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23 Jun 24 - a day at the races and seeing a trans woman looking stunning

It was the annual visit to Royal Ascot which was lovely as ever. 

Lots of Prosecco consumed which kept everything flowing. 

Very exciting to have actually won on a horse for the first time in any meaningful amount. We bought a random pack of bets for £20 and had low expectations as some of the bets needed two or three horses to finish in order so very unlikely. Except that one of them came in!

The box is great, and lovely to see people, plus free food and drink, but the atmosphere is best down on the rail in the crowd. 

We went down for the fourth race and found ourselves standing behind a trans woman in a long purple dress. 

My wife took a photo and posted on Facebook that as she is not very tall, being behind this very tall woman was not great for her view. She has not clocked that this is a trans woman and from the comments on the post, none of her friends see it either. This is encouraging in that even very tall trans women can still pass, which is one of my own concerns, being 6’3” and this woman was my height, although she was wearing heels. Of course what is interesting is that she passed to the cisgender, but I clocked her immediately. I suppose I am extra aware of all the little things that I worry about preventing me from ever being able to pass, so I see them. But if most cisgender people don’t, then maybe I don’t need to worry about them so much.  I felt that I wanted to speak to her and tell her she was beautiful and had a lovely dress and say positive gender affirming things, but aside from that being a bit weird, it would be telling her that I knew she was trans and that would probably make her feel worse. She had a lot of self harm scars on her arms, so had obviously had a tough time and struggled with her mental health. 

Obviously there were many lovely dresses on show and I was really envious that I couldn’t be wearing one. Maybe another year. 

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