Remembering Seven Years Ago

I saw a Facebook memory from seven years ago about my trip to Arizona to take care of things when my mother died. By then I was far enough into transition to be wearing dresses at work and so I had decisions to make about how visible I was going to while traveling and in unfamiliar places, and I figured it would be easier to dial back on the femininity and attract less attention.

And then I had a series of mostly basically nice, occasionally confusing, sometimes baffling, experiences in which I was clearly getting noticed. I was not very good at boy mode, and honestly had rather little idea how people perceived me. I guess if you have long hair, wear a floral print shirt and bright colored pants, carry a purse, and have a beard, you still get noticed, even if back at work I’d probably be wearing a dress and compared to that I felt like I was being much more careful. I figured wearing a dress at the airport would be taunting the TSA! But I still got a comment expressing some sort of surprise (though no actual problems going through).

I’d look at the other women around me and not really know what to expect my experiences might be like. As much as the Tumblr enbies wanted to insist that “passing” is bullshit, and as complicated a thing as it is, it still is really a thing. The cis women around me overwhelmingly got seen differently from me, that one guy who was so feminine he was more-or-less an honorary woman. And now that as far as I can tell I’m nearly always seen as an actual woman rather than a man who is sort of an honorary woman, I can tell you, it really is a different experience. As well as the honorary woman experience went for me, it’s a different experience.