When you’re looking for validation of your new gender status, sometimes you get bit in the butt or they don’t show up exactly the way you expected:
- My mom didn’t recognize me when I showed up for lunch, the first time we met.
- My in-laws didn’t recognize me when I ran into them at the Social Security Office unexpectedly.
- The women at work now don’t often lock the bathroom door on my side of the buiding when they use it.
- My male coworkers, instead of letting me sink or swim under my own power like they used to, now take far more care to explain things to me… even if I already know it all.
- I’ve been called a “bitch” in public now — by teenage black girls, no less!
- People stare at trans acquaintances of mine while not even giving me another glance.
- A number of times trans people have said they thought I was someone’s girlfriend or wife hanging out at the group in order to be supportive.
- I had a phone call for my old guy self that I had originally answered as a woman… and when I went outside to try to get my voice lower and talk to them, they wouldn’t believe I was him and told me to have him call back.
- I had a nasty experience where a guy friend so much accepted me as a woman that he was hellbent on fondling me and I don’t know if the relationship will survive.
- A woman friend saw me with her husband and almost started yelling at him because she didn’t think it was me and was just some attractive female stranger she didn’t know.
