How Transphobia Harms Me, a Cis Woman
“Ding dong - Doors opening. Step back and allow customers to exit…” As I stand at the opening Metro train car doors, I sense another passenger behind me. “They’re just letting men wear dresses these days, huh.” It’s 10:30 at night and I’m coming home from work. I get a pit in my stomach and reassure myself there’s no way he’s talking to me. I’m a woman, and always have been. However, we are the only ones in this train car, and I am wearing a dress. --- I am over six feet tall, with a build better described as “statuesque” rather than “model-esque” – broad shoulders, flat chest, without the soft curves that would mark me as belonging to the ranks of the fairer sex. This fact has been thrown in my face as long as I can remember – the fact that I am larger than most men and always will be. Judith Butler, misunderstood feminist theorist, writes that gender is a performance. You are a woman because you perform the stereotypical social role of “woman”...