Gender Euphoria Mic Drops with Megan! (46 MtF. 5 months out.)
Yesterday was a rough day. Lots of the monetary costs of being trans were taking their toll on me, especially after sitting down with an electrolysis professional who was highly rated but honestly assessed that it would take A LOT of treatment (that of course isn’t covered by insurance) to deal with even the van dyke region of my graying red-blonde beard. It was truth I’d tried to prepare for, but it was also exhausting on top of an issue with a human hair wig I’d had custom made but had serious problems with and a whole lot of hormones running amok during 2nd adolescence.
Despite all of these setbacks from the day, I did have one beautiful moment of gender euphoria.
My mother—who has made sure to be as non-affirming as possible over the last 5 months of my transition—had issues with her two TV’s and needed my help to get them fixed. I came over after I helped out at my church this evening and figured out what was going on with the TVs. After correcting them, I had mom practice with both TVs and then took photos and emailed her and my sister a detailed checklist for fixing the things in the future.
Mom also needed help contacting the cable company as she needed to cancel her cable television package and had been upsold to a more expensive package when she’d called to do the same thing a month before. In Megan mode, I’m much better at dealing with folks over the phone—as I no longer get pushed into corners easily—so I wanted to help her out.
Prepared for a tussle with the cable company, I called them up and was answered by a woman named Sara, who sounded like she was either from Jersey or the Bronx. I introduced myself as Megan and said I was calling on behalf of my mother. She said she’d be happy to chat with me, but she’d need the cable customer (my mother) to confirm that I was permitted to speak on her behalf.
I took the phone to mom with it set to speaker mode. She asked my mother a security question and then if she had permission to talk to me.
My mother, who always finds it a good time to try to uphold her version of the status quo and not affirm my choices in public, made sure to clarify: “You were talking to my son. Of course you can have permission to keep talking to my son.”
“DAUGHTER.” I clarified calmly over the speaker phone, as I took the handset back from my mother. “I’m in transition. It’s a whole thing over here.”
“Oh, [DEAD NAME]! You didn’t have to tell her that!” My mother protested.
“Oh, yes, yes I did.” I stated calmly and then walked back to the back bedroom. After 46 years of being encouraged to pretend not to be who I was—initially, on my mother’s behalf—I was no longer willing to play that game a second longer.
Far from the predatory person I’d been prepared to encounter, Sara turned out to be one of the few people with a sense of ethics at her cable company and actually tried to save my mother as much money as she could once she’d confirmed her modest needs. She gave me the less fun news about when the actual changes in fees would go into effect honestly and gave me an estimate for the change.
Moreover, she correctly referred to me by my correct name and my gender for the rest of the conversation, and then we discussed our Thanksgiving plans. When I disclosed that we were “still figuring things out for the holidays,” she correctly sensed that this meant tension between me and the woman who was ignoring my transition and quickly moved on, oversharing how she had lost track of the time this year but planned to make her special turkey egg rolls after the festivities!
As I concluded the conversation, I made sure to let her know that she’d been delightful and that I appreciated all of her help!
Afterwards, I packaged up mom’s unneeded cable boxes to ship them off to the cable company and she, wisely, pretended she’d never said anything while I’d been on the phone, thanking me for all my help!
I was honestly happy to do it, but part of me wonders if she’ll ever have me call a company on her behalf again, now that I will no longer pretend to be who I never really was. Each exposure to the outside world that she’s present for is one more exposure to Megan that she can’t actually ignore.
) was so awkward. No one laughed.
