I mentioned in my last couple of “recovering from a corporate life” posts that I was dealing with a lot of material that had been bottled up. That is not all related to my day job.
In the 1990s, I lived on a small (7m) boat - a fibreglass sloop that I kept moored in a marina (so I had a permanent address, and so I could use the shore facilities - or at least empty my Porta Potti at the dumping station).
One weekend I was mocked by a cishet couple on the shore - thankfully, about 100 m away, and on the other side of locked gates. It was typical of the transphobic abuse of that small regional town, although there were also decent people in the marina.
That was on a Sunday. The next morning I was fuelling my car for the commute to work (there was a train service, but it didn't leave early enough for me, and involved risk of being assaulted), and the male was there at the station, also refuelling - but his car.
Fortunately, I was able to hold back a little - I think I pulled out of the queue and pretended to be taking a call on my mobile, but eventually I had to fuel up. While doing so, he saw me in female work clothes, and appeared to realise his assumptions were wrong: I was living in the (correct) female gender, including working.
He looked a little ... hangdog - or perhaps sheepish is a better word.
In any case, I was fairly sure he realised what IPOCs (couple of bigots) he and his presumably girlfriend had been the previous day, but I wasn't going to trust my safety and wellbeing to that, so continued to stay as far away from him as I could until he was gone before I paid for my petrol and left.
I was also extremely careful about members of the public at that marina.
The second marina I stayed at was better - or, perhaps more accurately, less bad. That era was when my disillusionment with people in sailing was completed - a disillusionment which began with the sexism and racism I saw in the 70s, was ended by their trans-/homophobia.
I had little to do with sailing until the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney, although I acknowledge many clubs are trying to be inclusive ... but have a long way to go.
Those experiences at the marina, combined with the transphobia I experienced at work (and in the hospital where I had gender realignment surgery!!!) were key reasons I (a) decided not to waste my time and energy pandering to bigots by trying to “pass”, and (b) took the opportunity to get involved in activism when it came along.
PS - there have been other similar incidents, such as the spam caller from overseas in the 80s who refused to accept my correction of his wrong assumption and kept spam calling me until I unplugged the phone. The IPOC wrote to a local letter complaining about "men" pretending to be women and I wrote a reply complaining about women with deep voices being abused by IPOCs.
(Less sanguine are events such as the transphobic visitor who said I should rely on internal knowledge and not correct transphobes who misgender me!)
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Vote Yes for the Voice in Australia - see this backgrounder.
Finally, remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, and to mind our Mӕgan.
