Hey everybody!
So I've noticed something kind of weird in the last few months.
And that's that I don't know how people perceive my gender.
On the internet, if you look at my YouTube comments or my Twitter mentions, a lot of
people make it very clear that they perceive me as a man, but that's probably because
they're transphobic assholes.
I do have a lot of friends and loved ones who perceive me as a woman, but that's because
they know me, and I've told them.
What I'm talking about now is that when people who don't know me at all see me in
public, I'm never really sure at this point what gender they perceive me as.
For most of my life, I was perceived as male up until a few months ago.
I guess my face has gotten more feminine or my voice has gotten higher or my hair has
gotten longer, or something, because some people have started gendering me correctly
without me ever telling them my gender or my pronouns.
I know some people aren't gonna believe that, but it's true.
I don't have proof because I don't film all my interactions with strangers, but I'm not lying.
I have no reason to lie about this, and it would be a weird thing to lie about.
So if you're just not gonna believe me, you can just click away right now.
Leave your grumpy childish comment about how I'm a liar and then go do something more
productive with your life.
Anyway, so the first time I can remember a stranger immediately gendering me correctly
was a few months ago when I tried to go to the bathroom.
The thing is, because I think most people perceive me as male, I tend to use the guy's bathroom.
I think trying to use the women's bathroom would be too much of a hassle.
But a few months ago, I tried going into the guy's bathroom, and a man who was standing
outside the bathroom said, "Oh, hey, the women's bathroom is over there."
I kinda looked at him really confused and said, "Uhh, okay," and then I went into
the guy's bathroom anyway.
I had never had that happen to me before, and I just kinda panicked.
It was awkward and weird, but it was also kinda cool.
That scenario then repeated itself a few more times.
Once a guy tapped me on my shoulder as I was entering the guy's bathroom and told me
to use the women's bathroom.
Once a guy just said, "Wrong bathroom," as I went into the guy's bathroom.
It started being kinda consistent and annoying.
So I started to use the women's bathroom.
I kept worrying that a woman would tell me I was in the wrong bathroom, but so far, that
hasn't happened yet.
Then, when I went to fly to London to visit my girlfriend in April, I walked up to the
body scanner at airport security, and I don't know if you know this, but the TSA agent has
to select "boy" or "girl" for every person who enters the body scanner.
They don't look at the gender on your passport or anything -- they just look at you and decide.
So it's totally based on perception.
When I've gone into the scanners in the past, they've always hit the boy button.
But when I went in this time in April, they hit the girl button.
Of course, that didn't work out too well, because it said I had object in my pants,
so they ran me through the scanner again as a boy, and then it was fine.
Obviously, that's a pretty big flaw in the body scanner technology.
It relies on a TSA agent being able to correctly guess your genitals based on your appearance.
Since then, I've had strangers call me "miss" or "ma'am" pretty regularly.
I've been with other girls, and strangers would refer to us all as "ladies".
The other day, I went to Best Buy, and the guy behind the counter was talking to his
coworker and referred to me as "she".
Then, another customer came up, pointed to me, and said, "Does the line start behind her?"
And this has all been very confusing for me.
Because, to me, I don't look a whole lot more feminine than I did a year ago.
But, I guess that's a fault with my perception, since I've been seeing myself change very very slowly.
So I kinda tried to think about why this was happening.
It couldn't be my clothes, because I really don't wear like blatantly "female" clothes.
I don't wear dresses, I don't wear skirts.
I usually just wear like shorts that reach my knees, regular shoes, and a tank top.
I dress pretty gender neutral.
So at first, I thought people just saw me from behind and assumed because of my long hair.
But then people would say it directly to my face, even after we had been talking.
So, strangers had seen my face and heard my voice, and their best guess was that I was a girl.
Which was really cool.
I've heard this experience called gender euphoria before, like in contrast to gender dysphoria.
And I gotta say, it's a great feeling.
But I don't want to make it sound like all of a sudden everyone always genders me correctly,
because I do still get called "he" sometimes or "sir" sometimes, but definitely not all the time.
And that's why I wanted to make this video.
Because I think a lot of the time we talk about "passing" like it's a switch.
You either pass as a girl, or you pass as a boy.
But in reality, you can sometimes pass for one and sometimes pass for the other.
I'm kinda proof of that.
Passing and transitioning aren't linear or binary.
You don't go to bed one day being perceived as a boy and wake up being perceived as a girl.
The path to passing as the gender you want to pass as, is slippery and messy and not
linear -- and that was a hard sentence to say.
It's really based on perception.
Some people who knew me years ago are gonna have a harder time changing their perception
of me than someone who just met me for the first time today.
Some people are gonna see me as a guy, but others are gonna see me as a girl.
At the moment, I don't fully pass as a guy or a girl.
I exist somewhere in the middle, where I don't know if the people I meet think I'm a guy
or a girl until they say something gendered.
And I kinda like ambiguity, but at the same time, it makes using the bathroom really difficult.
Because I just wanna pee -- I don't care what bathroom it's in.
But if I go in the guy's bathroom, they tell me to go to the girl's bathroom.
And if I go into the girl's bathroom, I have a paralyzing fear of being told that
I'm in the wrong bathroom.
It's a lose-lose situation.
So yeah, I guess the point of all of this is just to say that passing isn't a one
or the other scenario.
I always kind of thought it was, but now it's clear to me that it's not.
You should remember that the next time you see a trans person -- because how you perceive
them might not be how everyone else perceives them.
And even if you're trying to be helpful by telling someone they're in the wrong
bathroom, you might just be making them really uncomfortable.
So, maybe try to remember that trans people exist.
Anyway, that's all I had for you today.
Feel free to leave a comment below about your experience with passing or being misgendered.
And thanks so much for watching this video.
I love you all, and I'll see you next time.
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