67 – gendering (but sexism)

Since this happened today, I’ve been wondering if it would qualify as a blog post. I’d already posted a snippet on my facebook page, but the more I think about it, the more I think I should write something.

Today, for the first time at work, I was audibly gendered correctly. This is big for me. It took just over 2 months to happen. I know without any doubt I do not look as female at work as I do outside of work. But I DO think I look female. ish. mostly.

Without hair framing my face, all the masculine features leap out. Granted, there aren’t a TON of them, but they are there. And even most of them are subtle, but add them all up, and people make assumptions. This really isn’t about passing, but it kind of is. If I passed, this would be a non-issue.

It’s about presentation and reaction. If I present properly as female, I should get reacted to that way. A lot of my problem in my work environment is my fault. How I view myself affects greatly how I present myself, and vice versa. It’s a vicious cycle. I know I don’t look the way I know I can look, so that gets projected. Muscle memory is a great thing a lot of the time, but not so much for a transwoman in my job. When I’m at work, I have to do a lot of things that rely on muscle memory. A lot of things I don’t need to rely on muscle memory for, come along for the ride, unfortunately.

So, this is what happened:

Having lunch in the truck, an Indian fellow (about 55 years old) walks up to the truck (I believe he is a shop owner in the strata mall we’re pruning at). He says hi, and then asks how he can make his plants grow, with all this sunshine, his aren’t growing.

I get a few words out to find out what kind of plants, as he spots my uncle on the other side of the truck. “Oh, I will talk to the boss,” he says, and walks around to the other side of the truck. My immediate reaction is great, I don’t have to deal with this. Then my second reaction is, wait a sec, I’m the crew chief.

My uncle proceeds to find out it’s vegetable plants this guy wants help with. Neither of us are that familiar with growing veggies. I kind of zone out of the conversation at this point. Until I hear, “How much does she work for?”

Wait. What? She? Holy fuck. He said it completely matter of factly, not questioningly as I envisioned the first time being. He KNEW I was a she.

“I could hire her to look after my tomatoes,” or something like that. “$25 an hour for her to do that,” again he says. Then he said something about she should work for nothing, but I didn’t catch why.

It was over and over again, “she” and “her”. I was flabbergasted. I, in my opinion at least, did not look my best today. I’ve had other days where I could have sworn I was very cute and rocking my head scarf and still got called sir/he/him. I had minimal makeup on today – foundation (to hide electrolysis redness), eyebrows, blue eyeliner. That is it. Not even mascara today.

As he went back to the store, he offered us drinks (because of the heat) which we declined – we had lots of water anyway.

For the next while I was over the moon happy about this. Then I started thinking more about it. Was that a little bit sexist? Was I just a victim (albeit a minor one) of sexism? First thought; yay! Second though; that’s a completely inappropriate response.

I am completely of two minds over this. Sexism of any kind is horrible, and here I am happy it happened to me. wtf? I guess I kind of have to live with the fact that I’m happy about this one time. If it wasn’t the first time ever getting correctly gendered at work, I would NOT be happy about it. And it was relatively minor, could even just be ageism. I can’t discolour my first time with negativity. So, I’ll try and forget the ‘isms’ of it, and just recount the happy.

So yeah, ultimately – Happy.

Hugs,
Jess