What Is That Boy Doing in the Women’s Changing Room?

And other stories of mistaken gender

Aug 13, 2024

It’s late fall 1993. I’m in the changing stall at my hometown YMCA, drying off after a shower. I work out at the Y three or more times a week with my husband. I’m a 28-year-old olive-skinned, short, wiry woman with good muscle tone and sport a punk rock spiked haircut.

Suddenly, I hear a woman screeching, “Oh my God! Oh my God! There’s a teenage boy in the changing room!” I think, “That’s weird—I don’t recall seeing any teenage boy in here,” and continue drying off. I’m partly dressed, with my underwear and flip-flops on, but I still have a towel wrapped around my top. I exit the stall to use the mirror and reapply some makeup. I notice a woman about twenty years older than me talking to a female YMCA staff member.

She is asking about bathroom policies, specifically if teenage boys are allowed to use the women’s changing rooms without their parents. The staff member responds, “Well, typically parents do accompany their children.”

I’m standing in front of the mirror, listening to this conversation while touching up my makeup. I can’t figure out what this lady’s problem is with boys in the ladies’ room. I don’t see any boys in there. But then, I notice her side-eyeing me, glancing in my direction while she talks to the staff member. She lowers her voice and says, “What about this one?” and nods her head in my direction.

It takes me a moment, but then it dawns on me: she is talking about me. I am the “teenage boy” in the bathroom!

I don’t know if “enraged” is the right word, but I’m furious at this woman and her ignorance. In a voice loud enough for others to hear, I say, “Excuse me? Are you talking about ME?”

The woman’s eyebrows shoot up to the top of her hairline, and her mouth forms a giant “O” of shock—like a silent scream.

“Excuse me, but I’m a 28-year-old woman, okay? I’m entitled to use this bathroom,” I’m disgusted. The staff member looks at me and apologizes. The woman scurries off, humiliated. I don’t remember her apologizing to me.

I return to my stall, finish changing, and head out to the front desk, where my husband waits for me. I tell him my tale of mistaken gender in the women’s changing room. I’m fuming.

“That’s it! I’m growing my hair long again!”

“Why would you do that?” he asks. “Because of some eejit lady?”

“It’s humiliating! I don’t look like a man!” I protest.

Well, apparently, to some folks, I did.

That wasn’t the first time my gender was mistaken.

When I first cut my hair short, I was living and working at a liquor store on Cape Cod. I was 21 years old, and my coworkers wanted to go out for drinks. I was dressed in flannel and jeans but still wore makeup and earrings and carried a handbag. We were sitting down at our table, and I had my beer in front of me when the bartender swooped down and swiped my bottle away.

“You’re not drinking that, are you, buddy?” he asked, and then he turned to my friends and said, “He’s not drinking this, is HE?” I thought the bartender was going to get physical and throw my ass out of the bar.

Not one to remain silent, I stuck up for myself. I was incensed. I grabbed my beer back and said, “YES, I AM DRINKING THAT because I’m A GIRL!” And with that, I whipped out my driver’s license to show him I was 21.

His shoulders slumped, and his demeanor softened. He put the bottle back on the table and said “Sorry.” At this point, my male friends were laughing uncontrollably.

“What the f#%k?” I thought.

“I went to the ladies’ room and had to walk right past the bartender. Didn’t he see me?”

After that, my coworkers started calling me “Little Buddy.”

The next time it happened, I was in London, sitting on a park bench, minding my own business while waiting for my husband to finish a job interview. A guy, maybe in his late 20’s came and sat beside me. Judging by his accent, he wasn’t from the U.K. He asked if I was Japanese. I told him no, but he either didn’t believe it or didn’t care. He said he lived not far from the park and asked if I wanted to go to his flat to “check-in.”

He thought I was a rent boy. Meanwhile, a British woman sitting across from me on the opposite bench was pretending not to notice while I made pleading eyes at her for HELP.

Luckily, my husband showed up just in the nick of time.

Another time, it happened in Dublin when I went to the Coombe Hospital to pick up my prescription for prenatal vitamins. The pharmacy had a walk-up window, so the woman behind the desk could only see me with my short hair from the mid-chest up.

She asked, “Is this prescription for your mother?”

I looked at her, dumbfounded. “NO, it’s for me.”

Her eyes opened wide with surprise. “Oh, my goodness! I thought you were a twelve-year-old boy,” she said in her North Dublin accent.

“That would be news to my husband!” We both laughed. Dubliners have a way of making even awkward situations funny.

Then there was the time I was visiting the Museum of Science with my oldest child. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, boat shoes, and makeup with earrings and a handbag—but again, the short spiky hair.

Some nosy woman asked, “How old are you?” I looked at her like, “What the heck, lady? Who asks questions like that?” I said nothing.

Then she said, “What a nice big brother you are to bring your sibling to the museum!” I looked at her in horror. WHAT??

For the rest of the day, I was paranoid about going into the ladies’ room, afraid I’d be accused of being a guy sneaking in there (this was after the YMCA incident).

Finally, when I was around 30, I had to get my license renewed. As you can see from the photo, I was wearing pink. I was also wearing makeup.

Guess what happened? The registry clerk changed my GENDER MARKER from F to M for male, without even asking. Unreal. I had to go back and show the clerk the mistake and tell her it was wrong. She squirmed with embarrassment in her seat. “Uh, umm, o.k.”

This wasn’t just a series of isolated incidents. After my husband and I divorced, I dated another Irish guy. We had been together for several months but one day, we went to the local playground to hang out. Afterward, when we got home, he said he was “embarrassed to be seen with me.” He didn’t like the way I was dressed in cargo pants and sneakers. I was also wearing a V-neck t-shirt that accentuated my chest and I’m not exactly flat-chested but whatever.

“You look like a wee boy,” he said in his Armagh accent.

I felt ashamed. A boy? I have breasts, I wear makeup and jewelry—I looked this way when we started dating, and he didn’t complain. He certainly didn’t complain that I looked like a boy when we had sex. But this time, I didn’t stand up for myself.

My boyfriend’s comment hurt but instead of kicking him to the curb for being an asshole, I caved. I grew out my hair after 17 years of keeping it short. I decided to look more obviously “feminine.”

I thought about all these instances after the insanity that occurred during the Paris Olympics over Algerian female boxer Imane Khelif. So many ignorant, transphobic people—including a journalist at The Boston Globe1—falsely declared that she was born a man and was transgender. Why? Was it because her appearance defied how a woman is “supposed” to look? Or was it because she packed a tremendously powerful punch? Her opponent, Italian boxer Angela Carini, got hit so hard and was in so much pain she stopped the match. As a result, Imane must be a man! It’s not fair! Transgender women are taking over women’s sports! OH NO!!!!!

UGH.

Imane’s nonconformance to Western European beauty standards, her boxing prowess, and her strength got her labeled “not a real woman.” Longer hair, soft features, and light skin—those are the “norms.” Imane, has a wiry but muscular build, strong features, and darker skin. I saw shades of my former self in her. (Not in height, though she is 5’10) I remembered how humiliating it was to be misgendered and treated in a hostile manner because of the sex I was ASSUMED to be all because of the way I looked. It felt dehumanizing.

When I heard Imane Khelif won the gold medal in her welterweight class for boxing, I was jubilant. Funnily, it felt like a victory for me, too. Hopefully, it is a victory for other women whose appearance/strength challenges the ideals of what a “real” woman is “supposed” to be like.

I’ll finish with an Irish saying I love and especially fits the spirit of this occasion:

“Feck the Begrudgers!”

Me in London 1989