Today I am attending trans pride at our gay beach. I have long wonder about trans*ness and swim wear. Nothing is more outing then being mostly naked if your tans*. Or at least that is what I would assume, I could be way off course. However, I am a black queer swimmer. Now you can be black and swim or queer and swim but never have I ever met another aquatic QPOC. Also the homos I have met aren't out to their teams, not like I am with my team. I am on two teams a co-ed all ages black team, the other is my schools girl team. I came out first to the co-ed team telling my friends first then the team as a whole. I was worried that the parents wouldn't like having me in the locker room with their small children (my younger teammates) but they didn't care they asked if their kids asked questions what would I say. I said I would make age appropriate answers or tell them its none of their business. My girls team wasn't as supportive. They were sure that I had a creepy lesbo crush on all of them. They even stripped me of my captain title and duties my coaches in turn made me an assistant coach. They would not allow bigotry of any kind. So I have wondered if gender non conforming people have similar or more difficult struggles in sports? Why can't my fellow queermos swim with me?
Trans* pride has come and gone and you know the art of hiding or making it look like something is there is something my fellow Chicagoans who have choose to present that way have freaking mastered. I mean where are the gay beach and we all looked queer as folk. ( tee hee see what I did there). However, most people were super comfortable being in a swim suit out in public with strangers ( I was not one of those people at the beginning of the day). Even enough so to go nude at different point during the fest. I don't know if that's because we are all like minded people and supportive of others or lack of F***s to give. It was a super body positive day that could make even the most self conscious let go of their insecurities for just a minuet and enjoy themselves without worry or fear of judgment. I met some people and everyone was very nice polite asking for pronouns and preferred names and it wasn't weird at all. In social situations when is appropriate to know or be curious as to how a person identifies it is okay to ask. So it can be done, and there is no need to feel awkward about asking. But if you strangely uncomfortable about asking these questions then it probably isn't appropriate to ask because it really isn't any of your business. Ha! See how you have a built in mechanism called guilt to keep you from being insensitive. All in all good day, good people, and got to reunite with an old friend :) Yep Boss is back! If you don't know who boss is go back to my post about my queer committee days. I think when I moved for school Boss became my lesbian counterpart in New York. But its back to Boss because they no longer go to school in New York or identify as a lesbian. So watch out for extremely late stories about Boss and I.
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