Trans Discrimination - Yes it happend to me

Ok so I am new, and this is probably old news. I got told I could not go to the bathroom.

Yes I know that seems pretty silly on the surface of it. Here is the situation, I am at the Keystone Conference and we have a night out at a local horse track/casino. And of course, I am en femme. So I am thinking I have just finished dinner and of course you want to freshen up (he he, never thought I would ever say that about myself, but I totally get it now). So I start looking for the ladies room in the casino, because we have been told, go to the room that matches your presentation. I am am female, so you go to the ladies room, right. The answer is, it depends...

And so as I approach, I see one of the other girls. Now I like this girl, and she is trying very hard, and is sweet, but she is clocked pretty quickly. And she is standing with this sort of gruff bouncer looking guy and she grabs my elbow and drags me into the conversation.

It would seem that this fellow is security. And security says, we cannot use the ladies room. My friend seems upset at this. The security guy explains, there have been complaints from the patrons. I ask, tonight? He says no, in the past. I said, oh so this is a policy now? He says, yes and that "you people" should know. I have been a white male my whole life, and now I am in a fully persecutable minority. Talk about a "transition". And I have never had anybody refer to me as "you people". But I guess things change...

Now to his credit, he has plan "B". Separate but equal apparently (where have we seen this before). There are family bathrooms with locking doors, and those are the ones they want us to use. And he reiterates, "you should know that already". Like we are all clairvoyant. Or it is in the Casino handbook, "Warning: persons who are presenting female, but maybe make our patrons uncomfortable that they might not really be female, or female enough, or might still have some boy parts, or maybe you are a Lesbian, or well anything that does not make us comfortable, or whatever I do not like, should use the family bathrooms to make the rest of us feel OK. Thank you for your patronage, and don't mind the door when it hits you on the way out"

He almost says "family bathrooms", like we should prefer them to using the ladies room as we would have more privacy. Oh yes, much better to hide, that would help, as I stand there in my skirt, boots, makeup, hair and handbag. Yes, I want to hide, that is my goal. After all, they are all wondering what is under the skirt I guess.

I tell this person, you know, we don't "know" it and we have been advised to use the ladies room. And that if somebody did go in there, then it was because they were unaware. But I told him, lets go get one of the group organizers so you can tell her of the policy. We go find her and she lights this guy up.

Now she was right, about the policy being basically unenforceable. I mean there were some post-op and FT girls in the group, are they going to ask to see their license to let them in to the bathroom? It does make me wonder what I might have done if I had an F on my drivers license. The security guy was black, and she made this point. How about if the signs said colored and white. He took hold of that immediately and said he understood, but did not make policy. Now, he changes his tune a little bit when asked about the complaint thing, now he says it was tonight. I suspect a fib to make us go away. We agree to tell everybody to use the family bathrooms, and the situation diffuses quickly. And we thanked him for being polite and courteous. You draw more flies with honey than vinegar.

But this all gave me pause. I got drawn into something that I had ignored to date. It is not that I don't know about such things. And expect them, and have a desire to change and educate. That is all there, it is just that as I am in the process of figuring "me" out, and I am not "out" per se, I am not sure I am ready to be an activist. I am not saying I don't want to be one, I am saying I am not ready to be one. I have enough to do with getting me sorted. But I had my first experience where another girl sought me out as an ally in public. Which makes me wonder, why did she pick me, there were like 16 other girls there, was I just the closest one? I do not know.

And I guess this is the thing I am trying to wrap my head around. If I choose to be full time, do I have to be an activist? It almost seems so. Now maybe not an in your face type, but perhaps a micro activist, do it in little doses. And see if you can win them over with a smile, rather than a threat. I am thinking this is who I am right now. What bothered me in this incident was, I went and got our group organizer, not because I felt I needed her to be my advocate, but as the person responsible for the group, she needed to know there was an issue. All the arguments she made, I was actually ready to make with this person, but it was not my group, even though I was a member.

And in the end, I was about to go into the ladies room myself, but I did not see him moving to stop me, just my friend. Now I do not know if that is because he was engaged with my friend, or I did not seem to look to threatening or maybe in his mind I fit his norm of a woman close enough that he did not feel in bounds to do something about it. And I guess that made a difference too. If he had stopped me, I might have shown him my carry letter. And he might have still refused to let me in, but I suspect that having that might have made it legitimate enough for him.

And so to sum this up. Two big things for me.

First, I guess am already an activist by circumstance. I don't get a choice. It happened the moment my friend asked for my help. I am thinking she did not know how new I was at this. I did get a fair amount of disbelief at the conference. And as a guy I am a leader type, and I am wondering how that manifests in me as a woman. So I might be stuck with this, it could just be a feature. So lets just say for now, I am a situational activist. I will not fight, but I will make them think.

And second, much of rest of the world does not get what we are. To them we are a menace of some kind, predators, waiting to pounce on their kids, or them, or something. I get that we make them uncomfortable, even if we present well, and once they find out they often do not know what to do. But it is discrimination, no different than black and white, or gay and lesbian, or pick your issue. I am sure they do not check at the door of the ladies room to see if you are a lesbian, or the men's room if you are gay. And not that I am trying to say anything about that but it would seem to me that being trans, based on what I know about most of us, should probably much less of a concern among the public, but fear of what you do not understand always trumps intellect. And I guess that next time I go to use a facility I am going to have to think about my choice before I enter, so as to decide am I looking to conform to their comfort, or am I just trying to be accepted as what I am.

Or to put it another way, sometimes you just want to go pee and touch up your lipstick.