Trying to define instinctive belief he was a misogynist twat

[BlingLoving]

I got into an altercation with a parking attendant type person at my local shopping centre of the weekend. Too boring but in a nutshell, he seemed to think I had purposefully ignored some cones he'd put out to try and redirect traffic. I hadn't even SEEN the cones and certainly didn't drive over them so am still baffled by that part, but I THINK he may have placed the cones behind me and not realised which car I was.

Either way, because I had no idea what was going on, I thought i was supposed to be getting out of the way of the car ahead of me that was reversing out of the arrivals lane. So pulled over accordingly. At which point this absolutely LIVID man started screaming and yelling at me about how I was "disobeying his instructions" and that I was "ignoring the cones I put out". I told him to stop speaking to me like that but that just led to him ranting about how if I'd just obeyed him in the first place, he wouldn't be shouting at me. blah blah.

But afterwards, I was absolutely CERTAIN that he wouldn't have spoken to a man in the same way. I'm sure he would have yelled and been furious at a man too, but for some reason I could just feel that the unspoken phrase at the end of each of his rants was, "you stupid woman...."

I wish I could define and explain these moments. Does anyone know what I mean and can you articulate them? The closest I can think is that the exact tone he used on me is one I've never heard a man use on another man. (bit like that hilarious journalist asking Corbyn about something once and he was SOOOO patronising in a way that I'm sure no male journalist has ever had to experience).

Send him a hat with the word OBEY ME printed in huge letters.
They've usually got CCTV. Is it worth making a complaint?

Dh thinks I should. I'm not sure I can be bothered. To be honest, he was behaving appallingly - and while I still believe how he yelled at me would have been different to a man, I'm also confident he was as obnoxious, in a different way, to any men. I'm just not sure I can bothered.

I'm more disturbed by my believe he was treating me differently as a woman without any proof. I'm trying to work out if I'm being oversensitive and my feminist focus has led me to start seeing misogyny everywhere when really in this case it ws just a wanker little man who was annoyed because in his one place of power people weren't listening to him (because he was giving useless instructions, but whatever....).

Men tend not to behave like that to other men because they know there’s a chance they’ll get into a fight. Women are unlikely to retaliate, so angry men feel free to unleash their anger with women.

So chances are your instinct was right. In any event, his response was disproportionate to any offence, and he’s clearly got a few issues, so might be worth a quick word to management.

The reason you have that instinctive feeling is because you rarely see men screaming at other men in that way in public. The might square up for a fight, but they don’t scream at them as though they have been disrespected by an inferior. You sometimes see men shout at their male underlings in a work situation like that (though even then, more likely at female underlings). But not random members of the public.

Making a complaint doesn’t have to be a big deal, you don’t have to take it further than you want to. But doing so would at least get it on record so if he does it to someone else and she makes a complaint...