Sexism as perceived by a TransWoman

It’s time for another sexism/feminist post by your friendly TransFeminist.

So in my work, I deal with mainly men, in a male dominated industry. Trucking. I no longer own or operate any trucks myself like I used to for around 12 years of my life. But I now use my past knowledge and experience in trucking, in the field of litigated truck accidents. Where I am able to read through thousands and thousands of pages of deposition transcripts from various parties whom are involved in major multi million dollar lawsuits against the trucking companies, or loading docks, or truck drivers who were at fault. Or at least our job is to use our experience in trucking to determine what standards of care were broken and such so as to get the victims and their families, a fair judgment or settlement to cover medical expenses and things. It’s a rather interesting field of work to be in.

Anyway…..as I said, it is mainly dominated by men. With the occasional female truck driver involved. It is very disturbing to me, how every single time there is a female truck driver involved in one of these cases we work on, there is sexism just spewing from the pages of the deposition transcript. Some of the attorneys can be extremely condescending and sometimes treat the woman deponent as if she’s an idiot. Other people involved such as other truck drivers, or dock workers or supervisors within the company who are deposed always end up saying something negative about the woman driver and say things like “Oh yeah, I always felt like she was an unsafe driver.” And when he is asked what he means by that, and what he actually saw with his own eyes that demonstrated that she was an un-safe driver, he gets all flustered and can’t actually give any real details, and admits that he just heard that from some of the other “men” on the job. Some of these guys are just downright brutal in their judgment of the women on the job, as if the women are complete morons who are incapable of doing the job. And the interesting thing about it is, most of them do it subconsciously. They don’t even really realize it is happening. They just know deep down inside that they are supposed to disapprove of the women for some reason, and it comes out as this weird superiority that when questioned, they have no actual substance to back their claims with.

Men and women started out as exactly the same blob of matter, which due to scientific happenings within the uterus that I only know enough about to get myself in trouble, formed into either male, female, or any variation in between. My point is, we all came from the same place. Just because certain chromosomes and hormones occurred within our bodies to make us form into what we did, does not make us any more or less superior or inferior. Being transgender puts me in a very strange position as far as this goes. I was born male, and lived most of my life as a man, and therefore have an exposure to sexism in everyday life that only a man would be exposed to. This is because men get this sense of masculine empowerment when they are around other people they perceive as fellow men. I have been like a covert spy, living among the masculine world, observing injustices and disgusting language and things said about women. On the other hand, I myself am a woman on the inside, so I have this extremely sensitive perception of sexism against women as well. It is very very strange! For men to feel safe about being sexist around me, yet here I am taking everything they say very hard, as if they are saying it about me. Not only is there comments about women just generally not being as smart, but also very objectifying comments about women only being good for sex and cooking and things. Even if these men are just joking around, it is said that “to every joke there is a little truth”. And what I mean by that, is that even though they may be joking, I feel like a part of them inside, does feel some sort of strange superiority to women.

I am constantly exposed to the troubles of sexism in the world. And I feel as though my position as a TransWoman really puts me in a rather unique place to be exposed to it in ways that ciswomen alone would not have to deal with, and men alone would not be fully aware of. Our minds tend to exaggerate, or make us more keenly aware of that which applies to us. Or at least that which we perceive applies to us. So being a man in appearance, puts me in a place where other men freely express sexist jokes and comments around me, not realizing that on the inside, I am exactly that which they are demeaning and degrading.