If a stranger misgenders you, please please please do not ever utter the phrase, “I’m a man.” It sounds very unnatural and immediately sounds overly defensive.
My advice? Just look at the person like they’re an idiot and, in the deepest voice possible, say, “Uh. Alright, then.”
Just act as though they made a huge and obvious mistake, and don’t get flustered. If you’re comfortable with it, handle the situation with humor and say something like, “Man, I know I’ve got a babyface, but I didn’t think it was thatbad.”
and if someone doesn’t believe u, say you have a hormonal imbalance + are on meds for it. it’s quick, believable, and most ppl are too uncomfortable discussing health problems with strangers to question it.
THIS POST, hang on somewhere is the notes is a sentence that changed my whole fucking life! I don’t have time to dig for it right now but
Can’t find it, going to just going to explain it. I’ve been out for like 4 and a half years. I saw this post when I was Freshly Out, and this post has been so deep in my fucking rat brain for actual years.
You have to react like you’re not expecting to be misgendered. It’s hard and it’s weird, because I know, you walk out into the world very aware and afraid of how the cis people are going to perceive you. But deadass there is a “Wow, that stranger has made a bold call there” mentality that, yeah it’s a fake it till you make it type of deal. But once I internalized that, I genuinely don’t even hear people misgendering me most of the time.
I’m nonbinary, most of the time my gender presentation priorities are Have Fun and Look Queer.
The first time I noticed that being misgendered slides off my brain like a wet duck I was in a 7/11 and a cashier tried to direct me to the cardboard drink sleeves while I was like 3rd or 4th in line (yeah it was kinda weird, I was holding a large hot coffee in my bare hand and I guess it freaked the dude out, but like my hands are actually really heat resistant I was fine, anyway) He said several variations on “Mam, would you like a cardboard sleeve for your coffee, they’re right there” and I legitimately did not process that he could possibly be talking to me until he tried something like “the one in the red hat” and then I tuned back in and declined the heat protectant sleeve. (I do not know why this human man was so insistent that I needed a heat protection cardboard sleeve, and I’m gathering that me totally zoned the fuck out to his multiple attempts to get my attention holding something that he apparently thought was made out of fucking lava probably had the exact Genderless Eldritch Horror effect that we all know and love)
I accidentally also did this to one of my professors a couple weeks ago, I was given an instruction with she/her pronouns in it, purely by accident, this professor genuinely does right by his trans students as best he can, but I legitimately did not even process that it was for me until he repeated it with they/them.
This compared with a couple years ago a different professor slipped up and used me in an example to the class with she/her pronouns and I literally barely held myself together until the end of the class, made it 4 steps out the door and started silently crying.
It feels fucking powerful in a “that should have hurt, and I didn’t even notice, cis people have no power over me” way. I have a little piece of the security that cis people have in the way that they interact with the world. And that is absolutely precious.
It takes untraining years of social conditioning, and pretending that you can’t fathom that someone would use those words on you, that no one has ever said that to you before and the words are so foreign that they mean nothing to you.
And yeah I started out begging my body not to flinch when a stranger calls out “mam”, and practicing a moment of confusion and unaffected disbelief when cashiers would ask if I found everything I was looking for “young lady” and deliberately ignoring the incorrect gendered terms. And you know op’s “Just look at the person like they’re an idiot, break out the deep voice and say “Um, alright then”” it will feel fake at first.
Butfuckat some point it stops being an act, and that feels fucking bulletproof.
