I went to a barber today. I haven't paid for a haircut in years, and the first and only time I did I got told that I couldn't have the cut I wanted because "it wouldn't look pretty." So I made sure to go somewhere that had no experience with women, and I emailed the guy ahead of time and told him I was ftm and please cancel if that's a problem.
He was cool and respectful, but my kid was running around calling me "mom" and "she" so much that the staff referred to me as "mom" as well. I swear my kid calls me dad more at home than when I really need her to. I'm trying to respect her experience and let her feel secure in our roles and affection, but I sometimes I just want to crawl in a hole and disappear when she calls me mom. It's always been wrong. I love her, but having her was a weird science experiment, and I've always nurtured her as a guy.
They friggin asked me what my original name was. The guy asked if I'd made any permanent changes, as if that's relevant. I can't afford surgery, I'm still jumping hoops for T, and I'm not going to change my name while on so many government programs. That doesn't make me not a man. That just makes me poor. I'm fuming because he was so nice and didn't mean any harm but I was such a doormat I didn't recognize how offended I was until I left. You don't ask transpeople what their name used to be. You just don't. You don't ask how far in their transition they are if you don't even have the word "transition" (as pertains to trans people) in your working vocabulary. I mishandled the small talk, and my ineptitude turned chat into ickiness for me to leave with.
For what it's worth, he said he thought I didn't look teenaged. If he thought I looked adult and male, that's a first. That was before my daughter laid in with the mommy stuff, so he luckily wasn't initially scripted by my family role.
Conversation got uncomfortable for me when he asked what I do for a living. There's just no delicate or casual way to say my kid hallucinates and beats the snot out of people, and that it takes enormous skill to simply coexist with her, much less raise her. I think I mostly talked about how I used to be in academia.
I was so looking forward to this, and I couldn't afford it but I decided it was important, and now I feel like I did something wrong. I felt like they humored me because they were paid to. I pass best when I dress like a suburban douchebag, and the new haircut isn't out of line with that look, which makes me feel so shallow, so much society's pawn. I feel better when I'm myself, even if that means passing less, but when I go all out and try to pass and don't, I'm crestfallen. To be fair, I pass pretty consistently when my daughter is not with me. It's more behavior than appearance, in my experience.
Tonight, though, the details of my shape and voice that are (or appear to me to be) womanly make me feel ashamed. I'd do anything to make this stop. I'm not supposed to look like this. I'm a boy, a man. I didn't do anything wrong, and this isn't fair. I'm usually more of a pragmatist about this stuff, and fiercely proud of my humanity and how it manifests, but...right now I look at myself and what I see is not accurate, and I feel bad.
Right afterward I went to fred meyer, and I used the men's room, and nobody looked twice at me. I can't figure out how to match up what I see with what other people see. That fact causing me stress is pretty new. The only theory I have is that passing more makes me happy and complacent, so when I don't, or I suspect I don't, it's more of a disappointment.
Is it like this for anyone else?
