I’m more aware of when don’t pass than when I do.
I pass when I pass out of danger. When mistakes and assumptions make me more safe rather than less. I passed in grade school when boys were too afraid of loosing to fight me. I pass when I came to college and northerners confided in me about how racist and ignorant those southerners are. I passed in grocery stores when I was on food stamps and I went to the self-check out line, so friends assumed I was using my ATM card.
I pass when I escape scrutiny. When people don’t imply that I secretly want to be something I don’t allow myself to be. I pass in Pride meeting when lesbian couples want to adopt me. I pass when other people make my life easier because they think I’m like them. I pass when I’m hitchhiking and mothers stop their cars because they wouldn’t want their daughters to be picked up by skeezy truck drivers.
I pass when I want to and when I don’t. I pass when other confer a privilege on me that I have not come to expect.
Showing posts with label passing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label passing. Show all posts
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Short Hair
It’s been so long since I’ve had to be anywhere I didn’t want to be, that I forgot how public space feels against my skin.
“You in the service?” an older man with a worn expression inquires. I look him over, reading the loose threads of his cut-offs, the wrinkles in his over sized shell of an sweat suit draping down from his carefully trimmed neck line to mean he was.
I’d not been asked this question when I grew up in my navy town. In the moment of hesitation, an image of myself registered in my mind, short curly hair above a tall body clad in board shorts and a sports bra. I forgot how reference points shift with cultural territory, how a sense of place mediates the meaning that etches itself into our bodies. What, in Northampton, is decidedly dyke boarding on queer wedges itself into the military discount arena once I set foot within 10 miles of a base.
“Naw, but my mother was an aviation mechanic. She did twenty years on fighter jets at Oceana.”
He nods approvingly in an effort to mask his surprise, “I didn’t know women did that. Ya know…back then” I want to tell him that fuck yeah some women did that, and some still do. Instead, I shrug it off refusing to indulge the novelty of his statement. After all, it’s always been normal to me.
“You in the service?” an older man with a worn expression inquires. I look him over, reading the loose threads of his cut-offs, the wrinkles in his over sized shell of an sweat suit draping down from his carefully trimmed neck line to mean he was.
I’d not been asked this question when I grew up in my navy town. In the moment of hesitation, an image of myself registered in my mind, short curly hair above a tall body clad in board shorts and a sports bra. I forgot how reference points shift with cultural territory, how a sense of place mediates the meaning that etches itself into our bodies. What, in Northampton, is decidedly dyke boarding on queer wedges itself into the military discount arena once I set foot within 10 miles of a base.
“Naw, but my mother was an aviation mechanic. She did twenty years on fighter jets at Oceana.”
He nods approvingly in an effort to mask his surprise, “I didn’t know women did that. Ya know…back then” I want to tell him that fuck yeah some women did that, and some still do. Instead, I shrug it off refusing to indulge the novelty of his statement. After all, it’s always been normal to me.
Signals from Strangers
**something I meant to post last month**
A stranger started a conversation with me in the coffee shop about transgender history. It was only days after I decided I was going to embark on the transgender oral history project. At first it seemed awesomely serendipitous, but then the questions crept upon me: How did he know this is something I’m interested in? What made him think I had an investment in it? What was his connection to trans issues? What did he presume min was?
The encounter went from being exciting to seeming dangerous. My body recoiled in retreat. He had spoken what I had spent so much time convincing myself people didn’t notice.
I was exposed. He knew something about me that I could hardly find the words for. Something I had tapped into while groping around in the darkness. Something familiar I kept there half for the comfort of tracing its outline and half in fear that the light might prove it to be less real than the sinews of its shadows.
Sometimes the signal becomes irrelevant. It only matters how strong the winds have blown, how quickly the rain beats into the pavement and how much the antenna have been bent and rusted in the process.
A stranger started a conversation with me in the coffee shop about transgender history. It was only days after I decided I was going to embark on the transgender oral history project. At first it seemed awesomely serendipitous, but then the questions crept upon me: How did he know this is something I’m interested in? What made him think I had an investment in it? What was his connection to trans issues? What did he presume min was?
The encounter went from being exciting to seeming dangerous. My body recoiled in retreat. He had spoken what I had spent so much time convincing myself people didn’t notice.
I was exposed. He knew something about me that I could hardly find the words for. Something I had tapped into while groping around in the darkness. Something familiar I kept there half for the comfort of tracing its outline and half in fear that the light might prove it to be less real than the sinews of its shadows.
Sometimes the signal becomes irrelevant. It only matters how strong the winds have blown, how quickly the rain beats into the pavement and how much the antenna have been bent and rusted in the process.
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