So you've grown your hair out, put a bit of jewelery on and you're out on one of the major shopping streets of the city. One time you're wearing a silk/cotton shirt, powder blue velvet trouser suit and green leather 4 inch heeled boots. Another time you're wearing flat canvas shoes, denim skirt and beige silk sweater. A couple of nerdy guys pass you and one calls out asking if you're a man or woman. What do you do ?
In the second case, I simply answered transi,( the ethnic style here), which at least temporarily defused any possible escalation, in a way that answering 'yes' wouldn't quite.
The first case...well I managed that once to give the approved pc response, 'Why don't you suck my cock and find out?'.
The second case was here last year, though, and the first was in London's Kings Road in about 1970.
Plus ca change, plus ca something completely different...
Do you get many compliments? In my town i get far more positive responses to my genderqueer expression than negative.
ReplyDeleteBut its very confronting when the negative does occur.. i took enough punches for being Goth and what effeminacy slipped through my repression in the past back before my disability was bad enough to make running or self-defence a problem I don't really want to have to test my current situation.
The problem is that 95% of my waking life is in my place : think down-market left bank cafe kind of thing. And the immediate environment is one of the most trans friendly on the planet.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't stop occasional street confrontations and if a local can't quite work you out , they are only too entitled to stare at you from a few feet away, but if I hear someone shout at me, it's far likely to be a friend. My health and vanishing testosterone muscles leave me hugely vulnerable though. I get vastly paranoid trying to organize travel to the UK for part of my medical stuff. Any infection can be serious and a couple of punches to the stomach would be potentially fatal.
But with the people in my place ? Of newcomers a very few don't stay around but for most I'm exoticised if I'm noticed.
Then they're the people who are regulars and friends, maybe about 100, and, sure, I get compliments there, after all they're very much a part of my transition schooling.And it's very much of a girl thing so...
On another level men sometimes compliment me on being brave, and women on being inspiring. The first I find mistaken, but accept the latter in that it's usually part of a mutual exchange of inspiration.