‘I Was Raised a Hasidic Man. When I Came Out as a Woman, the Sexism Shocked Me’

“Hey, Sweetie, what’s up?”

I ignore and continue walking.

“Oh, oh, you can’t talk? Show me that ass!”

I pick up my pace.

“What are you so afraid of? I am really nice!” he continues, taking a step toward me.

Now I am terrified, so I start to run. I run the half block down West 112th Street until I reach the door of The Bayit, the Jewish co-op where I am living on the campus of Columbia University. The co-op is empty at this hour, even the common room, so I take a cup of orange juice from the fridge, and head up to my room on the fourth floor.

I am shaking.

This was a wintry evening in January 2016. I’d been on my way home from a late night out with friends in Brooklyn, and by the time I stepped off the train just a few blocks from my apartment, it was after 11 p.m. The streets, usually still bustling at that hour, were quiet. Spring semester wouldn’t start for a couple more weeks, but I thought nothing of the emptiness. I had walked this way dozens of times and never thought twice about whether I’d be safe.

But while the area might have been the same as it always was, I had changed. This time I was finally living as a woman.

Being raised as a boy in the Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community in Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, wasn’t exactly liberating—our community was simply built on strict social rules that reinforced the most traditional gender norms. “Why aren’t the boys helping Mommy and the girls in the kitchen?” I remember asking my father when I was about 12. On Friday nights, especially in the winter, when we would come back home from shul (the colloquial Yiddish word for synagogue), the Shabbas table often was not yet ready for the meal. My mother and sisters rushed around with last-minute preparations while my father, brothers, and I relaxed.

It always went down the same way. “Girls, the table isn’t going to set itself!” was my father’s standard "motivational” call out to my sisters. They knew what they had to do: Get into the kitchen and get ready to serve a five-course Shabbas meal for our family of 15. “Shouldn’t we help set the table?” I dared to ask once. In my mind, it didn’t make any sense—it’s not like we were doing anything anyway.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for what it means to be a woman in New York City, in the 21st century.

Even growing up in the Hasidic community, with hard-set gender roles—only men go to shul, only men set the tone in community leadership, and only women are tasked with housework—the divide made little sense to me. In some ways, I was a feminist from a young age. (Of course, I'd known that I was really a girl since I was three, so that might have played into my feminist leanings.)

My father gave me a baffled look. “What? I mean, why? That is the women’s job. We don’t have to do housework!” I should, it seemed, just take my privilege and enjoy it.

I got used to it. Sexism was a pillar of my life—a life I was desperately straining to break free of. The older I got, the harder it became to deny I was misgendered. I was a girl; living as a boy was becoming more and more impossible. Living as a woman would mean leaving my family, my community, my whole world, but it would also mean being liberated. I would be free to be myself, free of the gender norms that made me feel suffocated.

I imagined my life as a woman in New York City: I’d wear pink, go on dates with men, get to hang out with other girls. It never occurred to me that I would encounter sexism in my new life in the modern world.

I left the Hasidic community in 2012 and came out as a woman in 2015. As I have transitioned into the melting pot of modern New York, I have been asked many times about what has shocked me most about “American culture.” For all intents and purposes, I did not grow up in the United States—geographically, sure, but not culturally—so people are curious.

The answer is sadly clear: It’s the sexism. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for what it means to be a woman in New York City, in the 21st century. “Once you start passing as a woman, people will doubt your statements and opinions, and expect you to ‘prove’ them,” a friend told me shortly after I transitioned. I believed her, but when it happened, the reality still shocked me deep inside.

I have experienced more harassment on the streets of New York City for being a woman than for being transgender.

That late January evening wasn’t my first face-to-face interaction with sexism—I’ve been cut off midsentence, my opinions dismissed by men who were sure they knew better; catcalled in ways that made me feel both seen (Yes! That’s right! I am a woman!) and objectified—but it was the first time I felt terrified walking the streets of my own neighborhood. When I told a friend about it the next day, still shaken, it hit me: This kind of harassment, this kind of fear, is the norm for women. “Now that people see you as the woman you are, you need to be careful about being outside at such a late hour,” she said.

In that moment I felt something so familiar, something I’d felt my whole life being incorrectly raised male in one of the most gender-segregated societies in the world: afraid.

Since then, I have experienced these subtle—and at times not so subtle—sexist remarks and aggressions. I can say in no uncertain terms that I have experienced more harassment on the streets of New York City for being a woman than for being transgender. I can count on one hand the amount of times I was harassed for being trans. I have lost track of the amount of times I was harassed for being a woman. That’s not to say transphobia isn’t a problem; it very much is. I am also very aware that I benefit from what we call “passing privilege”—the first thing people see when I walk down the street is that I am a woman, and unless you talk to me, or stare closely, it is difficult to pick up that I am trans. Sexism is so ingrained in our society that even in a “woke” city, it feels like many people find it more acceptable to be sexist than to be transphobic.

I don't know how many people can say this, but I have experienced living in New York City while passing as a man, and I have experienced living here as a woman. Whenever I hear men say that sexism is not as bad as women say it is, I can't help but agree—it’s worse.

Abby Chava Stein is the author of Becoming Eve, a memoir of her journey from Ultra-Orthodox rabbi to transgender woman. Follow her @AbbyChavaStein.

Originally Appeared on Glamour