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An unnecessary question

I always get very angry when people ask for other people’s sex. Including when they ask for mine. Once I’ve been to a secondary school and gave information about LGBT-questions. So there was this young boy, maybe second grade, who asked me several times: „Are you a boy or a girl?“

Another time I’ve been on the way from the Europe conference of RFSL Ungdom and I had to go back in town to get some of the participants – then I heard an old man asking the women next to him: „Sure this is a boy, isn’t it?“

„No, this is a girl,“ answered the women, I guess she was the mother of the child there. „Well, I was absolutely sure that this is a boy,“ said the man. I got so angry and asked my friend Caroline very annoyed: „Why do people always have to ask others about their sex? Can’t they just let people be? Why is it so very important to know this?“ Then something next to us moved – I thought it was a baby but it turned out to be a dog. This time my daily non-stop-activism turned into a big anticlimax.

Or on the same school information where they asked me in how far I was a boy or a girl, there was a boy who asked me, whether I was biologically boy or girl. One word made the whole question so much better. You can’t be anything else than happy about this. Even though also the biological sex shouldn’t play a role, but it’s normal that people should be allowed to ask, if I tell them that I’m transsexual without laying me down to whether I’m FTM* or MTF**. So they’re "political correct" educated children!

So even though there are people who wonder all the time which sex I have, may it be in the tram or on the ski run, I will try to calm down and see the whole thing as something positive and not negative. Because it’s better that people are curious and ask than if they see something as given and then use the wrong pronoun. This I’m doing to not become an aggressive trans, because I haven’t been yet. But because we have to get away from our labels it has to be possible to call them into question.

Jazz Munteanu, 19, is activist in the Swedish Organisation RFSL Ungdom and lives in partnership with girls

* Female to Male