The Leopard Shouted Her Face Right Off.
Bald is Beautiful.
What’s that? You’re desperately curious to find out what trans social media is talking about today? Well are you ever in luck, because this is a story about leopards, love, finding out, and the possibility for redemption.
Last Friday, around 4 in the morning, Lindsay Walter had the worst of experiences in an airport bathroom in Chicago. Walter is a marathon runner and activist for folks — especially women — with alopecia (lack of hair); going by Lindsay Hannah on Twitter, she shared this story about misgendering and the social consequences of cissexism:
At a loss for people right now.
This morning while at the airport I was washing my hands in the bathroom and this woman is staring at me and shouts (and I do mean shout) “you’re disgusting!” I look at her and then dry my hands and just walk out. She immediately is coming out after me and now into the open with all the gates and many people around and again shouting that I am disgusting for being in the women’s bathroom and how it is for women. At this point people are really staring and it is so embarrassing. My gate is right there and we are boarding soon. I calmly say, “I have Alopecia. I am a woman, but I just don’t have hair”. She backs away and says “whatever, just get away”.
Just absolute tears this morning. I don’t even know what to say.
I am sad, mad, embarrassed, heartbroken and just a lot of feelings.
I always try to see the good in people and extend grace, but I am finding it really hard right now.
Last year she had shared her struggles with Yahoo! Life, explaining that misgendering in particular had been hurtful growing up right through her early 20s. It was in her mid-20s when she posted a picture she was proud of, crossing the finish line at the London Marathon. What happened next showed how cruel the internet can be:
When someone commented to say that she looked like a “sick, ugly man,” she was overcome with shame.
“It hit me so hard because when I was a kid, the one thing that was the biggest trigger and ultimate gut punch was when someone would call me a boy,” the 32-year-old, who struggles with hair loss on her scalp and body because of an autoimmune condition called alopecia universalis, tells Yahoo Life. “Because I didn't have hair people would [say], 'Oh, you're a boy.' And so for me, that's the one thing that just hurts me the most.”
Misgendering, being told you’re ugly, feeling ugly: It’s exactly the kind of thing that resonates with trans people. So when she told the story of the woman loudly misgendering and shaming her, her story went completely viral. The trans internet couldn’t have reacted better, more quickly or more inclusively. From the Twit:
Roe Dawn Oneal: These are the people that want to “eradicate” trans people. Claiming to protect women, but actually putting them at risk with their hateful rhetoric.
Alexia Woodroe: Transphobia has always been a tool to police women’s femininity. I’m so sorry you experienced this, sending solidarity from Black Womenfolk whose strength and beauty have always been policed as not feminine enough
SloppyJoey: This is what transphobia leads to — policing women and their bodies, and deciding who is “other” based on whatever physical traits someone thinks matter — it's gross and vile. Sorry you had to deal with this.
As certain smartass Wonkette readers may have guessed from our hed pic, however, the discourse did not remain entirely positive. Things became more complicated after one of Britain’s most famous trans people and current co-host of “Good Morning Britain” India Willoughby expressed her support (“Shocking. So sorry, Lindsay xxx”). Katie SilverRay apparently looked back into the depths of Hannah/Walter’s timeline and warned, “careful India,” after finding this pair of tweets radiocarbon dated to the caveman days of two weeks ago:
Lindsay Hannah: I don’t even have all the right emotions to convey here but I am beyond hurt and disgusted by being told “you’re the problem with sports. men should not be claiming to be female and competing with them when they’re male”. Just because I am bald doesn’t make me not female 😡
[…]
And yes, I 100% agree males should not be playing against females. It is called #ALOPECIA the out spoken and just pure ignorance of people is mind blowing.
Just like everyone in Utah couldn’t wait to declare a harassed high school student “innocent” of being trans, Walter’s position is clear that the problem isn’t harassment. It’s harassing the wrong target. This misses the rather large point that women athletes are suffering from harassment. Superstar Breanna Stewart and her family were threatened just this past week when she missed a layup and a free throw in the first game of the WNBA Finals. These are real world problems limiting the ability of women and girls to participate and then punishing their excellence. (No one sent a threatening letter to any New York Liberty players who were sitting on the bench at the end of the game because they’re just not as good as Stewart.) And yet over and over we see the JK Rowlings and Martina Navratilovas of the world frustrated not so much that threats and harassment exist, but that they target the wrong people.
Unfortunately Walter is in the “find out” phase and reported that she has herself received harassment and threats based on the juxtaposition of her plea for sympathy with misgendered cis women with her anti-trans content. Yr Wonkette enthusiastically deplores all threats and all violence and hopes that she wasn’t downplaying the situation when she said that the vast majority of what she received was positive.
The goal now is to use this moment, the pain that Walter honestly expressed about how misgendering harms cis people and the devastation and tears that gender police inflict, to encourage the next bathroom cop, radical as this may sound, to not publicly berate anyone for washing their hands. There is even some hope that Walter may be in the process of learning something as her tweets from September 29 have been deleted.
But lesson learned or not, to show our solidarity with Walter standing up against the abuse targeting women with alopecia, we will leave you with a picture of Ayanna Presley, Joyce Beatty, and Andre Carson sharing a smile. Bald is beautiful, baby!
Previously!
Your friendly neighborhood Crip Dyke also writes other perverted stuff!
We need a t-shirt, "Prettier than Moo Deng, Stronger than Pesto," over trans pride colours.
Thanks CD, more great writing.