My gender trap
I shaved my head recently and sometimes I feel a bit like your prototypical alien figure because of that — genderless and… different.
It’s weird to live outside the gender binary. It’s to exist in a world where the vocabulary and social consciousness of almost everyone outside your own curated circle is blind to you. Confused by you. Maybe a little intrigued by you, you alien being.
Sometimes I feel like a superhero. It’s that strength that comes from raw vulnerability. I steel myself for situations where I know I’m likely to get misgendered. Places where conformity and civility is encouraged. Where human transactions happen quickly. It usually goes something like this:
Museum attendant, approaching what surely is a shaved head and therefore male: “Excuse me, sir, you can’t drink that here.”
Me, genderless alien sipping kombucha **turns around dramatically**
Museum attendant: **FLUSTERED** “Oh. SORRY! I uh..you. Maam? ”
Those interactions are rarely hurtful, not when there’s no malice behind the intent. And they can sometimes be funny. Because the person who calls me sir then often goes in a head spin when confronted with the fact that literally no answer is correct. No, I don’t want to be called ma’am. No sir, neither. Just don’t attach anything. I’m fine with she, I feel seen by the genderless they/them but what makes me most uncomfortable is the binary as a whole. While she is fine, maam is not. And I’m sure as hell not a lady or a gal pal or a soul sister, either. Can’t I just be me?
But you see, I’ve started planning ahead for these situations now.
I already anticipated that sitting facing the wall while drinking kombucha outside of the museum cafeteria (like the real rebel that I am) was the perfect scenario to invite someone who deeply adheres to standard protocols to spot me from behind, walk up to accost me for drinking, and — ta-da — misgender me.
I like to fuck with museum docents, anyway. To test their boundaries, toes nearly over the line you’re not supposed to cross in front of the painting. See me? So this was an experiment or rather a trap. After the plot was laid, I could then poke holes in the structures of civility that were laid so carefully. I see those structures because I can’t not. And my entrapment was indeed a way of luring the docents to walk over the line. Just a bit. Admit it; your rules are binary and your frustrations and your confusion at what to call me is your own making, even if I laid the trap.
But you see, my trap was never triggered the other day at the museum. I drank my drink in peace. No one came over to accost me, and no flustered museum docent was confronted by the limitations of a binary environment.
I expected it, though. And while I say it was a “trap” or a “game” it’s a nice way of saying the obvious: That I was in an environment where my chances of being misgendered were high. Maybe it’s not hurtful. But it’s also clearly not an environment that’s meant for me. And while my attitude about it is cavalier, that’s supported by my own privilege. I don’t get gender dysphoria and only get mild looks of disapproval or confusion in public women’s restrooms. I see the shittiness of binary environments, but they don’t really hurt me. They do hurt others. And that’s why I so badly want to twist and rip and tear into the purported civility of those environments.
I think I’ll continue laying these traps. It’s like an urban exploration game that ensnares people who adhere to the binary and, with the case of museum docents, pokes fun at those who really deeply love rules.
That’s my privilege to be able to do it. To not feel hurt or threatened or unseen by being misgendered. And maybe one of these interactions will help people challenge their own conceptions of the binary. Maybe I’ll print up little cards to pass out explaining the experiment. It’s a fluid plan.
