Transgender Visibility: How do people see me?

n.b.: As Transgender Day of Visibility 2019 was Sunday, March 31, I thought I would close out the little ‘social experiment’ I’ve conducted for twenty years.  My previous post on this is here: Riding the Long Island Railroad.

I often wonder how people are gendering me.  Sometimes it is clear (e.g. being addressed as sir or miss) while other times I can only guess, based on looks from people and other nonverbal cues.  It would be interesting to track how I am being gendered – to see if there is any pattern to it over time.  The problem with this idea is that it would require I solicit feedback from people (i.e. strangers) and keep some sort of running log: something that is not at all practical.

Or is it?

Prior to the end of 2017, all monthly Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) tickets used to have two boxes on them: a ‘M’ for male and and an ‘F’ for female.  The idea behind this was, supposedly, to help prevent people from sharing tickets: the efficacy thereof being questionable at best.  One thing it definitely did was to create discomfort for trans and otherwise gender non-conforming riders.  Under pressure from several advocacy groups, the MTA finally relented, and eliminated the ‘gendering’ of tickets at the end 2017.

I was featured in a 2016 public radio news piece about the MTA policy.  Those curious can listen to it here: Should the MTA Get Rid of Gendered Passes?

I have saved my monthly LIRR tickets for the past twenty years. It started April 1998, when my ticket was ‘mistakenly’ punched as female: I found it amusing, so I saved the ticket.  This was the genesis of an ad hoc experiment to gather some long-term data with respect to how I am gendered.  Each ticket is a physical record of how, for that month, the conductor gendered me.  It’s not a huge sample set, just one person one day a month, but it is a physical record – enough to yield some interesting insights into my gender journey over the past two decades.

Here is a sample of a monthly ticket:

At the start of the month, the conductor would take your ticket and punch the ‘M’ or ‘F’ as appropriate – with ‘appropriate’ being whatever gender the conductor thought you were.  This was usually a quick, couple of seconds procedure: take the ticket, punch it, hand it back.  In my case, however, they were not always sure what to do, and sometimes got creative.  There have also been a few instances where my ticket was punched one way, only to be ‘corrected’ by another conductor later in the month.

These usually have PIE (punched in error) written on them by the conductor who ‘corrected’ this most egreguious of errors.  I have tickets originally punched ‘male’, later changed to ‘female’, and originally punched ‘female’, later changed to ‘male’.  With the sample above, the conductor took my ticket, punched it ‘male’ and handed it back to me.  Then a few seconds later, fumbled about and finally said, “I made a mistake, can I have that back for a sec?”  I handed him my ticket, which he re-punched as ‘female’ and then circled the first (‘male’) punch and wrote PIE.  I had to smile, finding the entire exchange rather silly and pointless.

All in all, I have tickets punched male, female, neither male nor female, male then female, female then male, and some not punched at all.  I have pulled all of this together into a Tableau dashboard, because of course I would. 😉

Clicking on the above will take you to an interactive dashboard where you can filter by ticket type, year, total punches…  It’s a very clicky dashboard. 🙂

Notes on the data:

• My gender issues came to a head in 1998. I considered the ‘mispunched’ tickets that year just that, mispunched.
• Late 1999 through 2001, I started presenting ‘less masculine’ at work.
• During part of 2002, I was required to dress in standard ‘Business attire’ (i.e. a suit and tie.)
• From 2003 through 2017, I was presenting more trans / gender non-conforming (TGNC) on a regular (and increasing) basis.
• 2017 shows my ticked not punched for seven months. It was in the latter part of that year that the MTA stopped punching tickets, finally removing the male and female boxes for 2018.

Observations:

• The degree to which I have been gendered ‘female’ corresponds to my increasingly TGNC presentation since 2003, which had been pretty consistant.

• Winter months seems to be the most likely time for me to be gendered as ‘female’
• Overall, I was gendered ‘male’ only 24% of the time, opposed to being gendered ‘female’ / not sure 57.5% of the time.

My Two Minutes of Fame

So that thing I did – where I was interviewed for a news piece about the LIRR gendered ticket policy?  The piece is up and can be found on the WFUV website, linked here:

SHOULD THE MTA GET RID OF GENDERED PASSES?

I originally asked that ‘they’ be used as my prefered pronoun, but the editor thought that might have changed the impact of the piece. I tend not to get too fussed about pronouns as long as people are being respectful, so I agreed to ‘he’ in the piece. We had agreed to ‘gender nonconforming’ as the description for my gender identity which is accurate – well as accurate as single lable can be. Besides, “Male-bodied non-binary gender-nonconforming trans-feminine” sounds like I order my gender at Starbucks. 🙂 Also, I wasn’t thrilled about the “… when he started wearing women’s clothing and makeup …” as I don’t think I had described things quite that way, but it was minor to the story.

Overall I was pleased with how the piece turned out – especially as this is the first time I had done anything like that.  Thanks to Suzie Xie for contacting me and allowing me to be a part of her report.

So, have a listen if you like and maybe let me know whay you think. 🙂

So I did a thing today…

Perhaps there has been an unknown reason for my little social experiment; the one where I have saved my LIRR train tickets for the past eighteen years. (If you are just tuning in, read: Riding the Long Island Railroad, Conductor Confusion, What would you like to be today?, She’s Back…)  Up until now, the main (i.e. only) reason has been to provided a tangible record of how, once a month, I am gendered by the conductor du jour.  It has allowed me to look back and see how over time, I have moved from a predominantly masculine presentation, to one that is perceived as more feminine.

It has made for some interesting conversations over the years: discussions about why there would be gender markers on the tickets, as a lead in to how I identify and why, about why I present as I do, and some larger discussions regarding the ‘non-concentual gendering’ everyone does to everyone else…

I have clearly been trying to get my money’s worth out of these tickets. 🙂

Then this past Sunday evening, I received an email:

Donna,

I hope this email finds you well. I’m a reporter with an NPR-affiliated station based in New York City.  I’m working on a story about the gender-specific designations on LIRR and Metro-North tickets and whether they can be considered discriminatory toward gender-nonconforming passengers.

I came across your blog a few weeks ago.  The fact that you’ve kept your monthly tickets over the past decade provides a powerful illustration of the issue, and I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to share your story.

I’d be more than happy to tell you more about what I’m working on.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Someone wants to interview me – to share ‘my story’ – for a news piece.  That’s never happened before…

I spend ten minutes laying in bed considering this before replying:

Thanks for your kind email.

It was an unintentional experiment, but yes, I have tickets going back to 1998 in various states of being punched male, female, in the middle, not at all and ‘corrected’ – the latest correction posted here.

I’d be interested to hear about your project – and if you think I have something relevant to contribute,

I look forward to speaking to you soon. 🙂

Regards,
Donna

I pretty open about all the trans stuff and will speak about it with anyone who is respectful to me.  My feeling was, “Why not?”

And so today, I did. 🙂

I was interviewed about the tickets, my feelings about the policy, and about being ‘gendered’ in general.  It lasted almost an hour and it was all recorded.  I’m a bit unsure about my talking possibly being broadcast – just because that’s how I am.  It’s one thing to speak to one or two people – but it’s done now.  All that’s left is to see how the story turns out.

So, yeah – I did a thing today…

And I have to admit, it was kinda cool. 🙂

She’s Back…

My poor sad neglected blog…  I have had such good intentions – so many things I have wanted to say…  But I cannot seem to be motivated to write them up.   I am hoping that this entry will be the reboot – my opportunity to start over…  Time will tell.

So what has happened of such a significance, to prompt me to tippity-type into the ether once again?

More Railroad Fun

Ten years ago, I posted about Riding the Long Island Railroad and unintentional collection of nine years worth of data with respect to how I am gendered by the conductors on the train.  Since then, I have continued to save my monthly passes, to where I now have about 18 years worth of passes – all punched either male or female – and a few punched in-between.  Every month, my ‘gendering’ is recorded in a very tangible manner – and it has been a very very long time since this has happened to me:

Wow, what a mess!

The conductor took my ticket, punched it (male,) and handed it back.  Then a few seconds later, fumbled about and finally said, “I made a mistake, can I have that back for a sec?”  I handed him my ticket, which he re-punched as female and then circled the first (male) punch and wrote PIE (punched in error.)

I had to smile because I have so many tickets punched as female, and tickets punched as male, but only a few where they have been ‘corrected’ – and I have them ‘corrected’ both ways: punched male then female, and punched female and then male.  The whole thing is rather silly really, but as long as they keep punching them, I’ll keep saving them.

Short and Sassy

I got a haircut this past weekend.  Please do try and contain your excitement. 🙂

It was getting too long – which means it was taking me too long to do my hair and have it not come out looking good.  So, off I went to get it cleaned up.  I intended to have it re-layered and takes an inch off, but it wound being much shorter.  I was concerned at first, but I have to say I like the way it looks.  The truth is when it gets too long, instead of looking more feminine, it looks more like ‘aging rock star’ which is so not the look I’m going for.

At work today, a few people complimented me on my hair, which always feels nice.  One in particular stopped by my desk to chat and catch up.  She commented right away, “I like your haircut!”  I smiled somewhat awkwardly (I still am not good at being complimented) and said, “Thanks – I thought it was about time.”  She smiled and said, “It’s short and sassy for spring!”

I have written before (in Girl Talk and Girl Talk Redux) how my conversations with women have evolved over time (especially with friends at work) so I wasn’t surprised by our chat. But what did catch off guard was the ‘sassy’ part. I have had many adjectives applied to me over my lifetime, but ‘sassy’ has only ever been used twice: once by another friend at work, and then again today. It is one of those words that, to me at least, contains no hint of masculinity to it. It is a word women reserve for use with one another. It is a word that evoked an at first uncomfortable but then ultimately happy feeling.

And yes, I have been known to over analyze things just a bit now and then. 😉

I know that we should not look to others for validation, but I cannot deny how good a compliment from a friend can make one feel. I even caught myself a few times during the day, running my fingers through the short flipped up ends of my hair and smiling.

 

What would you like to be today?

It’s December first and that means a new monthly train ticket and a new opportunity for the conductor to play “Guess my gender” wherein they decide whether to punch my ticket as either male or female. I have discussed this here in the past – how I have been read as a man or (more often) a woman, but today was a first for me.

I hand the conductor my ticket today and he asks me “How would you like me to punch this? I’m not trying to be rude or disrespectful, I just don’t want to offend you.” It takes me a moment to reply: “Female is fine, thanks.” He punches my ticket and hands it back to me. “Just trying to be respectful. Have a good one.” – and he moves on the the next seat.

All totaled it was about twenty seconds of interaction – but it was an important twenty seconds to me. One of only a handful of times anyone has ever asked – as opposed to assuming – how I want to be gendered.

A rather nice start to the day.

Conductor Confusion

I have posted about my adventures Riding the Long Island Railroad – wherein each month I get to see what gender the conductor thinks I am. So far this year, my ticket has been punched as female every month except July: it’s ok, it happens. 😉

Riding the Long Island Railroad

As a Genderqueer, I often wonder just how people are reading me. Sometimes it is clear (e.g. being addressed as sir or miss) while other times I can only guess (based on looks from people and other nonverbal cues.) I have thought that it would be interesting to log how I have been read and see if there is any pattern over time, but it is not very practical on a day-to-day basis.