i essentially can't know if this person was really afraid of me or not. the crown agreed that there was no objective basis for fear and dropped the case, but what little i know about this person suggests to me that she has some kind of mental illness, implying that she may have been experiencing real fear without any sort of rational basis.

i mean, it's entirely possible. people are afraid of all kinds of stupid things. i don't have to accuse her of dishonesty - she might be insane.

but, regardless, what she essentially did was conclude that, because i'm disabled, i must pose a threat to her. her fear was constructed solely on the basis of discrimination. the officer should have pointed out that i don't have any kind of criminal record, and there's consequently no grounds for arrest. instead, he played into her irrational prejudices.

i'm a feminist in the sense that i believe in equality across the genders, and to me that means that you don't get to define your experiences differently. a feminist may look at this and claim her experiences are being invalidated - i think the point is that you can't be validating experiences rooted in prejudice, and her experience absolutely needs to be not just invalidated but denounced as wrong.

the irony is that i wouldn't have had a case, otherwise. i was trolling her to get a response, and i got a little more than what i wanted.

i'll call to look into the recordings on monday.