now with extra gender ambiguity

Today at Starbucks the server called me sir. so I just stood there and stared at him for half a minute. he probably didn't even realize that he had said "sir" and was mad at me for holding up the line, but whatever, I don't feel bad about it.

I have a little history of people absentmindedly addressing me as male. It's happened when boarding an airplane, when visiting a museum, when judging a debate round, and at more than one cash register. These are just examples from after puberty.

I was an androgynous little kid. It didn't help that from age 6 to about 14, I always had really really short hair. (At 6, I got my hair cut because I idolized my ballet teacher, and I wanted short hair just like hers. This has to be the girliest reason ever to chop all your hair off.) One time at day care, another girl tried to kick me out of the girls' bathroom because she was so convinced I was a boy. The fact that I have a gender neutral name did not help. (The only other Sasha she knew was male.) She and her friend were taunting me and what the hell was I supposed to do to prove I was a girl? Thankfully, I guess, considering the surroundings, the only thing we could come up with was for me to wear a dress to school the next day. It's not like I even saw her at school the next day, but I did wear something pink and frilly.

I'm used to people getting my gender wrong, but I still have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I went to Smith College for 4 years, and after being around a fairly sizable number of females who favored men's clothes and male haircuts, I've learned how unobservant people can be. Especially outside of Northampton proper, where I think a fairly visible trans population has made some people wary of referring to gender at all, if you have a buzz cut and a men's cut polo shirt, a lot of people will overlook the fact that you have breasts or a completely female sounding name and think you're a guy. But the thing is, I don't have a buzz cut or wear polo shirts. My hair is short, but still longer than most guys' hair. I've got broad shoulders, but also breasts. And it's not like I have an adam's apple or a 5 o'clock shadow.

So there's always this sneaky little insecurity that maybe all those bored servicepeople are right, and there's something about me that on first impression reads male. I think a lot of people secretly fear that they don't quite fit in: maybe within your group of friends you wonder if everyone really likes you or just tolerates you. maybe you get accepted to a prestigious college and wonder if the admissions office made a mistake. It's so common that it's boring, and when you think about it rationally, you realize it's ridiculous. Still, it eats at you a little bit. And the gender thing is just this insecurity writ large: It's like the world telling you, not only do you not quite fit in with your friends, or at your job, or at school, but you don't quite fit into one of the least exclusive peer groups in existence: your own gender.

I mostly don't let this get to me, but sometimes a random server at starbucks can rekindle the nagging insecurity. I guess the ironic thing is that even as I feel inadequate for being not quite female enough, I also sort of take pride in it. If you're different, you're special, and how special must you be to not even fit in with your own gender?