| You know I may well be maturing a bit in my old age. Just a small bit mind.
Often when out and about, I'm approached by strangers who've never met anyone like me. They're curious and often have lots of questions which they want to ask. And in the past I've gone out of my way to be helpful and try to answer their questions. I felt it was almost a duty, that (silly as it sounds) I was almost an ambassador for trans folk and it was up to me to try and give a good impression.
However, in the past, my desire to be helpful has often out weighed my better judgement. As on many occasions I'd find myself being polite to someone who's quite frankly being bloody rude and obnoxious.
As a lesbian friend pointed out to me when I first started going out in London, society see's trans people as the bottom of the food chain. She pointed out that although she got crap as a lesbian woman, I was destined to get a hell of a lot more crap as a trans one. In the years since I've often reflected on how right she was.
| I really didn't care what he thought. His opinion simply wasn't worth the effort.
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One aspect of this is that some strangers feel they have a right to ask the most intimate questions, or physically paw me to satisfy their curiosity. They don't see me as a real person and so don't appreciate that common decency and manners apply. I'm sure they would never think of approaching a man or a woman and asking them questions about their sex lives or genitals, but because I'm trans they seem to feel that its ok.
As I mentioned, in the past I've been really annoyed with myself for trying to be helpful with these types. I'm not annoyed with them for being creeps, I'm annoyed with myself for not handling the situation better. Of course I also get approached by a lot of charming people who are genuinely curious and not just indulging their lascivious fantasies or prejudices.
Anyway, I haven't had an experience like that in ages until Saturday when I was out celebrating at a dear friends engagement party. One of the reasons I was looking forward to the party, was the opportunity to meet a new crowd of people as I knew I'd only know one or two of the other guests.
It was a great night, and I had a ball. But there was one guy who grated on me. He started coming out with the usual list of questions, but much to my surprise on this occasion I thought "fk it!". My first reaction was to point out that he was a total stranger, he didn't even know my name, so why the hell did he think I would want to discuss intimate aspects of my life with him?
His justification was that "looking like that" I must expect people to be curious and I must expect people to ask questions, that it must happen all the time. Err, no it doesn't actually, well not recently anyway. But the important thing for me was that for the first time it struck me, I'm here tonight to celebrate with friends, I'm not here doing an outreach project trying to educate the world. So ok, you maybe entitled to your questions, but I'm entitled to bloody ignore them!
So I was polite but on the whole just ignored him for the rest of the night, and I was quite relieved when he finally left.
I did have to stop myself from biting at some of his comments. He automatically assumed I was gay, and I therefore must have the hot's for him. Funny how some straight men seem to see gay men as sex starved predators. On more than one occasion I had to stop myself from explaining that I actually liked girls, and some rather lovely ones at that. I realised that if I started down that path, I'd be justifying myself to him. And as I'd instinctively realised, I really didn't care what he thought. His opinion simply wasn't worth the effort.
He did grate on me, which is why I'm thinking about it today. But I handled the situation a lot better than I used to. Still room for improvement but I'm getting there. :o)
Perhaps I'm finally reaching the point where I'm not craving other peoples approval? Who knows.
At the after party I made a lot of new friends and we talked about many personal things (as you do). The big difference though was that these people where genuinely interested in what my life is like. And they also showed me a warmth and friendship, so I was quite happy to open up a little to them. And no doubt being rather trashed probably helped! ;o)
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