Travel

I had the awesome opportunity to go to India for a work event.  I know, totally awesome. After being accosted in the women’s toilets for the third time, it was less awesome.

We all had to wear pants and shirts, so it wasn’t the clothes that gave me away (a slightly different cut here or there, but really. Linen pants and light shirts really are much of a muchness, and it’s hot over there, so light linen. I don’t bind, so should be pretty readable). They take gender very seriously over there.  I knew this, so I tried my scarf trick, and draped it gently over my head, like I am super modest.  It didn’t work, because there were enough western men buying pashminas and wearing them with such abandon that most Indians probably just think foreigners are weird.

It might have been the hair.  It’s not a short back and sides…but it’s pretty short. But even with the scarf, and lose clothes… they just knew.  I don’t walk like a girl, I don’t defer like a girl.  I don’t…something in the right way. So even though my usual butch markers were all out of whack, they still knew.  Which makes me think me feel better about myself, I think.  When I get frustrated and think it’s my own fault because I don’t look right, I realise it’s not that.  I look how I feel I am, and that feeling, that’s what doesn’t fit.  Somehow it being innate makes it feel more authentic and less like I am to blame.  In fact, it makes me feel like I am the most honest person out there.