Yesterday I was in a car accident. I’m really OK (some mild brain injury and bruising), the car is not.
I had gone running, so I was wearing a t-shirt and leggings with an athletic skirt to cover my bits, I had no makeup on and was perhaps the least feminine I could be.
What surprised me was that the EMTs, firemen, and police all saw and interacted with me me as a woman, and not in that “being polite” way that some trans affirming liberals can be, I just think they had no idea I was trans. My gender survived even having to talk to the emergency responders, answering questions, etc.
In some sense none of this is new, people on the phone have correctly gendered me as a woman for maybe six months, but it doesn’t stop my brain worms from making me hear a boy. Likewise with countless interactions in public now where people seem to see a woman. Still, all I see in a mirror is a boy most days.
In the ER, the nurses and office workers all assumed I was a woman. I was asked twice by the doctors if there was any possibility I could be currently pregnant.
All I’m saying is that yesterday was one of the most gender affirming days in my life. I don’t think if they suspected I was trans they would treat me the way I was treated, I just managed to seamlessly navigate the world in ways that I never thought was going to be possible. It’s not real to me, but I’m definitely just going to keep replaying those interactions over and over again. Maybe it will sink in.
Less than a year ago, the equivalent experience would have been very difficult, I was very much not passing and I looked like a man dressed as a woman to most people. I assumed it was just going to be like that the rest of my life, and that’s still what it’s like in my head.
I felt pretty emotional about it yesterday, about the culmination of so many hours put into voice training, struggling without a sense of hope about the future and arriving here anyway. I feel like I owe the trans community my whole life.
Glad you’re (mostly) ok! Bummer about the car but what a lovely silver lining - thanks so much for sharing it with us! 💜
thank you!! 💕
This is maybe my third concussion, so I’m a little worried about what this means for me - but it’s so mild I’m also not too worried. 😄
It does suck about the car, it was paid-off and relatively low-mileage, so we’re losing money on that unfortunately. Still, I haven’t given it much thought in the interest of not stressing myself out or thinking too much while concussed.
Sounds like the weirdly happiest car crash ever. /j
But seriously That’s about as affirming as they can get lol
yes, I was telling my partner that all the gender affirmation made the whole thing worth it 😅 I felt pretty happy yesterday, not only did I narrowly escape death and severe injury, but I got rewarded for it with a lot of “ma’am”, “miss”, and “are you pregnant?” 🥰
Glad you’re OK(-ish)!
Yes, the brain worms are real. And you’re right: I don’t imagine emergency responders are going to play games. If they’re talking to you as a woman, that’s what they thInk you are.
Here’s hoping future affirmations are in more pleasant circumstances!
Congrats!! Not the fact that you got hit though lol
thanks! 😄
so glad you’re okay and safe, and that this turned out to have such a positive silver lining.
thank you ❤️
Congrats for getting hit! /j of course
for real, though - worth it 😆
Glad you’re okay in more ways than one!
I’m so glad you had an affirming experience during such a difficult time. Just to rain on your parade a tiny bit, medical settings are the one place where it is sometimes important to disclose your gender assigned at birth. Pharmacologically there are some difference between how humans respond to medications and your providers may prescribe differently to make sure you are going to be safe and healthy. Simply saying “When I was born they said I was a _____” and that’s enough for them to make the safest possible decisions .
medical settings are the one place where it is sometimes important to disclose your gender assigned at birth.
It’s more complex than that. On the medical side, doctors treating trans people as their assigned gender is just as problematic as assuming that they are cis. Which is to say, the majority of the time, it’s just not an issue, but sometimes it is, and when it is, they need to deal with our specific needs as trans folk, not as if we are the gender we were assigned at birth.
On the other side of that is transphobia. Depending on where the treatment is occurring, out yourself as trans opens you up to transphobia. Sometimes its outright refusal to give treatment, sometimes it’s referrals elsewhere, and sometimes it’s “trans broken arm syndrome”, where every issue you have is first filtered through the fact that you are trans, as if that is the real problem that needs to be dealt with.
I live in an accepting country, with laws that protect me. Yet, if I end up in hospital and I out myself as trans, I’m most likely going to end up in a room by myself, whilst having people smile at me and tell me that treating me differently to everyone else is somehow a gift, because I’m getting a “private room”.
So yeah, sometimes, to get safe and effective treatment, trans folk have to out themselves as trans. But more often than that, to get safe and effective treatment, we have to stay closeted. Navigating those conflicting scenarios is something that most trans folk have had to do at some point :\
It is one of my deepest regrets that people are forced to hide who they are because of others beliefs. I appreciate you sharing your experience and I hope that before I die it is just a memory. I’m a cis het ally, and I won’t be happy until everyone can be who they are.
No worries!! It’s true that sometimes there are medically relevant differences, though I don’t think anything was relevant in this instance. Also, my trans status is was in their medical file, and they saw I was on estrogen and could have read that I have gender dysphoria and have medically transitioned. I just think the ER staff didn’t read my file closely, and operated on the assumption I was cis. If I thought being trans could be relevant, I would certainly disclose that, though.
Separately, you should know trans women tend to have brains that function more like cis women’s brains (and become even more like cis women’s brains once on estrogen), so the way drugs interact with my brain would probably be more like a woman’s brain would react than a cis man’s brain, for example.
It’s a similar story with my body - assuming I’m 100% biologically male is the wrong take-away, my body is hormonally female for example. A lot of sex differences are mediated through sex hormone levels (and resultant body composition differences) - but in both of those cases I’m more like cis women than cis men. And this matches my experiences, drugs absolutely absorb, metabolize, and feel different since I have medically transitioned.
Also, my body was different from a cis man’s from birth in other ways, for example I did not go through typical male puberty and I couldn’t grow a beard until my mid 20s. My guess is that I might have mild androgen insensitivity syndrome, which is a common genetic condition in trans women.
Obvious other differences between the sexes with regards to drugs is more about concerns about possibly impacting a fetus in women (hence the unnecessary pregnancy questions in my case), and differences in weight / stature and thus dose. But they were able to get relevant information to make the right decisions (they didn’t give me anything but a single dose of toradol).
Disclosing I am trans in medical contexts is mostly relevant for screening prostate cancer (which is at a much lower risk in trans women on estrogen, not only is estrogen actually a treatment for prostate cancer but male levels of testosterone, one of the reasons prostate cancers develop, are absent), and there is not much else relevant to providers. (That’s actually the only time my doctors indicated I need to disclose that I’m trans, to ensure I get prostate screenings.)
All that said, if you have some information about other instances where those differences matter or situations you think it would be really important to disclose that I am trans, I’m all ears!
It looks like you’ve done the reading! I have nothing further to add and I hope your recovery is swift.
