I am a clean-shaven adult male-identifying human who sometimes misses a few haircut cycles. My hair grows out and its stems tickle my collar and cover portions of my ears.
Over longer spans of time, other aspects of my persona have experienced alterations. My body has gradually morphed from washboard to egg plant. (Okay, it was never washboard, but you could count my ribs when I was 10). My height has morphed from five-four to five-three. The nurse who measured my height before my annual physical said I was five-two and three quarters, but she’s an effing liar.
Here’s my point. When I proceed to a restaurant or grocery checkout line, the person designated to serve my needs will invariably say something like, “Can I help you, ma’am?”
Here’s my actual point, and I deserve enormous respect for submitting to the humiliation of revealing all this just to make said point, which is: I have been misgendered, and more than once.
When it happens I don my deepest Some Enchanted Evening voice and say something like, “Excuse me?” The gratifying result is usually a panicky and profuse apology. Most perpetrators see this misstep as massive; I’ve had distraught waiters issue multiple apologies throughout dinner.
My thirst for revenge is seldom quenched, which is a shame because in none of these instances is the offense anything other than an error. I can only imagine my reaction if the offender misgendered me with malice, if that person knew I was male and called me madam to mock me.
Still, after absorbing such a taunt, I’d get a haircut and go smoothly back into my heteronormative existence unscathed. Not everyone who is maliciously misgendered gets to do this.
A state lawmaker from Missoula, Montana (where I once lived), is zestfully misgendered by other legislators or was until she was banished for using colorful language to promulgate the truth that laws targeting transgender persons will result in fatalities. The banished official, Zooey Zephyr, is herself transgender.
It has become a source of, well, pride for transphobic folks to misgender trans citizens whenever the opportunity arises. These bigots have used all the power they can muster to attack, harass, and legislate against the trans community in state after state. Their objective is clear: erase this segment of our population by any means possible.
This is being done in the usual three-step fashion: demean, demonize, and destroy. The well worn formula was used to eradicate our indigenous peoples: call them stupid and unworthy; deem them terminally immoral, murderous, and cursed; wipe them out.
The same three-step process of erasure has been used on every group deemed unworthy to exist by those in power. The lives, the very presence of our beloved transgender brothers, sisters, friends, citizens is in jeopardy throughout the land.
They are a small minority of our population, easy to wipe out if we put our minds to it. We who cherish them, we who treasure their lives, we who wish them peace and joy. we all must stand up, lock arms, and build a shield of love around them.
Face down the eradicators, tell them no, not here, not now, not with these beautiful ones we are blessed to have among us. We will see to it that they forever enjoy the right to life, to liberty, to the pursuit of their happiness.
Happy Pride Month, 2023!
