It sucks. I hate it. And I hate that I have no other choice.

I thought I passed pretty well and for a good bit now, and there where no indications that I didn’t. I’ve been on HRT for over 1.5 years now and it has done a lot too.

Yet lately, especially at work, the misgendering has been getting worse and worse. Both from colleagues that knew me from back then and colleagues that are relatively new.

Why… How… What changed… I don’t get it. What is that people actually think about me. I know what other people think of me doesn’t change who I am but it’s still just such a punch in the face every time.

Why couldn’t it all just be different… Why could I not have been born the way I want to.

Edit: I don’t want to be trans, I don’t want to hold the trans label and I don’t even want anyone to remotely think about that. Not because I’m ashamed of it, just because I just want to live a normal fucking life the way I want to live.

  • SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    23 days ago

    My guess as to what changed: people’s inner insecurity levels are on the rise due to the stress of an increasingly uncertain & unstable-looking future. it’s a highly subconscious thing, so if you ask them they’ll instinctively deny it without any real thought. People tend to react to such subconscious stress by overcompensating for their insecurities via looking for other things to put down so they can feel “better” about themselves.

    The problem is that it effectively becomes the same as any drug addiction, albeit a technically legal one. The dopamine hit becomes less powerful each time (in part because it’s now expected), and so they chase that “high” by doing it more and/or more intensely. Ultimately it’s never enough, and a lifelong bully is born.

    IMHO, if we’re ever going to reach the ideal society we all long for, bullying will have to be taken even more seriously as a problem than even drug & alcohol addiction have ever been.

    • Squished Fly (she/they)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      23 days ago

      That would make sense if people would misgender me on purpose, but that’s just not the case. Some people even correct themselves and say sorry, tho even that never used to happen in the past… And a few times it’s not even a thing of them having to get used to me being trans now since they haven’t known be before.

      It just is such an obvious punch to the face of “no matter what you think, you don’t pass”.

      • dandelion (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        23 days ago

        I think it’s helpful to remember that people who knew you before you transitioned will continue to see you as you were before, no matter whether you are passing with new people. There’s this great part of Julia Serano’s Sexed Up that describes this:

        That may have been the most surreal part of my whole transition: gradually having strangers come to the consensus that I was a woman, while the people who knew me best and saw me most often couldn’t even tell that any of this was even happening. When I wasn’t spending my time at music shows, I was usually at work in the lab, and there were always strangers stopping by: students looking for someone they knew, delivery people dropping off packages, people from other labs asking for advice, and so on. At the height of my “in-between” phase, I learned to avoid these people like the plague because they would often vocalize their presumptions about my gender to my coworkers, saying things like “The woman over there told me that I should speak with you.” One time this happened right in front of me: A salesperson from a laboratory supply company was talking with my coworker and pointed directly at me and referred to me as “she.” And my coworker gave me a side-eye glance as if to say, “What’s up with this person? They can’t even tell what gender you are!”

        Needless to say, changing jobs and moving away from the town where I had lived as a man really helped me live fully as a woman - interacting with people who knew me before I transitioned creates a lot of stress for me, and “degenders” me in a real way - I can tell they don’t see me as a woman.

    • Jorunn (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      23 days ago

      I think maybe all the anti-trans propaganda spread by lobby organizations and many political parties around the world had something to do with it too :P

      • SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        23 days ago

        Is that not bullying to you?

        ETA: it’s all driven by an utterly insatiable need to dominate and control, which comes from deep insecurities preventing acceptance of what they don’t understand for fear it could hurt them.