Well, it finally happened.
I’d been feeling pretty dysphoric lately after seeing a photo a coworker took of me while I was working at a miniature convention. You know how sometimes pictures taken by other people just look... wrong? Like somehow they capture a completely different version of you. I didn’t feel feminine in it at all. It just didn’t look like me, the me I see in the mirror, the me I’ve been growing into.
So this morning I was doing my usual routine before work: grabbing breakfast at a local restaurant. I headed to the bathroom. Even now, as a trans woman, I still get nervous about using the women’s restroom because there’s always that little voice in the back of my head telling me I don’t pass well enough yet.
I ended up using the men’s room and was walking out when a woman stopped me.
She looked genuinely concerned and said, "Ma’am, you’re in the wrong bathroom. That’s the men’s bathroom."
Then she pointed toward the women’s restroom.
When I just stood there for a second, completely caught off guard, she pointed at the sign again and said, "They should really make that thing more visible."
And honestly? As a gay trans girl who'd spent the last few days spiraling over a photo and picking apart every masculine feature I thought everyone else must be seeing, that was probably the most unexpected bit of validation I could have gotten.
See more...
