Sometimes you have amazing new experiences

Sometimes you have amazing new experiences in the course of gender transition. Today, I was driving a somewhat longer distance and as happens felt a need to use the restroom and so I stopped at a highway rest stop. Obviously, I for one can talk at length about the issues with how we set up restrooms and the gendering thing, but nonetheless, I need to pee and since I’m a woman and also I am about $6000 into electrolysis and have been sticking a needle in myself every week to inject estrogen, I use the women’s side.

So I go in and do the usual things and wash my hands (standing next to a woman washing her hands and paying no attention to me whatsoever—why would she?—and I’m just saying having had a lot of experiences being a very noticeable guy in the men’s room, sometimes even when I thought I was in boy mode, it’s really nice to attract no attention whatsoever) and then it’s time to dry my hands. So I turn to the hot-air hand dryers, which, since this is a highway rest area and not exactly all brand new, are the good old World Dryer from Berkeley, Illinois. The white box on the wall with the chrome air nozzle and the big chrome button to turn it on, and the metal tag with the brand name and the amps and volts and the operation instructions (you press the big chrome button to turn it on). And they were completely unvandalized!!! My entire life, every one of these I’ve ever seen has had the metal tag all scratched up! Back in the old days, they wrote the instructions out in English: 1. Push button 2. Rub hands under warm air 3. Stops automatically. Every single one had some of the letters scratched off to read Push butt/rub hands under arm/stop auto. Newer ones have the diagram of button pushing and hand rubbing, so instead of that specific pattern, one or another message, of some kind, is scratched into the tag. One way or another, scratching the metal nameplate on the hand dryer is clearly a culturally important ritual!

Or, it is on the one side. Over on the other side, apparently women just don’t feel the need to vandalize them! In fact, not only were they unvandalized, they were in beautiful condition, just hints of a bit of normal wear and tear after probably decades hanging on the wall of a public toilet on the side of the highway, but apparently used by people who just wanted to dry their hands and didn’t abuse or damage them in any way! (I am laughing so hard, every time I think of this I laugh, this is such a bizarre thing!)

I’ve got a lifetime of harm from gender stereotypes, so I want to be careful what I say here, but, guys, dudes, fellows: Did you know that you can just not vandalize those things? It’s true! I’ve seen it!

Like a lot of things I’ve experienced in transition, this isn’t exactly a surprise, I’ve talked about the hand dryer vandalism with cis women over the years and all of them expressed surprise, they’ve never seen them vandalized. But, you know, actually seeing it is still a thing!

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