The struggles of getting a haircut as a non-binary person

Males not makes

It is interesting how services for makes have no qualms or problem with enforcing the exemptions of the EA2010. I am thinking of Hampstead pools, saunas, men’s toilets etc.

Warning! This is a poem

What hairdresser does she go to that asks if she's male, female, trans or gay? They might ask general pleasantries so as not to awkward, but I have never heard one ask personal questions about sexuality before cutting hair.

She's so close to getting it when she notes that females always pay more, and also when she explains that she feels like an intruder in a barbers because of her female biology, but is far too desperate to insist that practically everyone else is completely happy with gendered expectations and it's only the very special trans/non binary people that suffer so acutely.

FFS! Way back in the 80s I worked out that both hairdressers and barbers could keep my flatop neat and tidy. So I persuaded the local barber that he really could cut a woman's hair! And then persuaded most of my friends to use his shop.

Alternatively the more gender bending males in my then friendship group wanted a good salon who would help them grow weekday office freindly hair that back combed to Boy George type perfection at the weekend!

We didn't give a fuck about the feelz of it, we just wanted someone who was good at the haircut we wanted!

While it’s ultimately a first world problem, I can relate somewhat, having also been refused service at a barbers for being female (not for wanting a female haircut as I didn’t, for my actual sex). It was pretty humiliating and done rudely too.

I think it’s a situation where normally they should provide the service but could use one of those EA2010 exclusions. I wouldn’t want to force a barber who had (for example) religious objections to touching a woman’s hair to have to do so, but neither should I have to go to a salon for a basic man haircut that they’d charge me £35 for and probably get wrong.

My hairdressers does both men’s and women’s hair. Mind blowing.

Why is the very changeable characteristic of hair style, which can be turned into whatover the owner wants, used to stand in as a proxy for (the impossibility of) changing sex?

Nobody knows.

It must be so hard being the first person ever to want your hair in an unstereotypical cut for your sex. I’m thinking I should make a special blog when I go to the barbers tomorrow, where I shall very boringly sit my very female body down in the chair and instruct the barber on the very masculine cut I want, then very boringly film the barber do the cut, then I will very boringly pay the barber, say thank you and walk out of the door.