Blue Box, Pink Box

It's time to distribute envelopes full of tickets to the choir talent show all students are responsible for selling. Section by section is called out to sign off on them: each member has their own bunch, sorted by name into one of two boxes.

I approach them and try to figure out which to reach into.

"How are they...?" I ask of the tenor handing me a clipboard from behind the table.

".....They're binary," he says though a bit of a grimace. I smile at his reluctance and apology, reaching for the pink box.

"Actually, the... here, the blue one."

"....I thought you said it was binary?

"Yeah, but blue is the women, pink is the men."

I laugh. "Common, if you're going to make things arbitrarily binary, at least do it right," I quip sarcastically. Part of it is that there's something validating about being able to joke with cis people about gender. But something in me is actually thrown off for a second - I'm so used to guarding myself that I'm actually surprised to see something out of place.

He seemed to pick up on that, because he remarked, slightly taken aback in the same half-joking tone, "Adriaan, pink isn't a girl color, blue isn't a boy color."

"A- ah." I giggle. There's something even more validating than sarcastic jokes about cis people telling you off on your  cisnormative expectations.

"Rachelanne did the sorting. She's been doing it that way for years."

"Yeah," an alto pipes up, "I think she just wants to fuck with the system. No reason for it to be that way, right?"

The tenor smiles. "I like pink, anyways."

I sign off on my tickets. "Fuck yeah."