Thanks for sharing this. Your third-to-last paragraph reminds me of two ID stories from earlier (other?) points in transition:
I went to a friend's graduation party. An hour or two into the party, I go to the corner store for a pack of cigarettes. When I hand my ID over, the clerk holds onto it, reading the name (male) and gender designation (female) and looking at me (masculine, at the time) for so long that his co-worker, who is running another register, asks if he is going to give it back. I am dizzy when he hands it back and leave the party soon after.
Out for drinks with a couple friends and friends-of-friends. The bouncer doesn't have a problem with my ID (I think the sex marker was changed to M at this time). I do not go out to bars very often, and when I go to the bathroom, a man from our group that I don't know tags along. We enter the packed bathroom and I discover that there are no stalls, only urinals. I am so embarrassed that I fake the quickest pee ever, and rattled, return to our table. I hold out as long as my bladder can take it, and as I start to leave for the safety of my own toilet, a couple friends join. I end up having to make a pit-stop in a public toilet in a train station, hurting and embarrassed.
Other thoughts:
I think this is worth repeating:
The idea of being born in the “wrong body” is an insult to everyone. No one’s body is “wrong”
My gender journey has never really fit within the accepted trans narrative ("I always knew," "born into the wrong body," "he was a boy from the time he was very young"), though there have been times that I have tried to make it do so.
Now, my gender is less binary, as is my presentation. It is deeply disarming to me to be binding, have a beard, have a name tag with a male name on, and get called "she" (my least favorite and most dysphoric pronoun option). I like the idea of making space for flat-chested, hairy women, but sometimes doing it at the expense of my own body and identity hurt. Having that "M" on my ID definitely felt safer at times (though I'm starting to understand more now that as a white trans person, I was always at much less physical danger than a trans* person of color), but it also felt like acquiences: like, "no, really, my gender is legit now." Now it becomes somewhat alienating. I wish for a question mark or an X or a paragraph response....
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I went to a friend's graduation party. An hour or two into the party, I go to the corner store for a pack of cigarettes. When I hand my ID over, the clerk holds onto it, reading the name (male) and gender designation (female) and looking at me (masculine, at the time) for so long that his co-worker, who is running another register, asks if he is going to give it back. I am dizzy when he hands it back and leave the party soon after.
Out for drinks with a couple friends and friends-of-friends. The bouncer doesn't have a problem with my ID (I think the sex marker was changed to M at this time). I do not go out to bars very often, and when I go to the bathroom, a man from our group that I don't know tags along. We enter the packed bathroom and I discover that there are no stalls, only urinals. I am so embarrassed that I fake the quickest pee ever, and rattled, return to our table. I hold out as long as my bladder can take it, and as I start to leave for the safety of my own toilet, a couple friends join. I end up having to make a pit-stop in a public toilet in a train station, hurting and embarrassed.
Other thoughts:
I think this is worth repeating:
My gender journey has never really fit within the accepted trans narrative ("I always knew," "born into the wrong body," "he was a boy from the time he was very young"), though there have been times that I have tried to make it do so.
Now, my gender is less binary, as is my presentation. It is deeply disarming to me to be binding, have a beard, have a name tag with a male name on, and get called "she" (my least favorite and most dysphoric pronoun option). I like the idea of making space for flat-chested, hairy women, but sometimes doing it at the expense of my own body and identity hurt. Having that "M" on my ID definitely felt safer at times (though I'm starting to understand more now that as a white trans person, I was always at much less physical danger than a trans* person of color), but it also felt like acquiences: like, "no, really, my gender is legit now." Now it becomes somewhat alienating. I wish for a question mark or an X or a paragraph response....