𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓮 𝓦𝔂𝓷𝓷  💎

So it's best practice to refer to trans people as if they were always their gender. But pedantically speaking, before I transitioned, I was a man *for most intents and purposes.* I was socially and publicly a man. And I'm now escaping that past situation—MtF.

When people use my deadname and old pronouns, even when referring to the time when I used them, that impedes the escape.

This is kind of a scary way of thinking about things because it means that trans people aren't completely in control of our own genders. But isn't that, in fact, the predicament we're in?

The reason misgendering feels so horrible is that, in that moment, the person misgendering you is effectively barring you from being your gender, at least socially. That's the reason it feels oppressive. You're literally being deprived of something important to you.

People who refuse to accept trans people for what they are, or what they're becoming, simultaneously attack us for not conforming ("you still have obvious male features") and for conforming ("you're just perpetuating gender stereotypes").

Throughout this thread I've referred to my transition as an effort to seem "like a woman" to other people. So, what does "like a woman" mean? People who haven't thought this through will look at me and say "he thinks long hair and makeup makes him a woman!"

No. Hair, makeup, surgery, voice training, mannerisms—each of these is only a small part of a general effort to change how I'm perceived, how I'm treated by others, how I interact with others.

It's the net effect of these things—my acquired social position as a woman—that makes it philosophically sound to call me a woman. The minutiae of how I achieve that end are not particularly relevant.