As a blind person I get bumped into a lot.

I know the difference between an accidental knock & the thrust of a shoulder into my back.

This man gave me no warning, no opportunity to move & no assistance to move out of the way.

He just slammed into me & it was intentional.

And before the reply guys turn up to invalidate my experience & justify male violence.

My partner saw the man look at me & then charge in.

Luckily I wasn’t knocked off balance & hadn’t yet picked up my toddler. My partner helped me move aside & checked we were all ok.

The next incident happened as I took my guide dog for a toilet walk alone.

When I’m working from home I often take my guide dog Ava on what is known as a block route, it’s a walk that gives her enough exercise & guiding work with some time to do her business.

Most guide dog handlers have several of these routes memorised.

One of mine has a shortcut along an alley way with some grass & a few trees.

Ava was off harness but on her lead. She did her business & was having a sniff.

She wasn’t guiding me but I know every step of this path

As I have residual vision (shapes & motion) I became aware that someone had stopped a few feet directly in front of me which was odd.

I then recognised the familiar movement as he lifted his phone & pointed it at me.

He stood like this with his phone raised for several seconds.

I suspected he had photographed or filmed me.

So I confronted him.

As he walked closer I said “did you just take a photograph of me?”

And he snorted & said “what?”

I repeated the question & he came right up to me.

“No, I was taking a picture of the scenery.”

There is no scenery. This is an alleyway in a suburban bit of London.

The picture he took would’ve been of some scrubby grass, a tree & the back of some houses, in the rain.

So I scoffed at him.

Then he leant in and snarled “why don’t you take a look?”

And I walked away.

As a guide dog handler people photograph me a lot. How do I know? Well they announce it or they don’t bother to turn the camera sound off.

But this felt like a particularly nasty incident.

Perhaps he thought he’d caught me “faking” & wanted to record it.

It’s very common to assume guide dog handlers or people who use white canes have zero vision. When the reality is most of us can see something even if it’s just light or movement.

So maybe he didn’t expect me to notice him photographing me.

And he wasn’t pleased about it.

Maybe he’d watched me pick up after Ava (something we’re actually trained to do) & thought it would make a funny post on a Facebook group.

Whatever his motivation, it was gross & creepy.

But exhaustingly familiar.

I encounter this kind of hostility a lot.

For some people, often men, the mere existence of disabled women taking up space is enraging.

My being blind & being in a doorway in a garden or walking on a path provoked aggressive behaviours from these two men.

Disabled women experience this kind of reaction all the time.