Sorry, I don't believe in the mystical "they" that we look over our shoulders for who judges whether we are female enough or man enough or pretty enough or too fat or two short really exists except in our imaginations. There are plenty examples of the just right people who crash and burn in this world. In their minds they are not the pretty people we see. There are also plenty of the not right kind of people who are happy and successful. Take Danny Divito for instance. Then there are those of us who are somewhere in the middle with no apparent features that make us unappealing who have a hard time getting anywhere, and their are some who are moderately to very successful.
Since 2006 I have been stuck with or blessed with or cursed with having to spend hours of my life on public transportation as it shakes, rattles, and rolls through the city. Nothing in particular wrong with public transportation, except that outings by car that may take 20 minutes out of your life now take an hour. Hour journeys now take two or three hours out of my life.
Public transportation and walking takes you into a world of people you simply miss when you drive. Now I have had many differing experiences on the bus, both disguised as a male when I was still working and now as my fair looking female self.
Having been a rural school teacher, I have been trained to be very watchful and aware of the people around me. You loose contact with your surroundings and others around you as an elementary school teacher and when you come to, the world around you can be full of many extraordinary surprises. And besides it is extremely frowned upon to loose track of any of your students that you were supposed to be caged up with during the school day.
Much is to say, when I ride the bus, I am aware of the people around me, and trying to tune into any unpleasant vibrations coming my way. As a teacher you have to know when to duck. I find that a good many of the other passengers on the bus are just doing their best to tune out the world around them. Some are friendly and talkative with people they know and some with strangers.
In my mind I try to envision many of them as children that I might have taught in school.
Some people see you and some people don't. And because the urban area I live in has many small town people like me, they are very helpful when they discover a newbie has just come to town and wound up on the totally wrong bus going where they know not.
The news if full of drive by and police shootings, robberies, and young girls trapped in slave sex rings in the city. Many times there are on the bus convicts on work release programs either going to work or returning to confinement. This is a southeastern southern city and you see many interracial couples, and me being a rural hick from the Dakotas with a head full of stereo typical ideas about the South, and this is an urban area that gets the transplants from the neighboring rural southern states, I am looking for reactions of distain or disapproval, from the other passengers around me. I see no reactions, no glares, why I ask myself.
And as this 67 year old transgender grandma, who passes at a glance, but an instant later, does not, I do not feel those angry disapproving stares at me. I wait for the growl of some bellicose male, and God knows there are plenty of those on on the bus also. But the angry voices never come.
Where is the judgement of the "they." This transgender grandma goes to her son's (yes at 67 I have a ten year old son (my male parts doing!)) and I wait for the disapproval of the "they". It's not there. My significant other constantly calls me Michael. Even after I am called ma'am and the disapproval of the "they" is not there.
Yes, I get ignored and I really don't have any personal friends, (Lots of people in my life just acquaintances , most close friends from my past on Facebook). From the police, I get your life style your choice. Lots of indifference, but no threats from the "they".
The "they" in my life is surprisingly silent in the real world. The "they" only whispers to me from inside my head. Could it be that the "they" everyone is concerned about on this message board is just mythical, and it is the we that keeps "they" alive.
Yes I know there are transgender people in the world whose lives have been taken by an unforgiving and intolerant world. Their lives have crossed with the truly violent people in this world. But these violent ones could attack me because I am weak, I am on the wrong turf for my ethnicity, I am targeted like any other woman is, or I am targeted because I am transgender.
I never see the guards at the gender boarder. The "they" never come for me. I watch, and I wait but the "they" never comes. What if this "they" is a myth and it is we that keep "they" alive.
The "they" is also missing in action when I use their for there and as a retired school teacher feel compelled to fix the mistake, and I struggle with the spellings rarely typed words and my spell check is working intermittently, I wait expectantly for the frowns of my long dead teachers and the ruler tapping on my wrist. Where are you, "they"!!!!!!
