I wrote a story last year about a young woman in a casino restroom who got hassled because an older woman read her as male.

She has short hair and was dressed baggy casual, without any particular gender markers. When she spoke with her typical high-pitched woman's voice, her antagonist decided she must be a young teenage boy, and she raised holy hell over it.

In that case, transphobia was overt, with the complaining woman making disparaging comments about transgender people invading women's spaces.

But your story is a good reminder that all of us need to maybe chill about clocking people on gender. The man you describe was probably just trying to be helpful, but what was he so worried about?

Why is deducing somebody's gender so deucedly important? Why should it be?

I mean, I get the safety concerns, but can a slim 74 year old woman, even if misread as a man, really look like a threat to women?

Sigh.