I just walked into Caribou Coffee in Minneapolis and saw a trans flag & a non-binary flag at the cashier register and nearly started to cry. I literally had to take a moment to catch my breath before making my order.

I’m in Minneapolis for a one-day work event, the “Future Faculty Symposium” organized by the Society of Engineering Science. So I’ve been feeling a lot of alienation since the start of my trip yesterday: the “usual” uncomfortable feelings of having to pick a binary gendered bathroom most of the time at the airports and of being misgendered; the “usual” alienating or othering feelings at the scientific event with no all-gender bathrooms in the convention center, with no pronouns on the name badges, and with a binarily gendered panel of specialists — they did include some racial diversity on the panel as well as have nearly half of the scientist panelist be women, which are great improvements, but the panelists were all from R1 institutions and the very few times gender or equity issues were brought up they were always in terms of men/women or male/female, as usual forgetting or ignoring other gender underrepresentation. 

I’m getting used to some of this at scientific/technical conferences & meetings but these uncomfortable feelings of being othered, alienated, or ignored add up and weigh on me, on us, even though sometimes they remain at the subconscious level — in fact, I am less strongly or openly upset by these situations, I’m getting used to ignoring them or letting them roll off me, trying to bring up the issues directly with the organizers and/or in surveys to hopefully make a difference for the future while not letting it affect my present too badly. But still it weighs heavy and causes a sense of alienation in me with respect to my surroundings. 

There might also be a sense of alienation coming from the city itself: maybe I’m not used to “big cities” anymore; or maybe I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in a place where the weather doesn’t allow for patios for outdoor dining (I still feel uncomfortable eating indoors in many places); or maybe I’m not used to cities/places where it’s hard to find a quiet green spot to sit & eat or rest. 

With all of my experience living in different cities & countries, with all my moving, with all my work trips and leisure vacations abroad, I’ve learned to navigate different places and make myself at home easily and quickly almost anywhere. But I’m noticing some new difficulties within myself to navigate the world, even on days like today when I’m feeling generally confident & comfortable,  difficulties that come from presenting or being openly genderqueer.

Maybe the last straw for me today didn’t have as much to do with my gender identity as much as with my (hyper)sensitivity: walking into a bakery/cafe/diner for lunch and finding myself bombarded by the awful news of yet another war in Israel, announced on Fox News. It’s partly on me: I struggle to keep up with the news and I always feel somewhat guilty about it, so I was surprised because I wasn’t aware of the recent events in the Mid-East; but seeing it on Fox News and realizing I had just ordered my lunch in a place that streamed Fox News just felt too horrible, too jarring, too alienating to me. 

So maybe that’s why when I walked into Caribou Coffee and saw the trans & non-binary flags I felt like crying (with joy): because I finally felt like I belonged, that I was seen & accepted for the first time in 36 hours.