Dinner with an art school colleague.

The other week I had dinner with an art school colleague who I sometimes get together with, this (older) (white) woman with a round face and big light blue eyes and big frizzy white hair pulled back and a tendency to wear flow-ey stuff, and who can seem scattered and flighty and talks with a tentative tone of voice, but is super-ass perceptive and knows her sh*t with a ton of interesting stuff.

Over my coffee and a pastry (I had had a late lunch and had been snacking all day) and her dinner (quiche and salad, glass of wine), we caught up, and somehow we got on the subject of trans* students.

She said that she didn't do the "name and pronouns" thing on the first day and was going by names on the class photo roster she had gotten offline, and a trans*man (i.e., FTM) didn't change his name on the roster but identified with a male name in mumbly speech, and so she tried to use male pronouns, apologizing once when she slipped up in class.

"Because she really looks like more of a butch dyke," my art school colleague was like, in her normal tone of voice like she'd be talking about anything else.

Then, one day, she must have slipped around pronouns again, b/c the next time she got an assignment back, there was a standard form saying something like, "You have misgendered the lovely gentleman turning in this assignment" etc. etc. etc.

So, at the very next opportunity, my colleague apologized very lovely as she can be, and was like, "I agree that you are a lovely gentleman, and what else can I do better?" etc. etc. etc.

And, everything was good, though the student tended to be a little doctrinaire in reading gender in past novels, and my colleague was a bit afraid to push back too hard with those readings, though she did.

"But I really resent being called 'cis'," she was like, and then she started telling me the standard radical feminist line about how men have always defined women for thousands of years.

I then said something about radical feminism, and she was like, "It's not radical feminism, a lot of women think it, but everyone's afraid to say it."

Then, she was like, very seriously, "I don't want to be called 'cis-' -" - and then she paused quickly and broke out into a smile and was like, "Though maybe 'cis-tuh'!", and at that she leaned back in her chair and laughed heartily.

Later, when I invited her along on the tour of the city's sadomasochism museum with my class since we get a special tour of the back archives that no-one ever sees, she was like, "You know, thank you, but I think I'd prefer to imagine it, rather," and she laughed slyly.