I am making a very large scarf and Tally has been all over it. She cannot understand why she can’t attack it, lick it until it’s fuzzy, or generally freak out on it. She’s very disappointed her input is not being taken.
I am not the greatest with yarn arts, but I like to crochet because it gives me something to do with my hands besides pick at my cuticles when I am nervous. I haven’t really done a lot of it since before I transitioned to male, so I don’t actually look forward to dealing with the extra attention as a man who crochets if I take it out of the house with me.
I think knitting, crochet, and sewing are so very unnecessarily gendered. I like it, and I am not giving it up just because I look like some random cis dude these days.
Yesterday we went to a business/restaurant supply Costco. You can use your normal membership to go to the business/restaurant supply Costco. It’s just a Costco that doesn’t have all the electronics, clothing, and home goods, and instead has the food in bigger quantities, and restaurant supply stuff. The reason we went is it opens at 7am and is practically empty, with easy parking. We get up really early, and hate crowds so it’s super nice.
We spent a lot at Costco, and filled our chest freezer with restaurant quality crinkle fries, salami, lunch meat, hot dog sausages, a sliced cheeses, and corn dogs. Just about everything you could need for the next six months when you have non-cooking days.
While I like to cook everything from scratch, I am not always physically up and running. On those days, I like a quick and dirty meal and ready made food is a part of that. As my condition progresses, I have had to make peace with the fact that while I have the skills and prefer 100% from scratch cooking, concessions will have to be made. I focus on those items I really love to make, and make do with store bought for the rest.
Arguably, the best greasy spoon on the west coast.
We then went out to eat at one of the best kept secret diners in our area. The staff is amazing. The food is 110% Americana diner food that is well made, affordable, and with portions that are bigger than I ever eat.
However, going out in public these days is always risky. When my wife went to pee, some lady complained to staff about a “man” in the bathroom. My wife looked damn good in her little floral skirt, doc marten’s and top. She has boobs larger than my head, and her hair color was killing it. To call her a man at this point in her life is just literally being a bigot. She may be identifiable as transgender, but she looks NOTHING like a man.
We live in such a blue area that this was a non starter with the staff. The staff member cleaning the bathroom completely blew her off. When my wife left the bathroom the lady had gotten her husband to come stand with her by the door to the women’s room. Apparently, not content to just wait and come back after my wife, she wanted a man person to come menace my wife.
I should remind everyone my wife is 6’2″ tall. This apparently matters to the cis men she towers over. He couldn’t look her in the eyes when she smiled and waved at them both, and came back the the booth. This has been happening more and more. The amount of times my wife has been challenged by some lady in the bathroom, who then goes and gets a man to come help her threaten my wife with either implied or overt violence is just insane.
To be fair, the silver lining to this madness is the number of cis dudes that completely look out of their depth and back down when my wife shows up. Size really matters to cis dudes when height and threats come into play.
Oh, and can I be petty? My wife looked more feminine, had better fashion sense, and was just factually more beautiful than the nasty tired old lady freaking out?
The real challenge of this all was actually just being in public. My wife can’t leave the house without something happening right now. Those bigots seem thrilled there is a minority they can unabashedly attack because they feel they finally found a socially acceptable victim. Don’t be mistaken, these same people are probably racist antisemites, too. They just found a new group that isn’t fully protected by social convention and are gleefully on the attack. The Venn diagram for transphobia, racism, sexism, antisemitism, and all the other ‘isms, is pretty much a circle.
The most insidious situation is the picture taking. People will just take my wife’s picture like they saw Bigfoot. They are not as discrete as they think when they even try to be sneaky. Some assholes use it as a way to harass her by outright getting in her face to do it.
I live in a large city. My wife, is legit not even the weirdest thing I see driving to get donuts at sunrise just last week. Have you seen a meth head wearing a feather boa and nothing else at a bus stop dancing? I have! This is not a really rare occurrence because we live in a city that has a rep for that kind of drug use.
I mean, there are so many more pronounced situations going down at any one time in my limited time outside my home, that to pick my slightly gothy transgender wife to target for photos is just people being assholes.
It’s a risk whenever we go out these days, and while I am a transgender man who can “pass” as cis, my wife cannot. I worry for her safety a lot these days because the uptick in violence is very real, and you never know if you are going to run into someone that has been wound up by the media and is just foaming at the mouth to hate crime someone.
I truly wish this wasn’t a concern we had to work with just to go get breakfast and groceries.
See my first strawberry jam attempt? Turns out, like the raspberry jam, it tastes far better than any jam I have ever had from the store in the last decade.
I ended up making some gender based observations this weekend. My goal was to can up some raspberry and strawberry jam this weekend, and yesterday I went ahead and bought a stupid amount of raspberries and strawberries to do it.
I am new at this, and wasn’t sure what constituted 5 crushed cups of fruit, so this saw me in the check out line with six containers of strawberries and four of raspberries.
The cashier was a bit odd about it, and asked what I was doing with so much fruit, and I said I was canning.
I am a 51 year old, heavily tattooed man. I am also transgender, but she would not know that to look at me.
Instead she was completely bewildered that I was canning jam. She nosed around why, and I said becuase it tastes better than anything store bought, and you can’t even buy some of the flavors.
Then she asked if I was doing it as a gift with someone, presumably a wife or mother, by implication of her wording. I said nope. Just me, canning jam for the year for my wife and I.
I then stopped at a regular grocery store for sugar, and bought a single 10 pound bag. I was asked why I was buying so much sugar by the clerk and the bagger, and I said I was canning jam.
The bagger, a young man, was completely gobsmacked. He was like why? Did you pick a bunch of berries? I said it was too early in the season for that, but I was making a years worth this weekend.
Before I transitioned 11 years ago, I don’t recall anyone caring at all what I bought for food, and being a weird quasi-foodie that does a lot of odd ball things from scratch? I have purchased some empirically odd food combinations in really large crazy amounts before. Nobody has ever said a word.
Now that I am read as a man? It’s like my very existence beyond buying beer and snacks is read as odd, and worth further questioning.
It reminds me of the first weekend of the pandemic. I was in the grocery store with my wife stocking up on things, and being the primary cooks I had the cart stocked. The lines were stupid, so I sent my wife with the cart to the line while I grabbed a loaf of bread and some beer.
A middle aged gal saw me walking back to the line juggling a loaf of bread and several IPA’s, and just made eye contact and smirked at me. I knew instantly she thought we were in the middle of a national emergency, and this dumb dude was buying nothing more than bread and beer. She was laughing, and I am sure I presented a hilarious picture in the half panicked grocery store.
It’s such a weird gendered construct that men can’t cook or or take care of the home.
I find I also get questioned a lot more in fabric and craft stores. I still sew, and make clothing for my wife and I, and now I get questioned a lot more in fabric stores. I think there is a social construct for the gay designer archetype, so if I look competent they immediately shoot me into the expert category. It’s like there is no middle ground in perception. I am a dumb man who is invading women’s spaces or I am a gay expert. The truth is I am a confident middle of the road seamster, that is bi/pan, and is married to a woman.
Conversely, I am treated way better at Lowe’s Hardware, and any of the other hardware stores I end up in. People just assume I can do the work I am asking about. They start from an assumption of competence first, then back up if I tell them I need more information.
This is in stark contrast from when I looked like a woman. I have literally had hardware store guys argue with me over basic information I was 100% correct about, because they assumed anything that came out of my feminine mouth must be wrong.
I just find it interesting what people seem to expect is so gendered. Maybe we could just abolish useless gendering of activities, and I think we’d all be better off.
Garden Rat 