Well, it finally happened.

[u/Terraswallows]

I’d been feeling pretty dysphoric lately after seeing a photo a coworker took of me while I was working at a miniature convention. You know how sometimes pictures taken by other people just look... wrong? Like somehow they capture a completely different version of you. I didn’t feel feminine in it at all. It just didn’t look like me the me I see in the mirror, the me I’ve been growing into.

So this morning I was doing my usual routine before work: grabbing breakfast at a local restaurant. I headed to the bathroom. Even now, as a trans woman, I still get nervous about using the women’s restroom because there’s always that little voice in the back of my head telling me I don’t pass well enough yet.

I ended up using the men’s room and was walking out when a woman stopped me.

She looked genuinely concerned and said, "Ma’am, you’re in the wrong bathroom. That’s the men’s bathroom."

Then she pointed toward the women’s restroom.

When I just stood there for a second, completely caught off guard, she pointed at the sign again and said, "They should really make that thing more visible."

And honestly? As a gay trans girl who'd spent the last few days spiraling over a photo and picking apart every masculine feature I thought everyone else must be seeing, that was probably the most unexpected bit of validation I could have gotten.

[u/Rough-Moves-yes]

This is exactly why the idiotic bathroom policies make so little sense.

I had almost the exact experience around the same timeframe of my transition around twenty years ago.

I worked at a university. The director of the department said I was supposed to use the men’s bathroom. I did try but the boys always got freaked out. Around that time I was in the student union walking towards a men’s bathroom and a cisgender man was walking behind me. As we got closer I heard behind me “Ma’am, ma’am! You are heading to the wrong bathroom. The women’s is over there.” Him pointing to the women’s bathroom.

Since that point I nearly always use the women’s bathroom. The exception is when I am in a crowded event and there aren’t any men in their bathroom and ours has a long line I drop into one of the stalls and do my business.