Little things
I felt like posting some small writings I've found back on my phone, notably for the Trans Day of Visibility a week ago, but didn't have the spoon then, so I'm doing that now.
This short one deals heavily with everyday transphobia and misgendering and suffering from that, so take care regarding that; but, I don't know. I feel like it may give some insight to people who don't experience them. It hurts, and it still holds as true to this day as it was when I wrote it, in November 2022, to exteriorize my rage.
(also, yes. I mention bakeries as something extremely commonplace, which probably says something of France that is to be expected.)
It's the little things, you think. It's what gets to you the most.
It's the lady in the street telling her child, look at the boy with a fox hat! that actually makes you want to stop wearing it, in spite of the euphoria it gives you, just to be unnoticed at last, to reduce the risk of being gendered.
It's the one in a public restroom telling you you should have turned the other way because this is the ladies', as you storm your way through anyway, and you promise yourself for the billionth time not to go to public restrooms ever again.
It's the one other girl at a boardgame of four saying the room lacks chicks, to whom you angrily mutter No, I'm here.
It's the pollster for public transportation services who asks you for one minute of your time, to which you consent, just to be forced into a M gender marker without that question ever being asked like any other would.
It's EVERY. FUCKING. BAKERY.
Most of all, it's the fact that all this happened within two weeks and you're supposed to keep functioning properly. It's the fact that you know you don't pass, and that you don't really care, but sometimes you would feel better if people stopped reminding you of it every other word.
It's how you let people step over you each and every time they talk to you without even a single thought about it; how you choke on your words as you fail again, and again, and again, to convey you're a girl; how you swallow so much hurt and anger you sometimes wonder why you haven't started breaking people's knees with a baseball bat.
It's the raw thought that no one believes you - and that there is anything to "believe" in the first place, when people could be taught to ask and to listen.
Your stomach is in knots, and you want to cry, or to puke, or both.
You keep smiling to strangers.
You never learnt otherwise.