Transgender - Dealing with the Public
Oct. 18th, 2005 11:58 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
ku-she.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
transSo my spouse, Jamie, went full time two weeks ago and in the last few days we have been out a lot together buying girly things like underwear, clothes, shoes and makeup. I've had the chance to watch her interact with a bunch of people around the place and firm up some of my ideas about human behaviour when meeting strangers. I thought I might share this with those of you who have been through this in various ways and those of you who don't live in Oz and see what else you thought about it.
I've come to the conclusion that people don't really care that you are trans. They care much more about making a mistake about you being trans.
No offense is intended by my comments, just food for thought from a close to TG, but not TG perspective.
Jamie passes decently for a two week fulltimer. Some people clock her at a casual glance, some don't. When she gets to stand around someone for a few minutes and get involved in a conversation, more people start to get that little question mark in her eyes. I've been able to dispassionately observe some human behaviours that have led me to a few conclusions.
There are three basic stages people go through:
Recognition
Reaction
Acceptance.
Recognition - they recognise that Jamie is not a simple woman. She either is TG, a crossdresser, some other kind of trans, or strange in some inexplicable way.
Reaction - they act in some way that conveys their recognition.
Acceptance - after a while they realise that Jamie is just another human, not a 'thing' with a label, they get over their reaction and move on.
In some people this process takes no more than a minute or two. In others it takes years. ;)
There are a few different basic reactions:
1. Nervousness
2. Curiosity
3. Jerkiness
There's also a fourth category, Oblivious, that I'll go into later.
1. Nervousness
This first one comes through as the other person being very nervous around her/us (together we're a fairly obvious lesbian couple).
I feel that the person is concerned about getting Jamie's gender wrong or our relationship status wrong. Some people can get very upset over the smallest mistake from a stranger (like mispronouncing their name) and it is a much greater social faux pas to mess up someone's gender or relationship status. When a customer service/retail person sees us, there is nervousness that they will make an assumption, then make an incorrect comment and end up with an irate customer and a big customer relations incident in front of them.
Their nervousness has nothing to do with fear or condemnation of Jamie as trans, and everything to do with the fear of the unhappy customer/unhappy boss situation that comes from making a mistake. And a lot of people genuinely want to 'get it right' when it comes to how people want to be treated.
I notice that these people can get over their reaction very quickly when Jamie puts them at ease with her sweet nature and when I refer to Jamie firmly with female pronouns or identify her as my partner. Then they know what to say, and they move on to acceptance.
2. The Curious
When you get past the nervousness, or for people who are already over it, you then get the curious. There aren't many openly trans people in the world. Most are stealth or most aren't out or they're just plain rare. Homosexuality is much more easily accepted now and between TV, movies and magazines, the common person feels that they have some understanding of what homosexuality is about. What they don't know much about are trans people. If you even put a few minutes thought into what the mainstream media presents trans people as, you quickly realise that that's got to be a very shallow representation. And here Jamie and I come, often with kids in tow, and we present a much more mainstream, family view of being trans.
The curiosity burns in these people. Are you lesbians? Did you know each other as man/woman? Who had the kids? Are they yours? What's it like at home? Do the kids call you both mummy? What do your families think? How do you deal with school? There are so many questions, and no real place to get answers, because regular street variety trans people aren't represented anywhere.
When we meet these kinds of people they can often be a bit awkward. you can see that they are desperate to find out more - they want to understand life from your point of view. But society tells them it is rude to ask questions, so they just keep their questions to themselves.
3. The Jerks
About 8 years ago I heard about a very interesting psychological study. It examined whether talking to strangers in public made you a more likely target for a random act of violence. For example, if you're on a train and you smile to the person next to you, does that mark you as their next mugging victim? The very interesting results of the study was that no, talking to strangers in public didn't make you more likely to be a victim of random violence. If you speak to someone on the train, or just smile at them, you are not going to push them over the edge into random violence. The researcher's advice was to 'go ahead and be friendly to people' and to stop living in fear.
My understanding of this is that People will be jerks because they are, inherently, jerks. They will not be a jerk just to you because you are trans. If you weren't trans, they could easily find some other unfounded reason to be a jerk to you - your gender, age, ethnic background, weight, eye color, hair style, clothing. Each of those reasons for being a jerk is just as stupid and just as arbitrary as the others. The important thing to remember is that they are being a jerk because that is what they are. There is nothing you can do about it, you aren't at fault, nothing you did made them be a jerk when they weren't one before. They will never accept you for who you are, nor are they worth wasting your time on. Just recognise that they are jerks and move on.
Lastly, the Oblivious.
These are the ones that don't clock you. That don't recognise, react and then accept. They aren't nervous, or curious or jerks. They call you ma'am or sir without thinking, they think that we are sisters or friends or lesbians. They give you your change and move on to the next customer. There are an awful lot of these folks out there, they're simply too tired, too busy or too oblivious (like me) to notice. They can be a nice confidence boost or a demoraliser when they get your gender wrong. Don't worry about these folks, either, it's not personal.
When I was pregnant with my first child I remember telling a co-worker I was going on six weeks leave. I was 39 weeks pregnant. He looked at me and asked, "So why are you going on leave?" I explained that I was pregnant, due the next week. He, and the other three guys who shared his office space all looked surprised. And then embarrassed. It simply didn't matter to them that I had grown larger over the past nine months. There was no point in getting upset because it was never personal, they were just fellow geeks who don't notice such things.
As a trans person I know that Jamie worries a lot about passing, about being accepted. My advice is just to give people some time and make your goal to be accepted as yourself. 'Woman' is just another label, like 'trans'. It's much nicer to be accepted as yourself than as some stereotype (like a walking womb. Who would want to be considered just the sum of their reproductive organs?). As soon as people understand how you want to be treated (you want female pronouns, you want to shop in a woman's store for yourself, you want to be recognised as having a same sex partner) they make a genuine effort to meet your wishes. This is made much easier when you are nice to them when they slip up.
One thing I have noticed with Misty over the past few weeks is that after a few minutes it doesn't matter to other people what her 'label' is. People get nervous about labels, they forget that behind the label is a human being simply wanting to be treated as a person. Jamie, the wonderful person that she is, just smiles and treats everyone sweetly, despite being nervous and incredibly anxious under her calm exterior. I have noticed that it is this simple calmness and sweetness that makes things so easy for her. Once people realise that all Jamie wants is to be treated as human, they relax and start doing just that. They slip up, we just smile, say 'that's ok', gently correct them and move on.
I am so proud of Jamie, she is such a great ambassador for Trans folks. I know that, in the last two weeks, there are at least 20 people in our neighbourhood who have spent a little time getting to know that trans people are human too. They survived the experience and will hopefully find it a little easier to deal with the next Trans person they meet. Or maybe the next time they hear a tasteless trans joke or see a tasteless bit of media, they will decide that they know better and ignore that representation.
I've come to the conclusion that people don't really care that you are trans. They care much more about making a mistake about you being trans.
No offense is intended by my comments, just food for thought from a close to TG, but not TG perspective.
Jamie passes decently for a two week fulltimer. Some people clock her at a casual glance, some don't. When she gets to stand around someone for a few minutes and get involved in a conversation, more people start to get that little question mark in her eyes. I've been able to dispassionately observe some human behaviours that have led me to a few conclusions.
There are three basic stages people go through:
Recognition
Reaction
Acceptance.
Recognition - they recognise that Jamie is not a simple woman. She either is TG, a crossdresser, some other kind of trans, or strange in some inexplicable way.
Reaction - they act in some way that conveys their recognition.
Acceptance - after a while they realise that Jamie is just another human, not a 'thing' with a label, they get over their reaction and move on.
In some people this process takes no more than a minute or two. In others it takes years. ;)
There are a few different basic reactions:
1. Nervousness
2. Curiosity
3. Jerkiness
There's also a fourth category, Oblivious, that I'll go into later.
1. Nervousness
This first one comes through as the other person being very nervous around her/us (together we're a fairly obvious lesbian couple).
I feel that the person is concerned about getting Jamie's gender wrong or our relationship status wrong. Some people can get very upset over the smallest mistake from a stranger (like mispronouncing their name) and it is a much greater social faux pas to mess up someone's gender or relationship status. When a customer service/retail person sees us, there is nervousness that they will make an assumption, then make an incorrect comment and end up with an irate customer and a big customer relations incident in front of them.
Their nervousness has nothing to do with fear or condemnation of Jamie as trans, and everything to do with the fear of the unhappy customer/unhappy boss situation that comes from making a mistake. And a lot of people genuinely want to 'get it right' when it comes to how people want to be treated.
I notice that these people can get over their reaction very quickly when Jamie puts them at ease with her sweet nature and when I refer to Jamie firmly with female pronouns or identify her as my partner. Then they know what to say, and they move on to acceptance.
2. The Curious
When you get past the nervousness, or for people who are already over it, you then get the curious. There aren't many openly trans people in the world. Most are stealth or most aren't out or they're just plain rare. Homosexuality is much more easily accepted now and between TV, movies and magazines, the common person feels that they have some understanding of what homosexuality is about. What they don't know much about are trans people. If you even put a few minutes thought into what the mainstream media presents trans people as, you quickly realise that that's got to be a very shallow representation. And here Jamie and I come, often with kids in tow, and we present a much more mainstream, family view of being trans.
The curiosity burns in these people. Are you lesbians? Did you know each other as man/woman? Who had the kids? Are they yours? What's it like at home? Do the kids call you both mummy? What do your families think? How do you deal with school? There are so many questions, and no real place to get answers, because regular street variety trans people aren't represented anywhere.
When we meet these kinds of people they can often be a bit awkward. you can see that they are desperate to find out more - they want to understand life from your point of view. But society tells them it is rude to ask questions, so they just keep their questions to themselves.
3. The Jerks
About 8 years ago I heard about a very interesting psychological study. It examined whether talking to strangers in public made you a more likely target for a random act of violence. For example, if you're on a train and you smile to the person next to you, does that mark you as their next mugging victim? The very interesting results of the study was that no, talking to strangers in public didn't make you more likely to be a victim of random violence. If you speak to someone on the train, or just smile at them, you are not going to push them over the edge into random violence. The researcher's advice was to 'go ahead and be friendly to people' and to stop living in fear.
My understanding of this is that People will be jerks because they are, inherently, jerks. They will not be a jerk just to you because you are trans. If you weren't trans, they could easily find some other unfounded reason to be a jerk to you - your gender, age, ethnic background, weight, eye color, hair style, clothing. Each of those reasons for being a jerk is just as stupid and just as arbitrary as the others. The important thing to remember is that they are being a jerk because that is what they are. There is nothing you can do about it, you aren't at fault, nothing you did made them be a jerk when they weren't one before. They will never accept you for who you are, nor are they worth wasting your time on. Just recognise that they are jerks and move on.
Lastly, the Oblivious.
These are the ones that don't clock you. That don't recognise, react and then accept. They aren't nervous, or curious or jerks. They call you ma'am or sir without thinking, they think that we are sisters or friends or lesbians. They give you your change and move on to the next customer. There are an awful lot of these folks out there, they're simply too tired, too busy or too oblivious (like me) to notice. They can be a nice confidence boost or a demoraliser when they get your gender wrong. Don't worry about these folks, either, it's not personal.
When I was pregnant with my first child I remember telling a co-worker I was going on six weeks leave. I was 39 weeks pregnant. He looked at me and asked, "So why are you going on leave?" I explained that I was pregnant, due the next week. He, and the other three guys who shared his office space all looked surprised. And then embarrassed. It simply didn't matter to them that I had grown larger over the past nine months. There was no point in getting upset because it was never personal, they were just fellow geeks who don't notice such things.
As a trans person I know that Jamie worries a lot about passing, about being accepted. My advice is just to give people some time and make your goal to be accepted as yourself. 'Woman' is just another label, like 'trans'. It's much nicer to be accepted as yourself than as some stereotype (like a walking womb. Who would want to be considered just the sum of their reproductive organs?). As soon as people understand how you want to be treated (you want female pronouns, you want to shop in a woman's store for yourself, you want to be recognised as having a same sex partner) they make a genuine effort to meet your wishes. This is made much easier when you are nice to them when they slip up.
One thing I have noticed with Misty over the past few weeks is that after a few minutes it doesn't matter to other people what her 'label' is. People get nervous about labels, they forget that behind the label is a human being simply wanting to be treated as a person. Jamie, the wonderful person that she is, just smiles and treats everyone sweetly, despite being nervous and incredibly anxious under her calm exterior. I have noticed that it is this simple calmness and sweetness that makes things so easy for her. Once people realise that all Jamie wants is to be treated as human, they relax and start doing just that. They slip up, we just smile, say 'that's ok', gently correct them and move on.
I am so proud of Jamie, she is such a great ambassador for Trans folks. I know that, in the last two weeks, there are at least 20 people in our neighbourhood who have spent a little time getting to know that trans people are human too. They survived the experience and will hopefully find it a little easier to deal with the next Trans person they meet. Or maybe the next time they hear a tasteless trans joke or see a tasteless bit of media, they will decide that they know better and ignore that representation.