This was something new for me!
I mean, sure, some hosts read through your profile and tell you you’re not a good fit. BEFORE I’d traveled to another country to meet him! I’ve never met a host (until now) who told me “Go away” from the doorstep.
So, what happened? I was doing two Workaways, back to back. First in Mariposa, California, USA, then in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. And my mom insisted that I cross the Mexican border escorted by my father.
Which is exactly what happened. My dad drove down after my Mariposa Workaway and we met and spent what was a very enjoyable weekend together. At the end of which we took the trolley to Mexico. We spent one night in Ensenada, being tourists, and, the next day, we met my host.
Now, this host was a little different from others I’ve worked for. He lived on a boat. And the help that he wanted was help around the boat. Help I certainly could have given him. Only he didn’t think so.
He can’t have seen much of my walking, which IS a little imbalanced because of the head traumas I’ve had. But he can’t have seen much of it, because we literally rounded the corner and he was there across the plaza, telling me, “I’m sorry, but I can’t take someone with a balance issue on board.”
Was that the real reason? I doubt it. My mom tells me it’s because I’m a woman. Because he saw me as somehow fragile or weak. I don’t think this is the case either. He knew I was a woman. He could see that from my profile!
And my balance issue – which has vastly improved from the moment I suffered the trauma – isn’t overly noticeable.
What I think it was – and what IS weird for Workaway – is that I showed up with my dad. Which, of course, only happened because my mom insisted I couldn’t go to Mexico alone. Her words: “You’re a woman now!”
“Now” because she’d only recently realised I wasn’t the son she’d been told that she had. I’d only recently realised that. All my life, I’d grown up trapped in a horrid identity: this “guy” I hated with every slice of my soul. But all my life I couldn’t find the way out of him. It turned out the way out was simply to stop trying to be that awful person, and get medical help so that I could be me.
For the most part, since my “transition”, my family hasn’t treated me strangely. I’m not their daughter-who-used-to-be-a-son. For which I’m incredibly grateful. But this – the instinct to keep a woman back from where she might be harmed – is the one serious restriction that I’d found, repeatedly. This is part, I supposed, of being “socialized” as a woman: being told that you can’t do certain things. Even when you can.
Author’s note: This event happened when I was still trying to escape from a body that was fundamentally wrong. And my mother has since told me that this was the only reason for her worry. That some guy might feel something that shouldn’t have been there, and – because of it – beat the daylights out of me.
And it’s true: since I’ve been medically cured, my mother’s raised no protests as I Couchsurfed in Pakistan and then Brazil. So I guess it wasn’t “Because you’re a woman”. It was “because you’re a woman with a [you don’t want to know what]”, which – honestly – is something that no one should have to endure.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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