#redproject

I am dedicating 3 weekends/ days to walking around a park or city holding a sign saying I am transgender as part of my cross cultural barriers project. Thus titling the project "I Am Transgender". My first experience I invited my friend Noah Kostecki to video tape what happened around me. He would follow me at a distance of about 10-20 feet and hide his camera by his side. We started off our walk for about 15-30 minutes in Rochester Municipal Park of Michigan. In this I passed a lesbian couple, who stared at my sign but didn't say anything. I politely said "goodmorning" and received no response from them. I continued to walk, and walked past a play ground that held a few kids and parents talking on benches not far from the playground. I said goodmorning to them and received glares as they continued their conversation. As I passed, my friend Noah filmed them turning around and giving faces of disgust with my back turned. We continued to walk through the park past a man bicycling with his two daughters supposedly. As they passes the two girls slowed down to read my sign but the father urged them to keep going as he also read my sign. I said goodmorning to all three of them and received no response. There was no response to them after I passed as Noah filmed. We reached our halfway point and we're crossing a bridge and we're beginning to turn back towards where we started. I continued my walk as I saw an older couple walking towards us. I could see as they observed my sign and then abruptly turned and walked the other direction. Soon after a man walking passed me and as I said goodmorning he stared at my sign with a huge smile on his face, but said nothing. We were about to complete our walk in the park when we crossed the same lesbian couple in our first interaction. They refused to look at me, and made obvious conversation to avoid acknowledging me walking by them. Noah and I stopped at my car to recollect and write down our experience, then we walked on towards the city to start our second walk. As we walked down the sides of the street I noticed many people turning their heads while in their cars to read my sign. We stopped at a intersection to cross to go into downtown Rochester. Multiple people stared out of their cars, I witness near accidents as I saw people stare at my sign. I walked on through the intersection and down the city. At each intersection a few people would wait to cross by me, I would say goodmorning and receive no response from any of them. I crossed the town and headed back behind a couple of buildings. As I walked by the back, a women with pink hair was walking towards me. I waved and said goodmorning. She politely smiled, waved back, and said goodmorning. This was the first positive reaction I received all day. We continued our walk for maybe another 20 minutes but didn't pass many people. Noah and I headed back towards my car where we parked and decided to go for another lap in the park. In the second walk, we passed a girl with a skateboard, I said goodmorning and she responded “goodmorning how are you?” I said “I'm good how about you” and she smiled and said she was doing great. She went in the other direction of our walk. As we rounded our walk we did not run into many more people. Then, as we were beginning to end my project, Noah and I thought it would be funny to mess around with the ducks at the park. I walked up to a duck and said “Do you have any opinions” then a man behind me speaks up and says aggressively “Oh I have an opinion.” Then he says “Are you trying to teach a duck how to read?” and I responded softly with “No were just messing around” He walked off in another direction and Noah and I walked back towards my car and ended the project for the day.