Yes, I know I’m transgender and some people might not understand or grasp what’s happened in my life to get me to where I am today.
And, let me be brutally honest, I’m not asking or expecting people to accept me or understand my life or who I am anyway!
Live and let live is my motto.
Today, I’ve been to a small independent museum within a village in rural Wales and the reaction from a few of the locals was bizarre but not bad!
So we, Lilly Jae and I, walk into this place, hand in hand, and the experience we went through has stunned us both.
We have talked about this after we left and we’re shocked, firstly because the conversation was polite, but ultimately intrusive from someone who was probably a very conservative rural Welsh villager!
Upon entry, we were greeted by the elderly male proprietor and it was here the questions began. Some about both our genders, sexuality and later leading into sex changing.
He was clearly confused as to which of us were which sex, and how our dynamic worked as a couple, he swiftly took to pointing out how we “girls” should look at their information section on “how to look after men” which was said joking but also felt underhandedly condescending. Lilly quickly smiled and said “oh that’s fine, thank you, we don’t need to know this as we look after each other just fine. So, thank you.”
It was this polite manor that we maintained throughout the encounter that maybe bought the elderly man to realise quickly that he was digging himself a hole. A hole which he kept digging, but it wasn’t being done in a malicious or nasty way just more a generational blind side to LGBTQ couples and this soon turned into a fascination of some sorts.
He followed us around the museum making conversation and offered us tea on the house. This felt like a peace offering and was added to about the museums new display of information regarding being homosexual in the past. We wondered about the museum, and every now and then he would ask if we had been up to the homosexual area to view the materials.
To which we laughed this off and said, “we’re happy with each other, thank you very much” and hugged each other.
We wandered off and later one of the men came over to us, obviously intrigued, but he must have had some kind of preconceived idea about trans people or lesbians in general, and I don’t think he could truly work out if we were lesbians or one or both of us was transgender.
By this time he was quite nervous but we kind of laughed it off and went on our merry way but are shocked at the level of sub conscious ignorance out there.
We have talked about it and we aren’t angry about this but we are mainly stunned that there is a level of generational ignorance about the LGBTQ+ community.
Especially when the museum has a section on LGBTQ+ and transgender history.
