A while back I read something by someone who was angry and felt misgendered when being referred to as a “woman.” This person instead referred to hirself as “FAAB, femme-presenting non-binary.” As far as I could tell, the crux of the problem was that this person, as a feminine female-bodied individual, appeared to others who didn’t know hir as a woman, although zie identified as non-binary.
This raises several questions for me (a cis woman). (more…)
When I was still waiting tables, I worked with a woman who was around my age, a single mother of a three-year-old daughter who had moved to Ohio fleeing from an abusive relationship with a man who threatened to kill her and her child. She came here because she had an aunt who lived relatively nearby, but she lived by herself with her daughter in a studio apartment in a complex that was about 3 miles from the nearest grocery store.
She had a car, but would hitch rides to work (and to and from her daughter’s daycare) with other employees because she couldn’t afford insurance and had expired out of state tags which she couldn’t afford to get replaced. She was terrified of getting in any kind of trouble here because she didn’t want to risk any chance that her ex-husband would somehow find out where she lived.
I drove her home from work a few times and spent some time with her and her daughter, at which point I found out that they were getting all of their food from a Thornton’s convenience store that was within walking distance, or what is walking distance when you have a toddler in tow and no one to babysit. She herself was basically living on peanut-butter sandwiches because they have enough calories, fat, and protein to keep one alive. She had nothing to cook with, anyway. She had packed up her daughter, herself, some clothes, and the some of the child’s toys, but little else when she came here. (more…)
