“Workaway” is a programme for intrepid travelers who want to get off the tourist trail and really get to know a place for a while. In the programme, you exchange a wee bit of work for food and housing. The typical deal is that you work for five hours a day, five days a week, and the host covers room and board.
Now, I’d done this before. All across Europe and South America. Had loads of references. But all with a male name, a person I increasingly felt wasn’t even me and with whom I didn’t want to be associated.
So I made a new account. And started looking for hosts in my next destination. Part a series of flights I’d booked before I knew I was a woman. Back when I’d been in nonstop run mode, trying to escape the monster that I didn’t know was gender dysphoria, the monster who would follow my male-bodied alter-ego wherever he fled to.
My latest scheme involved spending a year on a working holiday visa in New Zealand. And to get there, I’d booked flights through Australia. So I was going to Melbourne.
So I looked on the website. And, forty minutes away, I found my host, a woman named Liz who wanted help gardening in her family’s beautiful, semi-rural property in Ballan, Victoria.
Liz was an amazing host. I’d recommend her to anyone! Not only was the work undemanding, she let me sleep in a whole in-law suite, and I got to have my meals as part of her family. (There were two kids, a fourteen-year-old son and a seventeen-year-old daughter.)
Now, you’re wondering, was it hard being trans with the kids around? Did you get asked about your junk often?
Absolutely not! It was early after my transition, and I still had a male passport, so I’d included my trans-ness on my Workaway profile. And Liz had told her kids. To which (she told me!) they’d said, “Why are you telling us this?”
In fact, during my whole ten days in Australia, I was only asked about my junk once. By an immigration official, to whom I showed the male passport as I was leaving. And all he did was ask me if I’d had “the surgery” yet.
I’d like to think that we’re entering into a better, less judgmental age for trans* people.
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