I guess this is an upshot of the situation described in the previous post. The hater I wrote about stirs up antipathy against me amongst the other neighbors, and sometimes it boils to the surface, particularly when they are drunk. The man downstairs has repeatedly challenged me to fight him, "to settle this once and for all." Of course I have abstained from doing so. Ironically, the man I used to try to be could have wiped the floor with him, and none of that knowledge/experience and little of that strength have dissipated. But I have negative desire to fight, and to do so would prove their idea that I am just a man who gets off on dressing as a woman. Nonetheless, emboldened by my seeming cowardice, the man's threats and verbal abuse continue to escalate, to the point where last night, he was screaming at the top of his lungs that he would f**k me up, kill me, teach me a lesson, show me who's boss - for a solid ten minutes, long after I had gone into my apartment, without ever having said a word to him.
I had been setting up a barbecue, and taken a fireplace ash-shovel to manicure the coals into the yard. As I was returning to my stairway, with the shovel in hand, he had been glaring at me, and I watched him as I passed, to be prepared to defend myself if necessary. He had taken this to be threatening him with the spatula-size shovel, and challenging him. I have to say it reminded me of some naturalist documentary about chimpanzees, where the alpha chimp goes on a rampage because a chimp lower in the social hierarchy was insufficiently deferential.
Below is the email I sent to the Director of the local GayPride Center, with whom I have had a long association:
I figure that it's unlikely anything can be done or gained, but I should check anyway. In short, my downstairs neighbor has threatened my life three times this summer, with very violent and hateful words, when he was drunk, most recently last night. I have called the police each time, and each time, this man, his girlfriend, and another neighbor have told the police that I instigated the problem by threatening them. It's not true. The truth is that they hate me because I'm trans and are trying to chase me out. Essentially, I provoke them by my very existence, and when they get drunk, it boils to the surface.
I understand that the police are essentially handcuffed by the cross-complaints, and that the patrolmen are ill-trained to handle this kind of thing. Their solution is always to threaten to write everybody tickets for harassment, and to threaten to arrest everybody if they get called back. On the other hand, the police seem to have no interest in getting to the bottom of this either. For one thing, they don't separate the three and question them individually, to see if their stories match up. They refuse to question other neighbors about what other neighbors may have seen or heard. It's like the cops know that the easiest resolution for them is to find a cross-complaint stalemate, and that is what they work towards finding.
I was particularly upset by the officer last night, who reached a point where it was all about him. He was tired of dealing with this problem, he said. He was frustrated. He wanted to leave. It wasn't about his duty, it was about his feelings.
But the worst thing was his insensitivity and ignorance about trans reality and trans issues. One thing that I can tell particularly annoys these neighbors is that I lay out in the sun, in the backyard, in a bikini. They talk about amongst themselves, and make nasty comments, like "I think I'm going to puke." Evidently, they told the cop that they can see my balls hanging out, and the cop believed them, and warned me against indecent exposure. I'm sure you know how absurd this is. The last thing any transwoman wants is for anyone to see something that belies her womanhood. A cop with any kind of sensitivity training would have known this. For the cop to give any kind of creedence to this was insulting. But more, I could tell that he not only believed it, but that he was disgusted by it. I think you have judged enough drag shows to have some idea of how effective tucking or gaffing is.
Like I said, given the 3 against 1 situation, I doubt anything constructive can be done. On the other hand, it would be a good thing if something could be done before actual violence occurs. On the third hand, it is another problem entirely that, when I am victimized by trans-bashing; the cops treat me like a criminal.
It's probably more likely that my experiences can be of some good for the community as part of a collective of similar issues, and that is why I am contacting you. I don't expect you to be able to do anything for me specifically. But if you want to discuss this further, or with other parties, let me know.
