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'Mate.'

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By Kay KnightingPublished 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago 4 min read
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"'Scuse me, mate, where's the jam?"

I turn, looking around because it’s not my department and I have to read the aisle signs, and he doesn't even notice his mistake until I speak.

"Second aisle, on the left hand side, sir," I say, my voice, unmistakably female.

It happens with such regularity I have become inured to it, and even laugh with colleagues about this week's inattentive customer, who looked briefly at the tall slender form, the neat shaved short, back, and sides and the clear, unpainted skin, and read it as a male.

But sometimes, it makes me think deeply about the assumptions that bundle up with each casual "mate”.

It doesn't offend me. To briefly be thought of as a human on a par with those who carry the status of 'mate' rather than the condescension of 'love' is a pleasurable moment. The second the error is recognized, the status disappears, swept away by a few different waves.

There is embarrassment. The person feels foolish for failing at basic human pattern recognition, and then, there is the flutter of something else. From a woman, there is sometimes a mix of curiosity and disdain. She may have failed the basic cues of sex recognition, but I have failed to woman properly. She might apologize, but she is sometimes doing so out of pity. Mostly she will soothe away the embarrassment for us both.

From a man, it’s different. Sometimes he will pretend he hasn’t noticed; that my deceptive appearance as one of the important humans is something that should sit on my conscience, not his.

Sometimes he’s amused at the very idea of a woman managing to fox him so well that he briefly thought her to be of his tribe. It is a parlour trick, a good game, something to regale his friends with when next they meet and swap stories to chuckle along to.

But the most telling reaction is the sneering disgust that I am female and daring to exist in an openly unfuckable state, not from the kind of laziness that induces a very different judgement, but from a deliberate choice to eschew the trappings of femininity. This is barely concealed, because why would they need to conceal it? They don’t need to pretend to approve; I have already failed to sit in my corner and signal my putative availability. They know there’s a strong possibility I wouldn’t even consider their charms, and though this is true of every woman, maybe even most, with me, it’s almost impossible to pretend otherwise, and that is an assault on their ego that cannot stand.

The fact that they bestowed the honorific ‘mate’, before they realized just how obnoxiously defective I am, is more than embarrassing, it’s positively enraging. They have been duped into respect, with no reward whatsoever. That’s why a homosexual woman must be denigrated, commodified, objectified. If she doesn’t perform femininity in her appearance and demeanour, then what is she worth? She isn’t even worth a ‘love’, never mind a ‘mate’.

If I wasn’t oriented to my own sex, it would be just as unacceptable. That flash of anger from men is the common thread that binds women together, whatever we look like and however we identify. They turn it on other men who dare to man incorrectly, too, of course, but the implicit threat when I may resemble ‘mate’ but inhabit a body that will always be susceptible to the power of a man’s rage, means that I may be more likely to keep my head down, don’t take up space, don’t return that anger with my own.

In the end, I laugh. I smile brightly at the mistake, and the social cues move the day along swiftly so that I remain intact, and they can move off with their reaction and whatever they want to do with it. I still laugh. I think laughing is the most appropriate response to foolishness, and I think it’s always the most powerful response to anger. It’s not a safe response, of course. Some view it as far more provocative than returning fury with fury.

But I am not male, despite what you may briefly think, and my power is very different. I am never truly safe. But I have a voice, unmistakably female, and I will use it. A man may tell me to smile at him, but he never seems to want me to laugh at him. That too is part of the response to the way I dare to look. It is indignance that I might be mocking the clean, sharp, driving lines of masculinity by putting them on the female form, the way men put on feminine drag and flounce about.

I know I’m messing up the divisions, I am making things untidy. A woman is meant to ease the passage of those around her, and despite how I appear, I still walk that gender path, conditioned that way for decades. I don’t mind that so much, now I am old enough and strong enough to direct that skill primarily towards women, rather than men. That itself is a challenge to the categories, of course.

But here I am, low paid retail worker, with caring responsibilities, the consequences of the female reproductive system echoing through my healthcare needs, telling the man, who for one small moment thought I was like him, where he can find the jam, despite there being an actual sign hanging from the ceiling that he could easily find himself.

His brief misgendering wasn’t an oppressive act. It didn’t cut to the heart of my existence. It simply served to remind me that gender itself is a game with opaque and complicated rules, and in which men are nearly always at an advantage.

gender roles
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About the Creator

Kay Knighting

British writer, creative sort. Navigating a system I didn't make, and finding my own voice.

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