for you and mad as hell that you felt entitled to confront my step-daughter. Hold your poison woman!
That certainly does sound like a nice evening gone sour! I'm sorry you had to go through that!
Once my guy and I were holding hands and a random guy came up to us and said he "thought that it was cool" that we could do that. It was a little awkward, but a nice gesture nonetheless.
In the future, just snap back with something witty and keep walking.
:)
has anyone thought that this might be alzheimer's/dementia?
This is Whitley, Sarah's partner and the other person targeted by that woman's hateful rant last week.
Thanks for the last few comments- and earlier ones- that recognize the pain of being verbally attacked in public simply for who you are. I'm relieved to know that some Slog readers don't let their anonymity eclipse their compassion. Of course what happened to us was not the worst that could have happened. But gay bashing can take many forms, including telling a victim to suck it up. Sharing this incident with others is our way of refusing to swallow the fear and shame this stranger tried to create in us.
And don't tell my girlfriend to fuck off.
For all of you generous sympathetic people who told Sarah (and Whitley) to shut up and suck it up, I hope you'll keep that in mind when it's your turn to suffer the homophobic attack of a bigot.
That being said I would hope every gay & lesbian couple in Seattle makes it a point to go to Madison Park and make out...or egg the old bitches house. Holloween is coming up and nothing makes the holiday brighter than a burning sack of dog poo on the porch and festoons of rotting egg yolks on the walls.
Comments Closed
Comments are closed on this post.