The other day I went to some family celebration, and my one aunt, who had cancer way back when, she was there with her kids. And she noticed that I was very conspicuously wearing a beanie indoors, and she asked me, “Is it a beanie day today?” — and I said, “Yup.”

And she asked me, “Is every day a beanie day?” — and I said, “Yup.”

And she said, “Yeah, I know what that’s like.” — and thus ended that brief exchange.

It was on the on the one hand “nice” to get a remark on my hair loss that came from a place of empathy, and didn’t emphasize the hair loss as anything “masculine”; on the other hand dealing with hair loss feels like a bit of a catch-22 as long as I’m closeted, like no matter what I do, even the most empathetic acknowledgement of my hair loss is going to sting a little and make me feel silly and pathetic regardless.

Other people can much better explain the exact deal with baldness and how it interacts with gender in multifaceted ways, or explain how “the fruiting body is not the whole mushroom” wrt the things that people might point to and call “misandry” — I guess I just wanted to chime in and say that shit sucks, and making fun of literally anyone for experiencing (or how they choose to deal with) hair loss, shouldn’t fly.

But being against body shaming shouldn’t be a controversial stance, anyways.