"In a functional sense, I'm an any-pronouns person. At my parents' house, I will always be she/her. With friends, I'm a they/them. And at the Atlantic Terminal Mall in Brooklyn, I'm a he/him teenager who must be escorted out of Sephora for shopping without an adult present. (I haven't been a teen since the 2010s, so this is how I found out that malls are increasingly banning young people."
"My gender bag has been especially mixed at the airport in recent years. To Transportation Security Administration agents and passport control officers, I've looked like a guy who stole some girl's ID. And the only thing stopping me from joining the crimes-in-the-sky club, I guess, was the "Sex: F" marker that confirmed their suspicions. It's never been too extreme, but I've had my share of airport confrontations-been sent out of security lines, tried my luck yelling "I'M TRANSGENDER" at more than a few agents."
An individual experiences shifting pronoun use across settings and frequent misrecognition by institutions. Public spaces like malls enforce age and gender expectations, prompting removal despite a driver's license. Airport security and passport control often treat the individual as if using a stolen ID, leading to confrontations and humiliation. A temporary federal injunction enabled obtaining an "M" passport, but the injunction was later overruled by the Supreme Court. Gender-marker policies form part of a larger set of anti-trans measures that include forced detransitioning in custody and transferring trans women into men's prisons, producing serious personal and legal consequences.
Read at Slate Magazine
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]