It’s 10am and I am making my way to the metro station entrance, I go through the security check-in entrance. And decide to go through the women’s line because I know how things work, you step in a covered makeshift closet, they pass the scanner around you and let you go.
Going through the gent’s line seems scarier, the mistakes feel public, the people are waiting visibly, the wait is visible. God forbid, something triggers off the beep on that detector.
Back to the moment, three guards talk to me loudly with alert commanding voices that I am in the wrong queue, I don’t have a template reaction for this, I am confused, I mumble a “no” and they are all looking at my chest to understand. After two long minutes of confusion, I scan my bag and go my way. The security-guard apologies. I mumble an “it’s okay” and rush to catch the leaving metro.
Although it has happened often enough now for me to expect, but I often am taken by surprise. Broken from my thought, the very thing I was mediating on, a thought lost to time and moment, something I won’t be catch again. Sad. Tragic. The cost is real. Read more about it on Page 9 of A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.
Can I please pass through the metro line without having to explain myself or my existence?
Being gender-non-conforming has its price in the everyday encounters of life, passing through the metro line, being stopped at washrooms, being gently and mockingly informed of “This is the ladies restroom”.
I also think it’s familiarity, if I had grown up using the men’s restroom with my dad, I might have easily gone to the other one, but I don’t know the unsaid protocols and rules, you pick up silently.
Playing the gender game seems to be the only option, I am…not trying pass as anything, I am just trying to exist as myself.
i can’t change an entire system where they would be respectful while checking boys. I’d take the boys line if it’s easy.
i was confused, because, rationally to me, why or for what benefit would I specially go out of my way to enter a women’s line or a bathroom?
like I don’t know what’s the worse that could happen if they let a boy or two pass through the women’s security check-in?
It is messed up, I don’t have solutions.
And this problem seems to be staying here for the long-term.
The few times I have gotten a pass was because my mom was with me or some female shaped person was vouching for my feminity, that feels wrong on so many levels that I need a gaurantor to pass through the world.
i think am just upset realising the long term effects, am just as upset as I realised that I will be menstruating for the rest of my goddamn life and calculating all the swimming classes or games periods I will miss. And the number of days that will be gone in this.
In the last week, I got called out, mocked or pestered for all of this:
– Metro security check-in
– Going to my berth in the Sleeper bus, the conductor was pissed off because he thought I was using somebody else’s name/gender to get the seat.
– The bus stopped at some random hotel for a restroom break, it’s raining, all the guys are peeing in the corner in the rainwater, I figure out the ladies restroom, I get told off “this is ladies”, this is where I snap, “I am LADIES”, I lie, if I had a dick, I would be happily peeing in the rain, goddamit.
– Using the paid women’s restroom, the money-collector women said something haughtily in a different language and started laughing. I didn’t have time for that, I had to use the restroom.
– I catch a public bus to go the village, I go up to climb the women’s section, it’s full, the college girls are trying to figure out if I am a girl or a guy, they tell me if I am a college student, the fare is free, I nod and smile at them. The bus halts at a stop, the conductor rushed to ticket me, looks confused, asks “If I am ladies”, I say “yes”. Going to the back in men’s department, lugging my suitcase, figuring out the cash exchange would be problematic. I lie again.
am-still-enby-and-will-be,
calra
Leave a Reply