Avid Transgendeer

the first time I went in there I pointed at one of those extra-skinny baguettes and said “a flute, please” feeling pretty sure of myself, and the baker said “… that’s a ficelle” (you idiot) (was implied) “a flute is twice as large as a baguette.”

That’s insane, first of all, a flute is a skinny instrument. Call your fat baguette a bassoon, lady—I made some timid remark about how it would make more sense for a flute to be a skinny bread and the baker said, “In Paris it is. I thought you were from the South?”

oh, that hurt

I guess I’m from the part of the South that’s so close to Italy the bread’s waist size matters less than whether it’s got olives in it, but I left the bakery having an existential crisis over whether living in Paris had made me forget my roots

the Least Intimidating Bakery just had normal baguettes vs. seedy baguettes vs. horny baguettes (easy mode, some have seeds, some have horns), while the new bakery has breads that are only different on a molecular level—there’s a good old loaf and then another, identical loaf called a bastard? google told me a bastard is “halfway between a baguette and a bread” but denouncing them like “those are not regulation-sized bastards” would get me banned from the bakery for life

on my 2nd visit (while I stood in line discreetly googling baguette terminology) there was an English tourist who asked for a baguette while pointing at what was either a rustique or a sesame and I felt a bit worried for them, but the baker just clarified “this one?” to waive any responsibility if they found out later it wasn’t a classic baguette, then handed them the bread without educating them in a judgmental tone and I felt envious

I know it’s because she thinks the English are beyond saving but still it made me want to come back with a fake moustache and an English accent so I wouldn’t be expected to play bakery on expert mode just because I’m French. I asked for a pastry this time and the baker asked “no bread with that?” which felt cruel, like she wanted me to sprinkle myself with ashes and admit out loud that my level of bread proficiency isn’t as advanced as I once believed it was

The third time I went, I had lost all self-confidence and I hesitantly pointed at a bread and said “I’d like this, uh—what is it called?” and the baker looked at me in disbelief and said “That’s a baguette.”

God.

for the record, if that stupid bread had been flanked by a skinny bread (ficelle) and a fat one (flute) then yeah of course I would have known to call it a baguette, but in the absence of reference points I now felt lost and scared of being called a Parisian again

I go onto Tumblr, the queerest site on the internet, to make a milquetoast statement. It’s hard to see myself as a woman in a society that acts like this. I see the same behaviour in others. I encourage everyone to have self confidence and self determination.

Immediately, within a couple hours of posting that trans women are meaningfully women, and trans men are meaningfully men, I get my first person saying that I’m the real transphobe. That hurts. Oh well, there are silly people online.

They keep coming, one after another, nitpicking at word choice, scrawling my blog for posts from months or years ago to find the one that decries that I am Problematic, that I am secretely malicious, that my words of encouragement are secretely words of dismissal. I reply in great detail explaining my beliefs, I explain I do not hate trans people that are not like me, some people understand what I was trying to get across.

The next day, another person accuses me of the same thing. I complained about people who were not transfem treating me poorly with the wrong language. What about cisgender men who kind of look like me, but don’t want to be respected as a woman? Don’t they hurt? What about cisgender women who kind of look like me, who have the whole brunt of society and the medical system insisting they should be more feminine, who have 10 times easier access to life-saving hormone medication than me or anyone like me ever will, because their birth marker says F. Do I want to erase their suffering? No, I explain, the terms are just shorthand, I don’t think these people are oppressors or don’t suffer.

Another person comes to tell me I’m transphobic the next day, and the next. Their blogs are posting that man’s caricature, mourning his death. The coffee shops are still running their transphobic Wizard book promotions. They just want clarity. They need to know I’m not one of the bad ones, that I don’t think that they could ever possibly hurt me because they have a womb and society will always see them as having a womb. No one will ever see them as a man. No one will ever see you as a woman. Isn’t it transphobic to deny that? Isn’t it erasure?

Guards Versus Stairs

it’s okay to use your turn signal when you’re changing lanes

it’s okay to use your turn signal when you’re taking an exit

it’s okay to use your turn signal when you plan on turning (can even be done sooner than 2 seconds before you’re about to turn)

you have a turn signal. in your vehicle. two of them in fact.