First of all, happy holidays everyone. The Gendered Lex crew is spread out across the country at the moment. I myself am recovering from some intense family time and enjoying a full week off from work. With all my free time I figured I better get some blogging in. You may have noticed that the blog layout has changed a bit. I've been playing around with some of our options. Don't be alarmed if it changes again. :)
On to the actual post..
I am very rarely read as any other gender besides female. I am a cisgendered, female identified person so I guess that works out for me. However, for many people that is not the case. Particularly for people who fall somewhere on the gendered spectrum in a place other than "male" or "female." Being mistaken for a gender other than your own can be a source of shame, embarrassment, and frustration for people, and even worse, can result in violence.
In a perfect world it I suppose it wouldn't matter if someone made a mistake and called you out of your gender. You would correct them, they would apologize, and everything would be fine. In an even MORE perfect world, maybe gender wouldn't matter at all and we wouldn't be so obsessed with trying to put people into certain categories.
Unfortunately in this world, we're only given two options and we have to conform to them. I really got to thinking about this recently after someone left me a crappy comment on my you tube channel where they referred to me as male.
To give it a little context, I made a video about what comes inside the Tofurky vegan feast package. The video is maybe about three minutes long and is intended to be light and silly. Here is the comment that I received:
"More proof that being a veegan is just a fad. Look at this guy's pseudointellectual glasses... multiple piercings... rebellious short hair... and flanel. Str8 Tool. So egotistic they record themselves because they think people want to watch. Well, i enjoyed calling you out, dear sir."
So yeah. I mean, I know that there are a lot of ignorant creepy people trolling around in internet land, and trust me, my feelings aren't hurt. I had a good laugh about all of the misspellings in his comment and his obvious lack of knowledge about veganism. But I think what really struck me the most was that he thought I was a guy. I guess I'm just not used to it. It just seemed so ludicrous to me that he couldn't see that I'm female. Then it struck me, that this may be similar to what transpeople and genderqueer people experience on a daily basis; people who can't seem to see their gender identity for what it is.
I want to hear about your experiences with being mistaken for a different gender. What happened? How did it make you feel? How was it resolved?
De Las.
Showing posts with label cisgendered. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cisgendered. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
New Venue in Town = I Peed on the Ground
Did the title grab your attention? Good. Let me propose something to you and please take the time to really think about this. As a cisgendered person, would you feel uncomfortable with gender neutral bathrooms in your favorite bar, or grocery store, or any other place you may frequent? And to those of you who identify differently, how would you feel if you came into your favorite bar and saw that the bathrooms were uniquely marked for the two types of humans who go out on a Friday night? I believe the response to the latter will be pretty uniform. Let me give you the story of my experience with the public restrooms in this town.
First of all, I am a pre-op, pre-hormone, androgynous, binding, FTM, gender-queer, and I go out A LOT. I used to work at the Good Foods co-op and before the expansion, they had gender neutral bathrooms. Sure, when I would walk out of the bathroom sometimes, a child would tug their mom's clothing and say "mommy, is that a boy or a girl?" but it's a Hell of alot better than a child screaming "Mommy, that boy was in the girl's room!" Or vice-versa.
I'm happy to say that I am no longer employed at this co-op, one reason being that with thier current expansion, they are providing larger bathrooms, which means they feel they need to throw a cut-out drawing of a "man" on one and a "woman" on the other. Some may be surprised at this step back in progress for this particular store, however it is coming from a place where the store manager said (to a cashier who shaved her head) "this is Kentucky, not San Francisco", then made her wear a hat.
I understand that with single stall bathrooms it is much easier to provide gender neutrality in a public space, which only pisses me off more when I see single stall bathrooms STILL LABELLED. To those spaces with large bathrooms providing multiple stalls I propose a third option. A safe option for people like me. I cringe at "Family" bathrooms, but God what a life-saver they are sometimes. Also, I have noticed some department stores provide a third option stictly for wheelchaired persons. In the event that I walk out of one of these and a handicapped person is waiting for me to come out, I will apologize profusely, however, I would rather someone assume I am an insensitive prick then stare me down on the way into the restroom because they feel I need to know just how disgusted they are.
To new owners who are just developing around Lexington (we are seeing a boom here) PLEASE include us in the drawing plans!!!! Buster's just re-opened bigger and better and on opening night I couldn't decide on a restroom (the old buster's was single stall and it didn't matter which one you used) and I had a male friend scope out the men's room and apparently even the toilet stalls have no doors. I ended up pissing in a corner of the parking lot all night.
Now back to my original question: To those of you who are cisgendered, would it really rock the boat too much to see a third space being provided for others? I mean, hey, if you're hateful toward non-gender conforming people, don't you want us to stop coming into your bathrooms?
This could go on forever and I want to see your comments!! Also lets take a moment to thank Third Street Stuff for being the ONLY public space who provide gender neutral restrooms. Thanks.
-Jackson
First of all, I am a pre-op, pre-hormone, androgynous, binding, FTM, gender-queer, and I go out A LOT. I used to work at the Good Foods co-op and before the expansion, they had gender neutral bathrooms. Sure, when I would walk out of the bathroom sometimes, a child would tug their mom's clothing and say "mommy, is that a boy or a girl?" but it's a Hell of alot better than a child screaming "Mommy, that boy was in the girl's room!" Or vice-versa.
I'm happy to say that I am no longer employed at this co-op, one reason being that with thier current expansion, they are providing larger bathrooms, which means they feel they need to throw a cut-out drawing of a "man" on one and a "woman" on the other. Some may be surprised at this step back in progress for this particular store, however it is coming from a place where the store manager said (to a cashier who shaved her head) "this is Kentucky, not San Francisco", then made her wear a hat.
I understand that with single stall bathrooms it is much easier to provide gender neutrality in a public space, which only pisses me off more when I see single stall bathrooms STILL LABELLED. To those spaces with large bathrooms providing multiple stalls I propose a third option. A safe option for people like me. I cringe at "Family" bathrooms, but God what a life-saver they are sometimes. Also, I have noticed some department stores provide a third option stictly for wheelchaired persons. In the event that I walk out of one of these and a handicapped person is waiting for me to come out, I will apologize profusely, however, I would rather someone assume I am an insensitive prick then stare me down on the way into the restroom because they feel I need to know just how disgusted they are.
To new owners who are just developing around Lexington (we are seeing a boom here) PLEASE include us in the drawing plans!!!! Buster's just re-opened bigger and better and on opening night I couldn't decide on a restroom (the old buster's was single stall and it didn't matter which one you used) and I had a male friend scope out the men's room and apparently even the toilet stalls have no doors. I ended up pissing in a corner of the parking lot all night.
Now back to my original question: To those of you who are cisgendered, would it really rock the boat too much to see a third space being provided for others? I mean, hey, if you're hateful toward non-gender conforming people, don't you want us to stop coming into your bathrooms?
This could go on forever and I want to see your comments!! Also lets take a moment to thank Third Street Stuff for being the ONLY public space who provide gender neutral restrooms. Thanks.
-Jackson
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