One of the joys of being genderqueer in a binary society is being the topic of a conversation where one person is referring to me as one male and the other person is referring to me as female and I'm chiming in with gender neutral language. Here is what happened tonight:
I went to the Austin Symphony Pops concert with the Mariachi Los Camperos. At the Pops concerts you sit at large tables. I went alone and had gotten the last seat at a great table (meaning fairly close and on the aisle). The other folks at my table were older (60+) and all knew each other. I felt a bit like a golden, glittery unicorn. They were very polite -- we all introduced ourselves to each other.
I had a lovely conversation with the woman sitting next to me. She told me the story of how she and her husband of 50 years met, moved to Austin, jobs, kids, retirement, etc.
Fast forward to intermission... I ran into someone I worked with at the Austin Lyric Opera 13 years ago and haven't seen in more than 7 years. She knew several people at the table. My former colleague said, "Oh so Shane is your love daughter?" The person from my table says, "No, Shane is our love son." I intervened and said "Love child." Then there was some conversation where one person used "he" and the other "she" and then I think I said "person."
You could tell that the two of them were confused. The person who hadn't seen me in a while I'm sure wondered if I had transitioned and she didn't know. The woman who had just met me assumed that I was a man (I was wearing men's pants, a fitted shirt and bow tie -- looking very dapper if I do say so myself).
I was just giggling inside, trying to use language that wasn't clarifying anything else and was authentic to my experience.
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