What is it about "lady"?

So I was walking my dog and this arrogant jerk in an SUV decides that he is not going to yield to me, after all SUVs are washable. After skipping back out of his way I made a gesture. Not that one. The one where you hold your hands out to your sides, waist-height, palms up, calling on heaven to witness the wrongness of what just happened. And this guy, this guy who is in too much of a hurry to slow down to permit me to finish crossing the street, this guy slows down, rolls down his window, and leans out to shout back at me, "What, lady? There wasn't a stop sign!"

"It's a crosswalk!" I shrieked back.

"There wasn't a pedestrian sign!" he yelled, still looking back at me while he was driving forward.



Obviously there are several things I can be righteously angry about here, but what most irritates me is that vocative "lady". Don't call me "lady" when you're being a dick!