<p>anothermom, I agree with you that verbal confrontation isn’t necessarily a great idea. After that man came up to me the other night and insulted me, he stared at me for what felt like a minute, even though it was probably no more than 5 or 10 seconds. I was very tempted to say something to him. “Have you looked in a mirror lately? You’re no prize yourself,” and, more succinctly, “Go f yourself, you old b-----d,” were the two responses that came immediately to mind. (I can have a big mouth too, sometimes.) But at the same time, I was very conscious of what a small woman I am, just like you, and that even though he looked elderly, he was still considerably larger. And I was afraid that if I did say something, given the way he was staring at me (rather aggressively, I thought), he might try to push me onto the tracks, or pull out a knife and stab me, or even just spit at me or the like. None of which I really wanted to happen! And nobody else was nearby. So I kept my mouth shut, and broke eye contact and looked down at the ground, and he moved on. Saying something loudly about rats and NYC Transit Authority workers.</p>
<p>So, clearly, he was deranged. Still, it’s no fun being singled out for public insult, especially in what felt like a somewhat threatening way.</p>
<p>But I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression about the New York city subways. I do feel perfectly safe 99% of the time, even at night. And the ability to take the subway to work every morning, and home every night, instead of driving or taking a New Jersey Transit bus, was one of the main reasons I moved back to the City several months ago. I do take a cab home if I’m working past 11 or 11:30 pm, but it’s because I’m so tired, and want to get home as quickly as possible, more than out of safety concerns. Besides, I’d be broke very quickly if I took a cab home every night!</p>
<p>I promise you, the subways are infinitely safer now than they were back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, when I used to ride them back and forth between mid-town Manhattan and Riverdale every day to get to school, from the time I was 12, and was mugged a number of times by older and considerably larger teenagers, once at the point of a knife. And always in daytime. There’s no comparison.</p>
<p>It isn’t only in or near the subways that strangers approach me. I would guess that people come up to me on the street to ask directions, two or three times a week. That’s been happening for some years now. Maybe the fact that I’m a small, middle-aged woman, and, I imagine, look comparatively safe and unthreatening, is at least part of the explanation for the approaches. Of all kinds. </p>
<p>I suppose it’s probably just pure chance, like flipping a coin and getting heads several times in a row, that makes it seem that there’s been an increase in the last few weeks. I know that I benefit, for the most part, from what a woman who’s a friend of mine and is around my age calls “middle-aged female invisibility.” As I think I’ve mentioned before, I have a friend who transitioned at a young age, and was flattered at first by the public male attention she received, but soon tired of it, especially, of course, the harassing kind. As much as I regret, at times, not transitioning when I first really considered it, in my early 20’s, and wonder how my life would have turned out if I’d done so, I know perfectly well that being a young woman in New York City – especially a young trans woman, back in the mid-1970’s – wouldn’t have exactly been a bed of roses. (Not to mention the obvious about what I could never have had, and would never give up even if I had to live the same life over again 100 times.)</p>
<p>In any event, as comparatively invisible as I am, I’m still a lot less invisible in public than I once was – there are few things more invisible than being a 5’ 2" man – and it’s one of the changes I’ve had to get used to in the last five years. </p>
<p>One of the hardest things to get used to, oddly enough, has been getting compliments on my appearance, whether publicly from strangers or privately from people I know. Of course it’s flattering, and validating, and makes me feel happy, and I think it’s extremely sweet when my son tells me he thinks I look pretty, or that when he sees me now he finds it very difficult to believe – even though he knows it as well as anyone – that I wasn’t always this way. But there’s also still an automatic instinct to disbelieve compliments like that, and think people don’t mean them (which, as I said, was my initial reaction when that man complimented me on the sidewalk.) I’m much more likely to believe an insult like the one I received recently. Why? Probably because it takes a while to get past decades of low self-esteem about one’s appearance. I do think I was [reasonably</a> presentable](<a href=“http://farm1.static.■■■■■■■■■■/129/375097408_247ab9bdec_m.jpg]reasonably”>http://farm1.static.■■■■■■■■■■/129/375097408_247ab9bdec_m.jpg) as a small child of 3, but I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of compliments I received on my appearance from the time I was about 13 until I was in my late 40’s and started presenting as myself. </p>
<p>Certainly none from my former spouse; my looks weren’t really what she found attractive about me. There’s no doubt that I was very ordinary- looking as a guy (for many years I thought I was affirmatively ugly), and being as short as I was obviously didn’t help. Nor, of course, did my gender issues. So I think it’s understandable that receiving compliments on occasion in the last few years (not constantly, I assure you – I am 55!) has been very difficult to get used to, and that I’ll never take them for granted. Even though I’ve had enough people tell me that I’ve become [reasonably</a> presentable](<a href=“http://farm4.static.■■■■■■■■■■/3097/2629604702_bb559afc64_m.jpg]reasonably”>http://farm4.static.■■■■■■■■■■/3097/2629604702_bb559afc64_m.jpg) again since I transitioned, that I suppose it might actually be true. Even if my features are more defined, or sharp, or whatever the term was, than most women’s. Certainly, I no longer worry that I look like a guy. (Being small obviously helps with that. No matter what my face looked like, if I were 6’2" and weighed 240 pounds, instead of 5’2" and 120, I’d have trouble blending in.) And I’ve finally accepted that even though I’ll never be happy about my nose – what with having long since internalized Northern European standards of beauty – it doesn’t make people think I’m a man. </p>
<p>(By the way, my hair doesn’t look nearly as nice these days as it does there – I haven’t had it cut or otherwise taken care of in more than a year, and I’m way overdue. Nowadays, I always keep it in a ponytail. Or cover it up with a [baseball</a> cap](<a href=“http://farm2.static.■■■■■■■■■■/1103/1373678535_592634c73a_m.jpg]baseball”>http://farm2.static.■■■■■■■■■■/1103/1373678535_592634c73a_m.jpg).) </p>
<p>I try not to take myself, or my transition, too seriously, or make it all out to be a bigger deal than it was. I know how extremely fortunate I am that I’ve never had to deal with the “it’s a dude!!” kind of comment from passersby. (If I ever got a comment like that, I’d still, even now, probably feel like going home, pulling the covers over my head, and never going out again.) But what I’ve experienced is still an experience that few people have, and even this one small aspect of it is very difficult to describe in a way that most can even begin to understand or empathize, or realize that I’m not fishing for compliments here. As welcome as they always are! 
Internalized self-hatred, and low self-esteem, aren’t so easy to get rid of. As much progress as I’ve made in the last 8 or 9 years.</p>
![http://farm1.static.■■■■■■■■■■/129/375097408_247ab9bdec_m.jpg]reasonably](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/129/375097408_247ab9bdec_m.jpg%5Dreasonably){kind=link}
![http://farm4.static.■■■■■■■■■■/3097/2629604702_bb559afc64_m.jpg]reasonably](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3097/2629604702_bb559afc64_m.jpg%5Dreasonably){kind=link}
![http://farm2.static.■■■■■■■■■■/1103/1373678535_592634c73a_m.jpg]baseball](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1103/1373678535_592634c73a_m.jpg%5Dbaseball){kind=link}
