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.
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.