Heterosexual Tyranny

The commonest form of it, one that all men, gay or straight, walking alone, experience sooner or later, is being "bumped"--run off a narrow sidewalk by a heterosexual couple. Like most tyrannical acts which deny personhood, it is usually committed obliviously and inadvertently. Absorbed in one another, and themselves, to the point of forgetting their public presence--and their manners--the young (not always!), typically American, het couple will push you to the wall, or drive you into the street, most often without noticing what they've done, and never with any apology. Women, happily for them, unless they're extraordinarily unattractive, seldom get ignored--or "bumped"--the way that a hapless single male does.

Historical Note: One of the "peculiar institutions" that poisoned the sweetness of living before 1789--not the only thing, of course, but certainly among the more keenly resented of aristocratic abuses--were the bâtonneurs, the liveried thugs that walked ahead of Dukes and Princes of the Blood in the streets, knocking people (men, women, and children) out of the way with cudgels.