con coda: a tranny moment

[sistawendy]

I forgot a couple of incidents in the last entry. I'm chatting with mamishka in the hallway in my Hester Prynne outfit when a girl of eleven or so comes up to me and asks, "Are you really a lady?"
I laughed. "No," I answer. She seems a little freaked, but I don't think too much of it.

Fast forward a few hours. I pass the same girl in the hallway, when she volunteers, "You don't really look like a girl."
"Oh well," I shrug.

Yeah, I could have pointed out to her that she had to ask earlier. L'esprit d'escalier. Besides, I was on my way elsewhere, and I was picking up a hostile vibe from her. How sad. I wonder where she got it.

Comments

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm hoping, too. With any luck, not pushing the concsiousness-raising won't turn out to have been a mistake.

[evillinn.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was likely a mistake. There is the possibility that it didn't have as big an impact on her as you'd have liked, but, had you pushed it, it may have not gone the direction you wanted. I think its just as important for people to have a number of largely inconsequential encounters with situations/people/lifestyles they aren't familiar with so that they really get the idea that, ultimately, it doesn't matter. Sometimes I think that too many "significant" encounters wind up making the differences seem like more of a big deal than they are.
Its something that I remember thinking about when I was living on the Navajo Reservation. If the fact that I was white was always a big deal, people never seemed to relax. If, on the other hand, the on-going encounters were just non-issues, things eventually just became more relaxed.

[adularia.livejournal.com]

I would submit that kids, even eleven-year-olds, who've never seen a particular type of person before are likely to say stupid things. I can't judge whether she was actually hostile, though I certainly hope she wasn't. I just remember a really awkward, inarticulate period as a kid, where I'd say something really dumb-assed and it didn't accurately represent my attitude at all.

I hope it did open her mind, though you sometimes can't tell until years later.