Just a regular day in dystopia

It’s kind of funny living as a transgender woman in Texas right now. There is almost this out of body experience. I’m aware of these debates happening at the Capitol by legislators and these statements being made by radical ministers or transphobes or just hateful men and trans exclusionary radical feminists. These arguments about my existence and who I am and what my life is like and what I think and it’s just really bizarre.
Well this is what my life is like:
I get up in the morning. I’m kind groggy on Mondays especially if I spent the weekend doing some now obligatory political work because of the aforementioned garbage. For breakfast I eat that Icelandic yogurt with some oats and some chia and some frozen blueberries.
Then I take a shower and I let the dog out to pee. I dry and curl my hair. Then I put this toner on my face and some really good Japanese sunblock that a girlfriend recommended to me. It’s very nice under my makeup it doesn’t leave any grease or anything and it soaks in very fast. I use this Makeup Forever Foundation that is almost exactly the tone of my skin and then some Nars blush and some Kat Von D eye shadow. I apply some NYX mascara which invariably I get on my upper lid and have to remove with a Q-tip.
Then I get dressed and I match my shoes to my outfit and then pick out my jewelry for the day.
I drive to the office down 35
It takes about a half an hour. Once there I make small talk with people as I ride up in the elevator and greet my friend who works at the front desk.
Today, like most days, I answered my email and then I went down to the little Cafeteria on the 5th floor and got a cup of coffee which cost me a dollar and today I bought a cake do-nut for my front desk friend and myself cuz she likes those cake Donuts and they had sprinkles today. I love sprinkles. Because I’m in there so often and always at the same time, I see the same people and we make small talk. I make it a point to say hi to the maintenance staff because they are really friendly people and I just think that’s important.
I spent the rest of my morning programming although I went in and chatted with my supervisor about what we did over the weekend.
The head of the division was standing in the office as I was leaving for lunch. She asked me where I’ve been buying my cute outfits and that led to a discussion about Ross which has become my favorite store. I buy so many things there.
For lunch I bought a burrito bowl from Freebirds. I added up the calories and because there’s no meat and cheese on mine I think it’s around 500 calories and so it fits well in my diet and I feel pretty good about eating it. I think it’s pretty healthy.
This afternoon I’m going to go back to the office and I’m going to program some more and I have a 2:30 meeting with the with the team of people who oversee the student information database. It’s a standing Monday meeting. There are about 15 people who show for meetings regularly.
Tonight I’ll go home and my wife and I will have dinner. I think it’s spaghetti tonight.
After dinner we’ll probably watch a couple episodes of Game of Thrones before bed and I might get on the treadmill for a little while if I get my initiative up.
Now I have repeated my day for a reason. If you listen to what the few people testifying in support of bathroom bills in front of the Texas Senate State Affairs committee are saying, it would suggest that I am living some sort of hyper fetishized and completely weird existence.
As I was telling you about my day I didn’t even think to tell you that I use the ladies room. I use it a couple of times a day. I often will also go rinse out my coffee mug and fix my lipstick after lunch. If I see another woman in there we make small talk.
The problem is, Senator Kolkhorst and Dan Patrick and Senator Huffman and all of these other bigots are so divorced from reality that it’s hard to believe any of these discussions are really happening.
Specifically because it’s happening, a lovely trans woman friend of mine who is set to be married in two weeks to a very nice man was attacked on Thursday night. While she escaped with her life, 16 other transgender women of color have not been so lucky so far this year. Children are being bullied some of whom will commit suicide.
These politicians are playing politics with people’s lives and people are dying.
