My experience has been that transgendered people will correct you politely when accidentally misgendered. They get it. They don’t like it, but they get it.
It’s the cisgendered people who get offended when they are accidentally misgendered (i.e. calling a cis-female who has masculine features “he/him”).
No different than assuming a fat woman is pregnant or a man with a high voice is gay. And the embarrassment is felt all the same, for both parties.
Okay imagine that… but with an internal crushing anxiety knowing that under best case there will be probably around five somewhat invasive follow up long answer questions either about your personal history or about trans people’s existence in general. Then an optional depressing thing people think is them being magnanimous where they say “I don’t get it but okay.” OR they look at you like you grew another head and walk swiftly away to watch/glare you with furtive long stares or try and speed run whatever brief social interaction you are participating in like you have the plague.
It also never happened to me but I imagine the conversation would be something like:
Hello X
Please don’t call me X I don’t like it, call me Y instead
Ok
~ ~The end~ ~
You’d hope that.
But in my experience it’s a 50/50 chance they will go off on you.
My experience has been that transgendered people will correct you politely when accidentally misgendered. They get it. They don’t like it, but they get it.
It’s the cisgendered people who get offended when they are accidentally misgendered (i.e. calling a cis-female who has masculine features “he/him”).
No different than assuming a fat woman is pregnant or a man with a high voice is gay. And the embarrassment is felt all the same, for both parties.
“OK comrade!”
Okay imagine that… but with an internal crushing anxiety knowing that under best case there will be probably around five somewhat invasive follow up long answer questions either about your personal history or about trans people’s existence in general. Then an optional depressing thing people think is them being magnanimous where they say “I don’t get it but okay.” OR they look at you like you grew another head and walk swiftly away to watch/glare you with furtive long stares or try and speed run whatever brief social interaction you are participating in like you have the plague.
Aaaaand mental picture complete!