Life is a Danger Zone

I've known that I am a boy since my very early childhood. When I was three years old I remember trying to pee while standing up making my mom going insane. I remember hating being dressed in dresses and wearing a ribbon and my hair being girly but not willing to look like this led to yelling and scolding. When I was a little bit older I hated playing with other girls, I hated playing with dolls. I enjoyed my little cars, Lego and I was fascinated by soldiers/warriors and fantasy creatures. Unsurprisingly I ended up being a gamer (whom I am till today). I was hardcore gamer of card games and video games and there was no time for anything girly. Unfortunately my parents always wanted a girl and so they continued treating me as a girl. Outside of my adoptive family people saw me as a boy, those that knew that I am in fact a girl hated me because I simply wasn't a girl. I was simply too odd for people around me. Being Asian and being trans was something that made me the target o...

Many people told me that meeting new people is great. I tried many times to meet new people at public places and event. If someone is kind enough to talk to me I don't usually get past one single question 'Where are you from?'. When people that never met before meet they usually say hello to each other, ask how they are doing, and then they start talking about something be it their hobbies, work, kids, or pets. When I meet someone I don't know and they are willing to talk to me they usually ask me 'Where are you from?'. My usual answer is 'I live in Prague' which does not answer the question directly but which should make the person understand that I live here, no matter if I lived here the whole life or not. Usually my answer is followed 'Where are you really from?'. At this point I usually answer 'Czech Republic' which is not usually accepted and often ends the conversation on the spot. If it doesn't another question follows: '...

I work at the biggest hospital in our country. Many people pass through it. Going to eat lunch at the local canteen is not the best experience for me for several reasons. If you want to get a certain meal you often need to go stand in a line. Unfortunately the definition of what that line should be, obviously, differs from person to person. Many people who want to stand in the line (I already stand at) decide to just stand in front of me. If I ask them to go to the end of the line they just tell me that they were standing there already. The tone of answer ranges from calm but resolute to very angry while accusing me of lying. One of the other problems (among others that are not the point of this post) is finding a table where to sit. When I go around and ask if I can sit down next to somebody there are people that will tell me that the place is taken even though it's not true so I usually just try to find a whole vacant table. It takes time until several people just get up from one...

Relatively recently a colleague was wondering what she should do to know when her coupon (for public transport) expires. I answered that she can just check the receipt (I keep those until the coupon is no longer valid - it shows the period for which the coupon is valid) and she followed with a question: 'You keep those?'. She didn't understand why someone would do that. It wasn't the first time someone was surprised why I keep them so I decided to tell her why I do it. Since a certain time I could go to a store and buy what I wanted or what I was sent to buy. In many cases I started to be followed by the security and if not followed just watched. There were incidents in which the security accused me of stealing and didn't want to let me go. While all these incidents were solved it didn't feel right. I didn't observe this kind of behavior when a white person entered the same place. I wanted to avoid situations like this I started taking receipts because th...

In order to understand my blog you will need to know several things about me. I am a person of color (I'm Asian) and I am a trans man. I live in the Czech Republic which is somewhere more or less in the middle of Europe. I was adopted when I was a little baby by white parents and I lived my life practically in total whiteness. This most probably resulted in me not being able to cope with the average reality an Asian person faces here. Life is a Danger Zone is my new blog. My plans with this blog is to share stories from my life from my perspective which can be anything from transracially adopted child, person of color or a trans person. Why I decided to do that? A relatively recently I went to pub with a fellow Magic (trading card game) player. We were talking about various topics and also about our lives. I received different kinds of advice that do not apply to me though. Later on, I explained why. I'm usually met with denial when I talk about my life but this time I was m...