Trans Awareness Month, Day 13 - Bathrooms

(This is part 13 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

Sheesh, further and further behind schedule... oh well, doing my best here. Here's the next question in the series:

13) Bathrooms

This isn't a question. Buuut, given recent events, it's certainly an important topic of conversation, so let's go.

I prefer gender-neutral, or so-called "family" bathrooms. When those aren't an option, I use the men's restroom, but I never use urinals if I can help it, because honestly, I'd really prefer not to focus on certain... facts of my anatomy.

I realize that trans-friendly bathroom policies are a hot button issue for many trans folks and cis folks alike. Take the current brouhaha over California's recently passed law that allows trans kids to use the locker rooms (and play on the sports teams) corresponding to their gender identity. Conversatives have gone nuts, claiming that this will lead to big bad scary boys declaring that they're "feeling transgender today" so they can go into the girls' bathroom and... do horrible things, presumably. There are at least two problems I can find with that strawman scenario, right off the top of my head:

1. I seriously doubt any school will roll over and let students change back and forth from day to day. This is intended to be more of a protection for the longsuffering trans kid that wants to permanently be associated with their identified gender.
2. If the "trans for a day" scenario wasn't already unlikely enough... what red-blooded meathead teenage boy do you know who would actually risk his reputation by declaring himself to be transgender, even temporarily? The boys that people are claiming to be so worried about are, I expect, so misogynistic that the thought of anyone seeing them as less than the manliest of men is probably terrifying.

So, yeah. This is such a strawman issue. Unfortunately, however, it's one that opponents can use to create fear and uncertainty in the electorate. Which really ticks me off.

Hybrids

So... um, happy new year?

Life's been crazy lately, and I'm sure I'll talk about why in another post. But this one's been simmering on the back burner of my brain for long enough that I need to just publish it and move on. Enjoy.

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A month or two ago I had a bit of an epiphany as I was on my lunch time bike ride.

I'd finally gotten myself another mountain bike, to replace the one that I lost in my big summer crash. It's a full-suspension bike, meaning that it has shock absorbers on the front fork, and also on the frame itself, below the seat. This is a first for me: I've owned plenty of road bikes, and my last bike was more rugged than a typical road-only bike, but this is my first full-blown "mountain bike."

Honestly, I'm having a hard time getting used to it.

The thing about full-suspension bikes, particularly the cheaper ones (like mine), is that they tend to be a little "bouncy": the shocks don't just cushion you from the big bumps, they operate pretty much constantly. So it leads to a bit of a weird rhythm that I can't quite get the hang of (yet, ze says hopefully...?). Plus it feels like I'm sitting too low, even though I have the seat post fully extended.

Maybe I just need time to adjust...

On the other hand, there's my new road bike, which I bought early in the summer (pre-crash) so that I could participate in the group rides that a friend in the area often does on Saturday mornings. It's tall—I almost have to get on my tiptoes to get my leg over the top bar—and the brake handles aren't where I expect them to be because it's a road-style cockpit, and my old bike had mountain-style handlebars. So on that bike, too, I feel a little unsteady. And frankly, a little unsafe.

I don't want to sound petty or ungrateful. This is definitely a "first world problem." The fact that I have a sufficient income to actually own two nice bikes during a recession is a real blessing. But I think my last bike really spoiled me.

My got-broken-in-the-crash bike was a crossover, sometimes called a hybrid. Ostensibly, it was a mountain bike, with the straight handlebars and shocks on the front fork, but the frame was much closer in appearance to a road bike's frame than to my new mountain bike's. I could ride it more or less upright, like a road bike, but the cockpit gave me the more precise and immediate control of a mountain bike. Its tires were also wider and knobbier than regular road tires, so I could ride the beat up, worn down streets around my office with confidence, then jump off the road and navigate dirt, rock and root-covered trails with equal aplomb.

I miss it.

So here's that epiphany I mentioned earlier: while riding, thinking about how weird the rhythm of my new mountain bike felt, and how I couldn't go as fast as I wanted to be going, etc etc etc, I realized that I feel the same way about my gender as I do about my bikes!

Yeah, shocker. :-P

Since last spring, when I started to earnestly examine my feelings of gender incongruence, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to me, what's really going on in my head. For years, I basically dealt with it by publicly acting more macho than I felt and rarely sharing my true feelings on a subject, and occasionally dressing en femme in private when the pressure got to be too much for me. I would swing back and forth between those two extremes for YEARS before I finally figured out that neither one felt entirely comfortable, exactly "right" for who I was.

Now that I'm out to my sweetheart, one thing she's felt very strongly about is that I not dress anymore, and I'm trying to honor that request by finding other coping strategies. For the most part, this has been easier that I expected it to be, because I'm finally allowing myself to be me, and not the totally-not-a-transperson-seriously-don't-look-at-me-that-way mask that I used to wear.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I think I'm slowly coming to the realization that I'm not the same kind of transperson as most of my online friends—and that's okay.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Okay, I'm a few days late with this one. (I'm on vacation, okay?)

This past Tuesday was the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to remember all of the transfolk that have been killed by acts of anti-trans violence.

I have a couple of dear online friends who are currently experiencing tremendous distress and hardship because of their desires to live an authentic life. Not physical violence, fortunately, but vicious emotional violence that threatens to tear apart their families and destroy their professional lives.

And why, exactly? Is it ignorance? Fear of the unknown? Is it an irrational hatred born of misunderstanding what "righteous indignation" is supposed to look like, and when it's appropriate? Maybe. But in both of my friends' cases, their avalanche of suffering has been triggered by the actions of a family member!

"Tough love" or not, that isn't how love is supposed to work!

But as bad as these situations may be, I can't help but think of those who have it so much worse. A recent report by Transgender Europe (TGEU), a non-profit organization that monitors these things, stated that by their count, at least 265 trans folk have been murdered in the past 12 months alone (and that count is likely low, due to unreported or under-reported cases)!

That breaks my heart.

There may come a day when transwomen and transmen alike can navigate the world with the confidence of relative safety afforded most cis folk. Where even if someone disagrees with your worldview, they respect you enough not to kill you over it. (honestly, that seems like a such a LOW bar to clear! Has humanity progressed so little since Cain and Abel?). I pray that day will come soon.

I Don't "Get" Guy Talk

So this morning I was part of a conversation at work with several of my co-workers (all men), and as is sometimes the case, there was a little mild teasing going on (I forget about who, exactly). Trying to get into the spirit of the thing, I made a joke that kind of ribbed one of the guys for not being as unrealistically awesome as his predecessor was. Then I almost immediately felt bad for doing so, because I was worried I'd hurt his feelings. Not that he'd ever admit to that, of course, and honestly, given the tone of the conversation, I doubt anyone gave it a second thought beyond the initial chuckle. But I so often read these things wrong!

I'm at a point in my career where it's becoming just as much about my people skills as it is my technical skills, and situations like this have a tendency to make me overthink everything. It's like I'm speaking a foreign language when I try to banter with guys, because I have no instinct for it. Maybe this is a learned trait that I just never learned, because I hung out with nerds and other social outcasts through most of my growing-up years. I don't know.

And you can just forget about "smack talk" before any kind of game or sporting event. My brain's just not wired that way.

Surprised

The other day when we got a few minutes to talk without the kids overhearing me, my sweetheart asked me a question that has apparently been bothering her:

"Why hasn't anyone commented on the second part of your post about me?"

I didn't have a very good answer.

I get the sense from the overall slowdown in my feed reader queue that at least some of you, my dear readers and friends, are largely preoccupied with your own lives right now. I certainly understand that (and have a whole post coming up on the subject).

I think maybe some people might be afraid to comment because they know D.W.'s now reading my blog, and they might not want to say something to offend her...? Maybe...? (At least I can imagine feeling that way about one of y'all if the situation was reversed!)

Anyway, this isn't a plea to go and comment over there, really it's not, because that would be kind of pathetic. But I have to admit I'm surprised.

I guess the takeaway I want to leave with anyone reading my blog is that they should feel free to express their opinions in comments here, and not hold back for fear of hurting our feelings or anything (but note that doesn't mean I'm giving you license to be trollish). I'd really like my blog to be a place where people can feel free and welcome to express themselves truly, and I will try to be a gracious host.

Giving directions

So the other day I was out on my usual lunchtime jog, when an older couple in a minivan pulled up next to me and asked how to get to (a nearby hotel that shall remain nameless). The road they were on, a small, residential dead-end, just happened to share a name with the larger, commercial road where the area's high end hotels are all situated, so I knew right away what had happened (darn GPSes! They're always getting people into trouble around here!). I gave them directions as best as I could, bid them good luck, and continued on my way.

About 5 minutes later, it occurred to me that I give directions differently than most guys I know, and I started to wonder if this was another "gender thing." That day I focused mainly on landmarks (e.g. "you'll pass a park on your left"), rather than on concrete map directions ("go north on Poplar about 2 miles until you get to Hollyhock"), which made me think of something I'd read a while back on the subject:

Studies over the past decade have shown that women are likelier to rely on landmarks and visual cues, and men on maps, cardinal directions (such as north and south) and gauges of distance.

There's a Men's Route And a Women's Route, washingtonpost.com

Sounds like what I experienced! But in Googling the subject tonight, I found a least one scientific study which seems to indicate that these differences are probably anecdotal at best:

[the researcher] gathered data from a more natural context, by driving alongside a customer in a petrol station, winding down her window and asking the person for directions. She did this 60 times, asking 30 men and 30 women. Ewald found no differences in the directions that she received, with the single exception that men tended to estimate how far away the destination was more often than women did. However the men’s estimates were more likely to be wrong than the women’s!

Linguistics Research Digest

Still, there may be some truth to this. Not that it makes any difference, any more than if my ring fingers are the same length as my index fingers, or if my arms turn outward when I face my palms forward. But still, it made me chuckle.

Me versus the male gaze

A couple of times recently, I've realized something a little unusual about myself. Occasionally, I'll find myself looking closely at attractive women I see when out and about (at the grocery store, pumping gas in the car, that sort of thing). I try to be discrete about it, but sometimes they notice, and kind of give me the evil eye like I'm undressing them with my eyes or something (which I'm not; although I'm attracted to women in general, my wife's my one and only).

Awkward.

I wonder how much more awkward it would be if they knew I was actually admiring their cool boots, pretty blouse, or very feminine short haircut. ;)