Current Events > Why do some dudes try to shoulder check people they think are weak? (rant)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Full disclosure, I'm a weird little, ostensibly masc presenting little non-binary person who dresses however they want. In another life, if I didn't have "shoulders too broad for a girl", I may have identified differently.

Please note the (some). If you're feeling called out, please ask yourself why.

Anyway, over my adult life I've vacillated between presenting myself as being very masculine, and just about as androgynous as I could manage at that point in time, or somewhere in between.

Something I noticed is that when I dress to a masc aesthetic, I never get shoulder checked. If anything, I get a lovely bubble. I have RBF for days.

When I dress or appear more flamboyantly or have my hair longer, suddenly there are a lot of 20- to 30- something males who don't know how to walk in a straight line. Their shoulders veer towards me, it's quite peculiar.

I had a moment today. I was going up the stairs at the station, and there was a bloke (a fair bit taller than I, but built like a piss-soaked whippet) who did that target acquired eye lock thing, and I knew something was up. I stayed on the left side of the stairs (as conventions and manners demand). He comes down the stairs, and veers into my zone. Given he was keeping eye contact with me the whole time, it would have had to be deliberate.

If I wanted to avoid a collision at this point, I'd have had to have cringed fully against the side rail to avoid him going down the centre.

I didn't.

There was that point of impact, and I wandered off to catch my bus without any loss of momentum, and he sort of ricocheted and stumbled. Better luck next time?

I mean, I might be a weird little non-binary goblin person, but I was forced to play rugby at school. I may have shoulders too broad for a girl, but they diamond.

The same reason they feel the need to announce their presence whenever they enter a room - usually by talking loudly or groaning or grunting so everyone can hear.

SilvosForever posted...

The same reason they feel the need to announce their presence whenever they enter a room - usually by talking loudly or groaning or grunting so everyone can hear.

They want to be noticed? Well, he got noticed with a diagonal vector, I guess?

When you see them coming you're supposed to stand still and shoulder check back as hard as possible

Assert Dominance

Despised posted...

When you see them coming you're supposed to stand still and shoulder check back as hard as possible

Assert Dominance

Oh, dude bounced off me.

I've never experienced it before, it makes me wonder if it was a couple decades ago if it would have just been a shoulder check.

no one does that

are you sure you're not the one doing it to others and not realizing it?

GuerrillaSoldier posted...

no one does that

are you sure you're not the one doing it to others and not realizing it?

Uh based on the description tc provides it sounds like a homophobic assault.

As a broad shouldered dude, sometimes it legit is just an accident. It's easy to misjudge space and knock into something/someone. This is especially true if you've been drinking. Intentionally doing it though is just being an asshole. It's the equivalent of outright shoving someone but while trying to keep some sort of plausible deniability of not starting the fight.

I'm 6'4" and well over 300 lbs. People don't shoulder check me.

In fact, I chewed out a yolked-out steroid freak who was about shoulder height on me because I'm trying to pull into a parking space and his dumb ass is just meandering right through my path as slowly as humanly possible.

He got his back up until I parked and got out of the car. Then he suddenly remembered he needed to make a phone call far away from me.