Me, to a cis person: “have you….have you had…the surgery?”
Cis person: “what surgery?”
Me: “the one that removes your head from your ass”
Care for an anecdote? I call this one Cis People Are Crazy, and it’s a lil sumthin sumthin that will come as no surprise whatsoever to any trans person.
So, due to All Of The Most Recent Bullshit, I was at a trans support rally in my city yesterday with my family. Some nice person was handing out these big pretty heart stickers with the trans pride flag colors on them, like this:
We all got one. I put mine on the hoodie I was wearing, which I wear a version of basically every day, right? It’s the Cringeandwince uniform.
So, without giving it much thought, I put that hoodie on again today and go food shopping, and – this is dense as fuck, but it took me a few minutes to figure out why so many people were acting weirder than usual towards me.
I got a lot of looks.
I got mainly curiosity from people who noticed at all. But I also received open hostility from two separate White dudes about my age, over-the-top/smile-too-big kindness from a White woman a little older than me, and total, disaggregating confusion from my White 30s male cashier after he asked me what the sticker meant and I told him. As in, my presence coupled with the very concept of trans people seemed to have this guy on the verge of simply falling apart, joint by joint, atomically, behind his register. It was like he blew a fuckin gasket, ok.
For people who don’t know me well enough to know who I am – I’m a straight, mixed Native cis woman in her 40s. While I don’t think I’ve ever been misgendered, I am about 5′10″ and built like a brick shithouse, and I wear mainly “men’s” clothing (black hoodie, blue jeans, hiking boots); the word “butch” has been thrown my way in the past. I also however have very long hair and wear long earrings.
The gamut of reactions today was pretty interesting because I’m a middle-aged woman – I’m almost roundly ignored in public these days, utterly invisible. But the presence of that trans pride sticker changed that on a dime. I left the store thinking to myself, Jesus Christ, this is the most interested people have been about what’s in between my legs since I was about 25.
So, hey, other cis people? Just a suggestion that a lot of us may be looking like total gormless morons – possibly abject fuckwits, maybe even vacuous clowns??? – when we interact with trans people a lot of the time. Try to be aware of this if you ain’t already because: it’s fucking annoying as hell, kinda scary, really really boring, and weird.
Not sure I’ve ever read a more comprehensive summary of How People Stare at Me ™ before now.
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