A personal anecdote about going to the drugstore while trans. . .
I was born right after a vaccine for measles was introduced. In those early years of the vaccine, killed virus was used instead of live, and only a single shot was given instead of a series of two. So, the pre-Kennedy CDC urged people in my age bracket to get a modern MMR vaccine if there was a possibility of encountering measles (initially considered in terms of foreign travel or healthcare work). Now, medical news reports recommend that my age cohort get vaccinated.
So, I decided to get an MMR vaccine at my local Walgreens. I've been getting my vaccines at Walgreens rather than a nearby CVS because the Walgreens registration form to schedule a vaccine just asked me to indicate my "gender," while starting in the first Drumpf administration the CVS form began requiring that I check the "sex originally listed on your birth certificate." But recently, Walgreens started making the same registration demand.
I waffled over whether to ignore the new requirement and just list my lived gender. People of any gender get the same vaccines--they don't come in pink and blue sex-variants. There is zero medical reason for Walgreens to have to know my original-birth-certificate sex in order to vaccinate me. In any case, I was born intersex, and so my original binary birth certificate sex-marker was never accurate. And trans people living outside of large "blue" coastal cities receive medical care that is on average substantially worse in quality than that cis people receive in the US. When I am dressed, I currently have the privilege of being gendered correctly by strangers more often than not. Being balding and bearded thanks to testosterone access has a lot to do with that. Sometimes they recognize that I am transmasculine--but here in Wisconsin, sometimes they just presume I am a cis man. (Transmasculine people face a lot less scrutiny than do transfemmes, so my being 5'2" and pear-shaped can go overlooked fairly often.) Should I not try to conserve that privilege in interactions that could negatively impact my health? After all, I have dependents. . .
In the end, I entered the sex originally listed on my birth certificate, for the same reason that my backpack features trans pins and I wear t-shirts with trans-celebrating graphics and I post about trans topics on social media. As someone who has the privilege of often being properly gendered by strangers, it's important for me to be out, and not leave the hard work of trying to navigate and lessen transphobia to those who don’t have that privilege.
Well. I went to get my shot. I filled out my paperwork at the counter (with "Sex: F" printed at the top right corner next to my name) and took a seat in the waiting area. Twenty minutes later, my name was called. I got up and started walking to the pharmacy tech—young, with feminine makeup and long hair. “No no,” she said, “I’m not calling you.” I looked at her for a moment, then went and sat down while she watched. “Next is Cary,” she articulated loudly. I got up again, and walked over. “Your name is Cary?” she asked dubiously. “Yes, that’s me,” I said. She looked down at the form on her clipboard, where my name sat next to the “F” marker. She looked at me. “OK. . .” she said, and led me into the little vaccination cubicle.
Once we were in and the door was closed and I sat down, she had to go over the checklist of prevaccination questions—all of which I had to answer already on the form—but first she said, with a stony look, “Sorry, Cary is a female name so I was confused.” I have a standard routine in circumstances like this, bringing up actor Cary Grant, but she never heard of him. So with a smile I said I am old, and many names change in how they are gendered over time, almost always going from traditional men’s names to gender-neutral ones to names seen as quite feminine. Lesley. Beverly. Meredith. Lauren. Taylor. “Really? Beverly was a boy’s name?!” “Yep,” replied I.
She didn’t mention the gender marker, though she did glance several times at my chest. (I wear a binder.) She just went ahead and gave me my shot. But she looked uncomfortable the whole time. Who knows what she was thinking. I didn’t ask, because it was a socially awkward situation, and there were a batch of people awaiting their shots. Getting a simple injection is a short medical interaction, and hard to get wrong, so it’s not like this tech’s discomfort posed a substantial risk to me.
But many other medical interactions do put a person’s health or life at risk.
Folks who are trans, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming had been seeing improvement in the quality of our interactions with medical practitioners, but now that’s reversing, because institutions all over the US are caving and pre-complying with executive orders demanding disrespect for trans people that are all being legally challenged. And you see it even in the simplest of interactions, like going to get a shot at the local drug store, and having that experience become more uncomfortable.
It's important that we push back at things like this. There’s no reason to force people to misgender themselves to get a vaccination. Or to get a passport. The cruelty is the point, and we need a nation that is less cruel, not more! I know there are many worse things happening right now, from deportations to the attempt to destroy universities. But so much of our lives exist in little moments and short interactions. . .
This administration has turned a cold cultural civil war into a hot one, but we can mitigate that at least to some degree by being civil to one another. For example, if we’re unsure what’s going on with someone else’s gender when we’re dealing with their paperwork, we can just carry on being friendly and kind.
Do that!
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