The Worldwide Perception of Femininity and the Use of BathroomsThe initial and primary objective of us setting up the ‘Dyke Tales’ blog was to provide a resource for what we saw as a slight gap in the blogging resource world. When going through the early planning stages of this mega world trip, Riv did a lot of research into LGBT travel in the continents and regions that we were hoping to visit. This provided us with a reasonable amount of information about where was ‘safe’ and where wasn’t, where homosexuality generally was legal and also what experiences other LGBT travellers had had personally. This was a good start, but what we noticed was that there was almost no information available for the ‘L’s’ within the LGBT traveller world who did not present as socially acceptably ‘feminine’. There are lots of lesbian travel blogs out there and a good amount of information and advice pertaining to travelling as a lesbian, but almost none of it seems to address the issue of presenting as a ‘butch’ lesbian…or in fact as being mistaken for a man! From this perspective I felt I could provide an insight. The result of this blog post is not going to be me giving ‘advice’ in the conventional way that travel blogs do, but rather it will be me passing on my experiences in the hope that this may ease some concerns of some travellers out there. Before I write anything more I want to make it clear that none of the experiences I have ever had as a ‘butch’ lesbian traveller have ever made me feel so uncomfortable that I have ever felt the need to actively remove myself from a situation or a place. Maybe I have just been lucky, maybe the fact that I am travelling with somebody who does present as normatively feminine has helped, or maybe I just have extraordinarily thick skin (or a thick skull). Whatever the reason, the aim of this blog is to simply share a couple of travelling experiences to highlight that good and bad things do happen and these are likely to be shared experiences.
Since Riv and I began travelling in 2013 we have visited 52 countries together. These countries have covered Western and Eastern Europe, North America, South and Central America and Asia. The have included some of the most conventionally developed nations in the world and some that can only be described as entirely third world. We have visited different countries representing an entire end-to-end spectrum of religious, social and political values and beliefs. Personally, I have sometimes been incredibly pleasantly surprised by the level of understanding I have experienced and encountered and sometimes I have been disappointed and occasionally even slight appalled. As I am sure you have gathered from my introduction, I present as a ‘butch’ lesbian. Actually, I hate this term, it literally makes me cringe! As far as I am concerned I just dress and present the way that makes me feel comfortable, but from an outsiders point of view that would definitely be categorized as ‘butch’ and for the purposes of this blog I am going to go with that…I can’t really be bothered to enter into some kind of discussion or debate about terminology and pigeon-holing! Travelling and looking the way that I do and with my girlfriend, now wife, has presented an interesting set of challenges and most of these I have to admit are not exclusive to being in ‘foreign’ countries. The difference when being on the road is that these challenges are made more difficult by often significant linguistic and cultural barriers. I have a couple of examples of note that I feel could be beneficial to share as I do not doubt for one minute that they are likely to be shared experiences. These by no means represent the entirety or even the majority of positive and negative experiences I have encountered, but I believe they represent a reasonable cross section. As a ‘butch’ (argh!!!) presenting lesbian, one contentious situation I face on a daily basis both at home and on the road is using the bathroom in public places (restaurants, bars, museums…you get the idea…I’m not talking about randomly peeing in public!). For people out there who clearly present as the gender that they were assigned at birth, or that which they wish to be recognised as, this is likely to be something that you have never thought about, but as someone who does not present the ‘norm’ this is almost always a cause of (at very least) consideration for me. In day-to-day life, when I am in my ‘home’ country, this can be frustrating and occasionally embarrassing, but rarely does it actually become a problem. On the road, it can be a totally different story. One such occasion occurred a few months ago when we were travelling through Bolivia. We were on a bus, on a long journey and I needed to use the toilet on board and noticed that it was locked, but there was nobody inside. I went to the bus assistant and asked (in my best broken Spanish) if it could be unlocked. He proceeded to ask me if it was “solo urinaro” (only wee) and I said yes. At this point he suggested that I just get off the bus next time it stopped and wee on the side of the road like the other men were doing (the bus was stopping with extraordinary regularity to pick people up and many of the men had been doing this throughout the journey). At this point I felt astronomically uncomfortable as I then attempted to convey to him that I was a woman and therefore could not just jump of the bus and stand quickly by a tree to relieve myself. “Yo soy damas…mujeres…no hombre”, was something along the lines of what came out of my mouth. He looked pretty confused, slightly put out and potentially mildly embarrassed (I use the words ‘potentially’ and ‘mildly’ because I’m really not sure he felt it at all, but he may have done) and then nodded at me and sent me back to my seat with what I believe was the information that he would find the key and unlock it for me…which he eventually did. This, as I have said is by no means an isolated bathroom related incident, but it was one during which I felt particularly unsettled as the length of the journey and the fact that I had no other option meant I was forced to actively address the situation on the spot rather than quietly walk away or remedy the situation myself. On other occasions I have been shouted at, in a variety of different languages for attempting to enter, or in fact being in, women’s bathrooms. This is never a pleasant experience, and as I said before, the linguistic and cultural hurdles often make it significantly more unpleasant. I try to believe that in the vast majority of these cases the misdirection, dissuasion or (occasionally aggressive) explanation is not done out of malice but simply out of an attempt to inform, but I can’t say that makes it any easier. Over the course of my adult life and particularly since I have been a traveller I often opt to wait for less interactive and open situations in order to use the bathroom. There is absolutely no advice I can give in relation to how to deal with this situation, or ones similar to it, other than to say that getting angry is likely to be completely redundant and just try to maintain enough self confidence to know that it is probably just a mistake and nobody is trying to make you feel uncomfortable! A surprising and very positive experience I had when travelling came on our extended exploration through the Deep South of the USA. Prior to doing this part of our trip Riv and I had read a lot of negative media surrounding LGBT experiences in this region and we certainly went in with a higher than average level of apprehension. All I can say, is that as somebody who visually presents the way that I do I was repeatedly and unfailingly delighted with encounters I had with people there! Over the course of two weeks in the south I was only ever referred to as ‘ma’am’ or ‘miss’ and Riv and I collectively were addressed with terms like ‘ladies’ or ‘gals’. It was astounding! This has never happened to me at any point throughout my life with such consistency. Even as a child my Mum was faced with situations when she was questioned as to why she was looking for clothes for her son in the girl’s section of children’s clothing stores! What the reason behind this unexpected understanding of my actual gender was I am still unable to pin point. In an area of the world that is perceived to be so drastically conservative, to a level of active rejection of certain social sub-groups, what was it that meant that for the first time in my life I could walk down the street, or into a motel or a restaurant and know that the people around me knew that I was a woman? This is a question I am genuinely unable to answer, but it made me feel good, it gave me a confidence in my interactions with people that I hadn’t really acknowledged may have been absent in worlds and situations that I considered to be slightly ‘other’. It was a heart-warming and massively encouraging experience as a ‘butch’ lesbian traveller and as a person who is regularly mistaken for a man and thus referred to as ‘mate’, ‘dude’ or ‘bro’ (‘amigo’, ‘hombre’, ‘señor’). None of these terms cause me distress; none of these terms really negatively affect me in anyway. However, they are just another thing that as a person who presents themselves in a certain, slightly non-normative way, I am aware of on a daily basis. Sometimes I am faced with a bit of an internal debate when it comes to the question of whether I would rather be recognised as a woman, mistaken for a man or possibly understood as a lesbian. As I have said, we have travelled through places where my lifestyle is not considered to be appropriate and some places where it is in fact not legal. If people mistake me for a man, sometimes it is just easier to go with that, sometimes it might be safer, less embarrassing, less complicated. If Riv and I are mistaken for a heterosexual couple that can provide a huge relief in the absence of the necessity to explain our request for a double bed when we stay in a guesthouse. If I am mistaken for a man that could occasionally provide us with an increased level of security when walking through certain places, as a man and a woman are much less of a target that two women. The immediate flip side of that is that guys are more likely to ‘start’ on other guys without provocation than they are to on girls…so does this previously positive misconception suddenly become a hindrance? I am not saying that presenting the way that I do causes me distress on a daily basis when I am travelling. Absolutely not!! If it did, I wouldn’t travel, or I would change the way that I present myself. It wouldn’t be ideal, but it is of course an option. It is my choice everyday to go out looking the way that I do and it is my choice to do it in the places that I do it in. This blog post is not meant to be a “please pity me” post, nor is it meant to make any current or future butch/androgynous/alternative travellers feel like the way they look should stop them from going out and exploring the world. The world is a beautiful place and the diversity of cultures and experiences that are waiting to be discovered out there is endless. Having anything about you that is different can present difficulties anywhere in the world at anytime. This is my difference and it may very well be yours too. Embrace the difference and don’t shy away from it, or alter it and try to blend into the background. I have chosen the former but that doesn’t make it the right choice. Your choice is yours and yours alone…own it…go forth and explore!
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