Is Street Harassment on a Bus Still Street Harassment?

I’d had a rather long and exhausting day, and was not in the best of moods.  But it was, at long last, time to get on some buses and make my way home, so I lumbered out of the school like a zombie, with my hood pulled up to make it easier to avoid eye contact with anyone.  I didn’t feel like listening to any music, I just wanted to get on my hour-long express bus after a connection, so I could read a bit and maybe even have a nap.

On the connecting bus, I stepped up, paid, and took a seat near the front, since it’s only a couple stops to where I transfer to the express bus.  On the next stop, an older man who was very loud got on the bus, and sat in the side-facing bench seats in front of the front-facing paired seats I was occupying.

He turned to me and said, “how you doing?”

I made an attempt at a smile, and gave him the time-honored Boba-Fett-in-Return-of-the-Jedi head nod, which I hoped he would accept as indicators that I had heard him, but I did not actually say anything in reply, which I hoped he would understand to mean that I did not feel like talking to anyone.  In response to this, he immediately said, much more loudly, “I SAID, HOW YOU DOING?”

Now, my face reflected mild annoyance and confusion.  I’d answered his greeting, and didn’t really understand why he wasn’t satisfied with that.  “Oh, no English?” he asked.  “I’m used to that.”

He then tried to express his displeasure with how I had responded to him by engaging a proxy, a hapless nearby bus rider.  “You ever seen a 24-carat vagina?” he bellowed.  The other man smiled sheepishly and shook his head, no.  “I ain’t never seen one, neither!” the first man continued, “but they all act like they got one!”

By this point, I was trying not to laugh.  I considered speaking at last, to tell this man that I’d honestly settle for a tin foil vagina right now, but I decided that anything that might agitate him further was probably a bad idea.

Just before the next stop (where I needed to get off), he walked up to the driver and asked to be let off on the near side of the intersection, saying something like, “I ain’t feelin’ the way she disrespectin’ me.”

Which was nice.  I’d been properly gendered, at least.

In the Beginning, There Was Estrogen

Started HRT today.  I also did a consult with a very highly qualified and highly rated electrologist, and set up my first appointment with her after a sample treatment to test tolerance. Oh, and I got a flu shot. That’s not really a transition-related thing, though.

Yesterday Was Pretty Nice

I was out for hours and hours, nobody said anything shitty to me.  The banker who helped me with my name change on my account was as friendly and welcoming as they’d always been with me when I was out as a guy.  He asked where I got my boots, and said his daughter would love a pair of them.

I went to DOL to update my gender on my driver license, and got in and out within five minutes.  It now says, “Sex: F” and doesn’t expire until 2021 or something.

While shopping for makeup, a rep who was in the store placing her product started talking to me about her own work in makeup, and asked how I did my smoky eye look.  I showed her the tutorial I based it on, and she was surprised I’d only been doing it myself for a couple weeks, saying that it was better than most eyeshadow she’d seen on other women who’ve been doing their own makeup since they were children.

When I corrected the esthetician after she misgendered me, she was aghast, and said she didn’t even realize she’d referred to me as “him.”  She apologized profusely, and said that anyone who gave me any shit about being who I really was was just ignorant.

Later, at the mall, as I headed into the women’s restroom, some random woman standing just inside the doorway smiled at me.

Later still, at Wal-mart, the cashier who was helping me find something asked a manager for help, and correctly gendered me without any slip-ups, and without my saying anything.