I haven't posted in a while due to being overwhelmed by work and grad school applications, but I thought I'd share this.
Every Thanksgiving, my parents, younger sister, and I go to my dad's family's farm. We aren't that close with them, and this is the main family bonding time we have with them. They're not incredibly liberal, but they're not overtly conservative, either. Still, I was nervous about wearing my work clothes--which are all male--to Thanksgiving dinner. I decided to do it, though, because even though I'm not out to them as trans yet, I knew that I would have felt crappy wearing my old rather feminine stuff. I definitely don't pass as male, but I look somewhat androgynous. (I identify as a guy but I think I'm genderqueer, not TS.)
They treated me pretty normally, actually, which was nice. But there was one thing that happened that made me laugh. I have two very young cousins, one 4 years old, and one 6 years old. I pretty much only see them once or twice a year. I had been playing with them upstairs earlier, and then went back to the room with the TV where the guys were watching football. I personally don't care much for football, but I didn't have to make small talk in there so it was something of a safe haven. When the kids came downstairs, the four year old came up to me. The other guys didn't really seem to be paying much attention.
"I think I know you!" he said.
I smiled and said, "I think I know you too!"
Then he asked, completely seriously, "Are you a daddy?"
I started laughing. I think he might not have been able to read my sex, but he was actually the only one to accurately read my gender. Still, I don't have kids, so I said no.
"Are you a mommy?"
"Nope."
"Well then who are you?!"
I was laughing pretty hard at this point, and I said, "I don't know, who am I?! I'm your cousin, silly." But by that point he was already running off to play with his brother.
Honestly, I've been getting "ma'am"ed and "miss"ed a lot lately, which has felt pretty bad. But this was the first time I've been read as something other than female, which really lifted my spirits. Sometimes kids really do get things that adults don't...
