Misgendered at the Apocalypse
"Maybe, now that all the computers are down – I can use the opportunity to reinvent myself"
People on the television this week are saying something really ‘uh-oh’ happened with Bill Gate’s Microsoft. I’m not going to pretend to understand what happened, but apparently their main computers at head-office dun-goofed-up and now everyone has a melted cd-rom chip. Planes have fallen out of the sky, trains are all going backwards and someone got such bad Microsoft Teams withdrawal, they tried to assassinate Donald Trump in his head.
I was at the GP’s today to have my 3-monthly, hi-femme, slay pussy serve girl transgender testosterone inoculation (eg. boy-blocker). Because of the incomprehensible CyberTech fritz, everyone there was using a much older, outdated operating system: paper and a pen. The nice lady at reception took my details, located me on a sheet, and seemed to have the absolute time of her God dang life dragging a massive black line through it. I commended on her and the team’s capability to adapt so quickly to difficult, semi-apocalyptic circumstances, which she seemed genuinely touched to hear. Was this the ‘Blitz Spirit’ I’d heard so much about in numerous Primary School assemblies? Yes. Yes it was.
The nurse was notified of my arrival by tin-can phone on a string, which snaked up and across the ceiling, then down towards the fire escape and in through the hallway, into her room. I went in, sat down, and answered all the nurses' questions that she too had written down on a piece of A4 scrap paper. Usually the nurse doesn’t ask me questions like this when I go in for my 3 monthly injection... questions like:
“Who are you?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Do you promise you’re a registered patient? Because we have no way of actually checking now”.
“I don’t suppose you have a spare pen on you?”
“...so, what sort of transgender are you exactly? Female to male or male to female?”
The last question would catch me off guard if it were being asked outside of a GP surgery, but the irony is that I get asked this every 3 months, regardless of whether or not my medical files have been permanently deleted by a Trojan Virus, so I’m actually, annoyingly, sadly used to it. Still, it never doesn’t hurt a little bit to be asked, because: 1) I’ve been medically transitioning for over 12 years now. 2) I’ve handed this nurse a box containing an injection, which has a singular function – to block the natural production of testosterone in my body. And 3) I’m wearing a dress. I try not to take it personally – to imagine that she more than likely did already know the answer to her question... that she did perceive me as female, but lost confidence in herself at the last minute – stranded without the safety of my extensive medical records there on the computer screen to reassure any doubts.
She told me that a lot of people’s records were down right now, which made me feel slightly better about the whole thing. Actually, if I can be candid for a moment, it made me feel great! Finally, everyone else was going to experience what it feels like to have their records overlooked and ignored. To have their decisions and motives questioned. The Microsoft melt-down had made all of us equal under one God (the failing NHS). In this scary and unknown Brave New World we have been thrust into, will we soon get to a point where even pen and paper will become compromised, and instead we’ll have to go back to carving our blood test results onto the side of a giant rock.
Maybe, now that all the computers are down – I can use the opportunity to reinvent myself. If the information isn’t there, then who's to say it ever really was? Maybe I’m not even trans? Maybe I’m just on HRT for the menopause? Maybe I’m entitled to get it over the counter now? Look, here’s a piece of paper that says so – I'll just slip it into my file while the nurse isn’t looking...
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