3:19am May 30, 2014

How many times have I gotten “are you a boy or a girl?”

I can tell you the worst, anyway, because it stands out in my mind:

One time I was in a mental health clubhouse type thing. You know, one of those ‘psychiatric consumer’ places where the whole thing is run by 'consumers’ and it’s supposed to be better than psychiatry, but the whole damn place looks like a giant dayroom in an institution.

Anyway I was getting registered with the owners, who were standing right there. You had to get registered, you had to have the name of your psychiatrist, because gods forbid that you just be a random crazy person walking in off the streets to spend time with other crazy people. And I was in a wheelchair so everyone towered over me. And this really big woman comes up to me, gets right in my face, and asks “Are you a boy or a girl?” I don’t answer. "ARE YOU A BOY OR A GIRL!?“ She starts shouting it over and over, getting closer and closer to my face until she’s inches from my face and I can smell her breath.

Nobody says a word, nobody tells her to get away from me, nobody suggests that she’s doing anything out of line. Meanwhile, as happens in many communication situations like this one, I become too paralyzed to respond, I start shutting down.

I still don’t remember how that scene ended.

I just remember I was shaking, and afraid for my safety, and nobody lifted a finger to help me. Not even the people who ran the place.

I became afraid to go back there without an escort.

And no, the problem wasn’t that the person who treated me that way was crazy. I’ve gotten treated much worse over gender issues, by sane people. Don’t even think of going there. When I’m in all-disabled places like that, I see them as all-people places, not special-kind-of-people places. And all-crazy just means all-people to me, it doesn’t mean special-kind-of-people who are more threatening and scary than usual.

If you want special kind of people who are more threatening and scary than usual, you could do worse than think of the cops:

There was the time the cops thought I wasn’t breathing because they’d caught me in the middle of a severe motor freeze, the kind where even my eyes don’t move. But their first order of business was not to figure out if I was breathing, not to call an ambulance, but figure out whether I was male or female. Their determination took about half an hour. It’s a good thing I was merely catatonic. If I hadn’t been breathing, I’d have died before they’d worked out their idea of whether I was male or female.

There was the cab driver on his radio. "He… uh… she…. uh… he… uh…. she… uh… THE PERSON… is in my vehicle now.”

The woman who worked in the emergency room. She gave me my ID bracelet and asked me if it was accurate – name, date of birth, etc. It listed my physical sex as female. She turned to my staff person, pointed at the “female” part, and said “Are you sure that particular partis accurate?”

And the kids who called me “she-male”.

There were the times I wondered myself. I remember being a kid, standing on the playground. Boys had a smell, a synesthetic feel, I didn’t have it. Girls had a smell, a synesthetic feel, I didn’t have that either. I didn’t think too hard about it. But the thought came up, again and again, “Why don’t I seem to be a boy or a girl?” That’s how it would have translated, if I thought in words.

In the way my thought actually worked, it was more like this:

Resonance with boys: No fit.

Resonance with girls: No fit.

Confusion.

Then there was the silent horror when I realized that the way my brain expected my body to develop, and the way my body actually developed, were two completely different things.

So this is not a new question.

And while I find it rude and offensive, I don’t quite know how to answer.

“I’m genderless, go away.”

“I’m genderless, but I was raised female.”

Will that “raised female” mean they’ll assign me, in their heads, to a gender that doesn’t fit? Will the “genderless” part mean they’ll decide that being raised female is irrelevant, didn’t happen, that (among other things) being molested in a highly gendered, misogynistic way was not relevant to my life experiences anymore? (Or worse, will that admission be seen as why I now see myself as genderless, even though it has nothing to do with it? I’ve already had people assume I’m attracted to women and nonbinary and genderless people exclusively, because I was molested and otherwise mistreated by men. Which likewise could not be further from the truth.) Will they even understand what genderless means, when even most trans people, people who are constantly looking at gender in new and inventive ways, can’t even understand what it means, unless they too are at least partially genderless?

So, “Are you a boy or a girl?” “No.”

Will have to do for now.