Roommate roulette

[ng_moonmoth]

I will be attending a weekend retreat offering a number of intensive courses. Spouse had originally planned to join me until the course they had planned on taking lost an instructor and changed focus. So I'm going on my own.

If I was going with spouse, I would have a chance to peek out from behind my gender-normative disguise a bit, but only to the extent they would be comfortable with. That varies. Going by myself, I can go as myself if I want. But that might be challenging if I wound up sharing a room, depending on who I get, and the cost of not sharing a room is a big percentage of the (not cheap!) retreat cost.

My experience with the community interested in the retreat is that it is reasonably tolerant, and contains many accepting people. My impression is that there's a good chance that a roommate would be able to handle my expressing my gender variance.

Anyone had any experience with something like this? What happened? It's hard to measure the value of not having to misgender myself for a weekend in money, but that's what I'm facing right now. Anything I can find out will help.

Comments

[sparkythegeek]

The closest scenario I can offer was when I was sent to a conference with several members of my office. When it came up, I had only come out to my immediate supervisor and our director. So, when it came to assigning roommates for the conference, they auto-assigned me a female roommate because no one else knew yet.

I felt super awkward about it because I wasn't ready to come out to my individual roommate without also telling the whole staff... and had worried that she'd be upset after the fact, when I did. (Thankfully, she was cool all around.)

So, it was that awkward time of being misgendered because too few knew. I haven't been asked to go to that conference since; I really wonder how the director would do room assignments now, since everyone knows now.

[rosefox]

You say "if I wound up sharing a room" as though it's wholly out of your control—can you contact the person in charge of housing and say "I need a roommate who's cool with all genders"? Usually when orgs coordinate roomshare agreements there's a form of some sort to fill out where you specify, at a minimum, what gender(s) you're willing to room with, so that would be another opportunity to ensure up front that any possible roommate will be fine with you being you.

[ng_moonmoth]

Sharing a room is not wholly out of my control; I can opt to pay a single supplement at a daily cost of a decent metropolitan hotel room and have a room to myself. That's not particularly appealing when I might get lucky on the roommate front.

The company organizing the retreat does not have any gender-aware options available when one signs up. (They aren't located in a particularly gender-aware area, and may not understand the issues well.) I would suspect that it's uncommon enough for people to come unaccompanied -- I hadn't planned on it -- that it hasn't been an issue.

As for requesting help to find a roommate who is gender-aware enough to be cool with my expression, I'm wary of going that route. The organizing company does not appear to be especially gender-aware (but maybe not gender-oblivious, given that the course I'm going for is being presented by a married gay couple), and many of the attendees are likely gender-normative enough to regard being asked about their gender as an affront. I'm not really interested in outing myself blind to folks who don't have the information they would need to give me much help.

So at least for now, I'm going to be content taking pot luck on the roommate, and working out how far I'm willing to be out based on the situation I find myself in. I may get a chance to share thoughts on this subject, and improve future experiences, with some of the people in the organizing company.

[rosefox]

It sounds like this is a more professional event than I was thinking of at first; most of the conference-type events I go to are run by volunteers who personally know a lot of the attendees. If someone asked me to help find them a trans-friendly roommate at the event I volunteer for every year, I could list a dozen names without trying. So I thought something like that might be possible, but it sounds like it's not.

I hope you have a great time and feel safe and happy there.

[ng_moonmoth]

>> It sounds like this is a more professional event than I was thinking of at first <<

Not in the sense that one can make what I'm learning about a trade (that ship sailed a couple centuries ago), but definitely in the sense that it's a significant component of the organizing company's business model.

>> I hope you have a great time and feel safe and happy there. <<

Thank you. Me, too, as I'm hoping to be able to apply the skills I'll be learning in ways I can use to improve the congruence between my expression and my gender identity.