So what gets left out of these arguments a lot or misunderstood about being trans is not that this is a ‘belief’ based system. We are very individually aware of what we look like to other people and how we are being “clocked” by others. Take me, I am trans masculine but bodywise I have opted not to transition because of specific reasons. I don’t automatically feel comfortable using the gent’s washroom.
All of us are looking to find the path of least resistance in this binary that wasn’t designed for us. Trans women I know who don’t seemlessly pass often get stares regardless of what bathroom they use but while women might be horrible, going to the mens means that transphobes can follow you to a secondary location to assault you. If there’s an individual third non gendered option that’s often what we use because for me, I feel weird about being in women’s spaces even if they don’t hassle me and my clockable trans grildfriends don’t have to deal with the anxiety of other people staring.
If I did go on hrt though it would be a different story. I, like all of us, want to use the option that makes everyone around me the most comfortable and the whole thing pass by without any incident.
Under a system that allows trans people to make the call to use what allows us to make the call about what is safest and the least path of social resistance you really don’t find trans people who look like big scruffy men entering women’s washrooms and claiming to be a women because that isn’t a path of least resistance move. It’s not that we “believe” we are our preferred gender and just automatically switch to everything right away. We are very aware that we do not fit in but why we’re doing what we are doing is that our brain looks at our natal sex characteristics as abhorrent which means visually speaking we do dress so that other people can pick up on our deal and don’t keep reminding us in language.
Non-binary folk are kind of the standouts but generally speaking we make the exact same sort of social risk assessments and do our business in the bathroom that other people tend to clock our gender as, not nessisarily the one we feel closest aligned with.
So really under a situation where bathrooms are a free for all a fully masculine looking and coding person wandering into a women’s room not making any attempt to pass IS still a red flag worthy of heightened caution… But if you are in a place where trans men are forced to use a women’s room then more than likely that’s a person following the law and in following that law is risking getting the security or police called in because they had to pee and then spending the next hour being treated like a sex offender while they have their documents checked all because they weren’t permitted to make the bathroom choice of social least resistance for themselves.
Yeah back in the day (idk if it still is I’m just really post transition) switching bathrooms was a right of passing (heh). It was done when you started getting stares in the old bathroom. I last used a men’s room back in college when I was at a urinal (it was late and I was in a hurry) and a guy came in, saw me, walked out, then came back in, clearly having had to check the sign on the door. It’s been many years since, I’m nearing 10 years on hormones and 4 post bottom surgery and I look somewhere between androgynous and female. I get misgendered sometimes but I’ve had coworkers comment on my menses. And the thing is, I’ve met cis women who look more trans than I do.
I dunno if it is much a right of passage as it used to be. Where I am we’ve had bathroom freedom for a long while now and since we have a larger than usual trans population (Vancouver BC) folk transition bathroom use a little earlier than double take type passing but like anybody who crosses into the other side at minimum definitely looks properly trans. Abroad I have been bodily chased out of bathrooms by women when I was younger and passed for more androgynous even though I am an AFAB who never went on T. I ended up using the gents for awhile just because it meant nobody tried to clock me in the head with a purse but like… it sucked worrying that someone would clock me the other direction while I was waiting for a stall. Never personally happened so I never figured out how that experience shakes out but I was definitely trying to lay low.
Even with it being a city that puts “trans people welcome” over the bathrooms us enbies / non physically transitioned folk tend to have a pretty brutal self assessment of how we clock before we pick which restroom to take. It’s really sucky how people take the whole “We don’t owe you presentation” quote to infer like the way we personally choose to present doesn’t actually factor into how we make choices or navigate the world… Like we still don’t want to make people uncomfortable! Half of us enbies are so socially anxious that causing social friction gives us the bloody horrors and we accommodate other people at our own expense more often than not.
Like really… It boggles the mind how so many straights seem to think we operate as some kind of all powerful gender authoritarians who can force people to unquestioningly not even glance at us sideways or else we trot them to the censorship guillotine!
Hi, trans person here.
So what gets left out of these arguments a lot or misunderstood about being trans is not that this is a ‘belief’ based system. We are very individually aware of what we look like to other people and how we are being “clocked” by others. Take me, I am trans masculine but bodywise I have opted not to transition because of specific reasons. I don’t automatically feel comfortable using the gent’s washroom.
All of us are looking to find the path of least resistance in this binary that wasn’t designed for us. Trans women I know who don’t seemlessly pass often get stares regardless of what bathroom they use but while women might be horrible, going to the mens means that transphobes can follow you to a secondary location to assault you. If there’s an individual third non gendered option that’s often what we use because for me, I feel weird about being in women’s spaces even if they don’t hassle me and my clockable trans grildfriends don’t have to deal with the anxiety of other people staring.
If I did go on hrt though it would be a different story. I, like all of us, want to use the option that makes everyone around me the most comfortable and the whole thing pass by without any incident.
Under a system that allows trans people to make the call to use what allows us to make the call about what is safest and the least path of social resistance you really don’t find trans people who look like big scruffy men entering women’s washrooms and claiming to be a women because that isn’t a path of least resistance move. It’s not that we “believe” we are our preferred gender and just automatically switch to everything right away. We are very aware that we do not fit in but why we’re doing what we are doing is that our brain looks at our natal sex characteristics as abhorrent which means visually speaking we do dress so that other people can pick up on our deal and don’t keep reminding us in language.
Non-binary folk are kind of the standouts but generally speaking we make the exact same sort of social risk assessments and do our business in the bathroom that other people tend to clock our gender as, not nessisarily the one we feel closest aligned with.
So really under a situation where bathrooms are a free for all a fully masculine looking and coding person wandering into a women’s room not making any attempt to pass IS still a red flag worthy of heightened caution… But if you are in a place where trans men are forced to use a women’s room then more than likely that’s a person following the law and in following that law is risking getting the security or police called in because they had to pee and then spending the next hour being treated like a sex offender while they have their documents checked all because they weren’t permitted to make the bathroom choice of social least resistance for themselves.
Yeah back in the day (idk if it still is I’m just really post transition) switching bathrooms was a right of passing (heh). It was done when you started getting stares in the old bathroom. I last used a men’s room back in college when I was at a urinal (it was late and I was in a hurry) and a guy came in, saw me, walked out, then came back in, clearly having had to check the sign on the door. It’s been many years since, I’m nearing 10 years on hormones and 4 post bottom surgery and I look somewhere between androgynous and female. I get misgendered sometimes but I’ve had coworkers comment on my menses. And the thing is, I’ve met cis women who look more trans than I do.
I dunno if it is much a right of passage as it used to be. Where I am we’ve had bathroom freedom for a long while now and since we have a larger than usual trans population (Vancouver BC) folk transition bathroom use a little earlier than double take type passing but like anybody who crosses into the other side at minimum definitely looks properly trans. Abroad I have been bodily chased out of bathrooms by women when I was younger and passed for more androgynous even though I am an AFAB who never went on T. I ended up using the gents for awhile just because it meant nobody tried to clock me in the head with a purse but like… it sucked worrying that someone would clock me the other direction while I was waiting for a stall. Never personally happened so I never figured out how that experience shakes out but I was definitely trying to lay low.
Even with it being a city that puts “trans people welcome” over the bathrooms us enbies / non physically transitioned folk tend to have a pretty brutal self assessment of how we clock before we pick which restroom to take. It’s really sucky how people take the whole “We don’t owe you presentation” quote to infer like the way we personally choose to present doesn’t actually factor into how we make choices or navigate the world… Like we still don’t want to make people uncomfortable! Half of us enbies are so socially anxious that causing social friction gives us the bloody horrors and we accommodate other people at our own expense more often than not.
Like really… It boggles the mind how so many straights seem to think we operate as some kind of all powerful gender authoritarians who can force people to unquestioningly not even glance at us sideways or else we trot them to the censorship guillotine!