#meat wagon

Hearthstone - Meat Wagon

Art made for Hearthstone for the Knights of the Frozen Throne set. © 2017 Blizzard Entertainment

Work has plenty of transphobia. EMS is generally an accepting field, at least among coworkers, but we interact with the public and those assholes are frequently terrible people. Sometimes wonderful but also transphobic as hell. And sometimes you get partnered with a transphobic asshole for a few months who will misgender or deadname you every chance he fucking gets.

I'm glad there are a couple other trans people at work who can relate. They get it. They understand why I highlighted & bookmarked all the relevant policies on the employee handbook when we started (and appreciate the assist when shit hits the fan). It's nice to be able to talk about shit like choosing to use a single binary set of pronouns, because I do not have the energy to explain my gender identity to cis people. Even trans people don't always use neopronouns, so I am not going to put any effort into Joe Public when it comes to that.

Relating over that shared trauma is good though. The thick skin. Learning to deal with casual transphobia and just being beaten down. Being able to shrug it off even when you want to cry, because there is shit to do.

Fortunately we have a lovely medic partner right now. I have several stories about him being like an aggressively supportive grandfather (he's almost the right age). Right up to thinking people are trans "the other way" a few times. He still messes up my pronouns, but he corrects himself, and he'll put the fear of God in anyone else who misgenders me. Especially if they have a pattern of doing it despite correction. He's also a lot better at telling if a patient is a misogynistic creep, and will shoo me up to drive if he can tell I'm just going to get leered at.