Downside to being Transsexual

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My transition had been going extremely well --- Until recently.

We have new neighbors who moved in the far apartment of the duplex next door. The first time they saw me, they gawk, pointed their fingers and made little giggling comments to each other. I wasn't thrilled, but I held my tongue.

The next night, when my roommate went out to do something with his bike, the woman there told her kids to get inside because the perverts were out. At first I thought it was about some of my legal issues, but later found out they assumed I was in a relationship with my roommate, something I'm sure he doesn't appreciate as much as I don't.

The final straw came last night while I was going to work.

One of the guys who lived there approached me. His first question was if I had implants. Right away that pissed me off because of the crassness. Then he asks me my name. Order of events was off. But okay, I tell him my name and that I have to head to work. Then he makes a sexual pass at me. Grr. I am not a highly sexual person, nor do I have the desire to have sex with a random stranger just because they ask. i am beyond disgusted.

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AFAIK, you can report them to

Submitted by on

AFAIK, you can report them to the complex. Fair housing should shield you from it. Failing that, you can call the cops on it.


Downside?

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Angharad's picture

You mean there's an upside? If there is, I missed it and I've been at this a very long time.

Having said that, your neighbour is a prize arsehole, tell him you used to be a wrestling champion and see if he asks again.

Angharad

U 2 huh..?

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It was my immediate response as well. Woe us... * self deprecating snort *

And indeed the neighbours are prizes. Maybe you should tell him you had an implant: a male brain chemistry gland. But since that depressor's been removed you're seeing the world much clearer and not as skewed.

Blessings,

Jo-Anne

If that was in the UK ...

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If that was over this side of the pond, you could have the police approach them about sexual and transphobic harassment. Perhaps it's the same (it probably is,) in Canada but I don't know about the US.

I was approached a couple of months ago by a foreign student from Sharjhar and he didn't know I speak a bit of Arabic. When I heard the word 'Shufti' then a somewhat derogatory Arabic word referring to me, I approached him in Churchill way in Cardiff UK. Firstly he was shocked that a tee-girl would have the sheer effrontery to tackle him there and then in the street about his rudeness. Then he thought it was a joke to ask if he could feel my (real) boobs. Sadly for him my friend Mattia's mother and several other real girls in our group overheard him so we called a policeman over.

I told him the situation and suggested that the officer advise the young visitor that suggestions like that were illegal in the UK. The officer promptly did so and the poor kid was very distressed. He actually came over and apologised though being as I didn't hear exactly what the officer said, I don't know if the student came over voluntarily or under duress. Certainly though he and his two friends soon left the scene while we resumed our lawful occasion namely studying a menue outside a restaurant before deciding whether to go in.
I feel sorry for you if you feel you are unable to approach the agencies of law and order to have this abuse stopped.

bev_1.jpg

Much as I hate to say it...

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Ragtime Rachel's picture

...welcome to my world. The situation you were in almost exactly mirrors the first two years of my transition. Here's a sampling of what I went through:

  • I worked as a flower seller on weekends to make extra money. When I first did it as Rachel, I had three individuals in a period of two weeks yell "Fag!" out of their car windows at me. One of them was a very grandmotherly sixtyish woman, while another was a boy about ten or eleven years old, if you can believe it. A mother who sent her kids over to buy flowers from me warned them "Now don't you talk to him!", as if I were going to talk them into coming into a waiting van or something.
  • I was accosted by a drunk on a bus, who slurred that he thought I should be shot. Not one person on that damned bus came to my defense.
  • When I got turned down for a consumer study that would have paid a hundred dollars, the woman in charge met my pleas that I needed the money with the statement that I was having money problems because I displeased God, and should return to being male.
  • My drunk neighbor felt me up. I let him because I was too afraid of what he might do if I didn't.
  • My other neighbor wouldn't talk to me, she said, because I had a "kickstand" and wanted to "cut it off." Charming woman, that one.
  • I'd had home health aides assist me for years, but after I transitioned, suddenly they were unavailable, and I was eventually dropped as a client.
  • A fellow handing out religious literature asked me what my "real" name was, and thought I should go back to being male because it was "more honest."
  • When I first moved to Wisconsin, I spent seven weeks in a homeless shelter before I could find an apartment. I was placed with the men because I was a pre-op.

    I'm in no way saying that my pain is worse than yours, Katie, only that I've been there, and am living proof that one can survive those years and have a reasonably peaceful life. It's far from the life I'd like, (see my blog post) but it's a paradise compared to what I left.

Livin' A Ragtime Life,
aufder.jpg

Rachel

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