It hurts when you misgender me.

Trigger warning: dysphoria, misgendering, descriptors of fatness

Okay, "duh." But I need to rant. More than rant, I need to educate. I need to write this in the hopes that at least one cisgender person will read it and come to understand why trans people get so upset when they are misgendered, why we're not always as patient as we should be with your adjustment period. It's not because we're selfish or inconsiderate - at least, not for all of us. Sometimes it's just because it hurts.

I have dysphoria. Every day I look at my body and remember that it's not the way it's "supposed" to be. My hips are too big, my belly too round, my face too soft, my voice too high. I look at my physical traits and I see "female," and have to remember that everyone else is looking at me and seeing "female," too. I also have to deal with the feeling that certain of my body parts do not belong on my body. Have you ever hated some part of your body so badly that you wanted to tear, cut, burn it off? Imagine what it's like not only to feel like it doesn't belong on your body, but to know that anyone who sees that part will start to make assumptions about you that completely contradict your own identity. Someone who is fat knows a little about this - the torturous sensation of walking into a restaurant and feeling like you've gained a hundred pounds as soon as everyone looks at you, or instantly losing your appetite as soon as someone sees you eat (even though you're still hungry). Now add to that the pressure of everyone who sees that part of your body assuming that you prefer certain colors, certain clothes, certain sex partners. The misery of being forced to obey a set of rules because of that body part when that body part doesn't even belong to you in the first place.

In my case, compound that with the pain of being unable to remember what your life was like before that body part was there, so that even your dreams and imagination are tainted with the feeling of that alien thing (or things) living on your body.

I am in the closet. The people I know in meatspace who know my true gender can be counted on three-fifths of one hand. Every day someone calls me "she," addresses me by my girl name, and/or refers to me as a girl. I don't feel like a she or a girl, I don't consider anything I am or do to be female, and yet people keep referring to me this way. I don't know if there's any way that I can explain to a cis person what this feel like, because cis people aren't usually as acutely aware of their feelings of gendered-ness, and have never been in a position to understand what it feels like to be thought of as a different gender. I will try to explain what it is like, and it should be fun because you get to use your imagination.

Imagine that you woke up one day in what seems to be an alternate Earth. It's not very different - in fact, it's so close to your own that you didn't realize there was anything wrong, at first. You live in your own house, the people around you are your own family, and all of your friends and co-workers and teachers and everything else are exactly the way you remember them.

The only thing different is you. You first noticed it when you looked in the mirror. The reflection is sort of familiar - at least, xe looks like xe could be a family member of yours. But it's shorter than you remember. A little bigger in the shoulders, longer in the face. The nose is much too small, your breasts (if you have them) are a cup size bigger than they should be. Or your penis is a half-inch bigger in diameter. And you're clearly wearing a different clothing size.

To go with this slightly-familiar-yet-somehow-alien body, everyone you know keeps trying to tell you that you're a different person. They call you Tracy or Jackie. They keep asking you about hobbies that you're supposedly into and have never liked. Your closet is full of clothes in styles that you hate and when you ask for new ones they take you out to buy more of the same and when you tell them you want something different they look at you like an alien, and you just feel like the person they say you are is the alien.

Does it make you crazy? Every time one of your family members addresses you as Tracy, do you die a little inside? Do you learn how to build model trains or play the saxophone, even if you hate it, because that's what everyone expects of you? As time goes on, and you learn to play the role that everyone says you fit, do you start to question yourself and wonder if you're really the person you think you were? Sometimes, when you're not feeling the dissonance too hard, you think maybe you really are Tracy and your other identity is a fancy you cooked up one day. Then your aunt buys you one of Tracy's shirts for Christmas and can't understand why you recoil from it like it's a snake. You tell one of your friends what has happened, and xe is sympathetic but convinced that you've always been Tracy and you're just going through a phase of discomfort as you try to figure out your identity. Xe may even ask you, "But how do you know you're not Tracy? You never acted like someone else before." You can't convince xem that you're not "figuring out" anything - this is who you are, you're just the only one who's realized it.

The worst part is when you are surrounded by people who are talking to you and about you almost non-stop for hours. Be it family gatherings, work, wherever. None of them know who you really are, because you don't know anyone who would believe you. They go blathering on about you like they know everything about you and every time they make a comment about something you did or something you like you cringe because they're completely wrong and you can't correct them without showing yourself as a freak. Sometimes you feel like the identity that they've assigned to you is more real than the one you remember - but at those times, you don't feel more like Tracy, you just feel like nothing. Like you don't exist at all and you're nothing but a ghost forced to act out a fabricated life.

Many people don't realize it, but a person's feeling of gender is a fundamental part of their personality, like their taste in clothes and hobbies. The feeling of gender that cis people have matches the gender that has been assigned to them, which makes the fact that they do feel gendered less obvious. However, the signs are there. Many cis men and women, when asked, will tell you that they love belonging to their gender (though they may not understand exactly why). They may become fond of their sex characteristics, to the point where women treat their breasts almost as a set of secondary lifeforms (a man may have a similar relationship with his penis). Some men will lovingly grow and craft beards to express their masculinity, while some women view the act of plucking facial hairs to be an expression of their womanhood and would not shave if they had half a beard. (Full confession: my aunt feels this way.) Moving into the transgender umbrella, there are a variety of butch women who are nonetheless very proud of their womanhood, and crossdressing men who are nonetheless secure in their masculinity, indicating without doubt that the feeling of gender is innate even when the rules are bent. The end result of this is that someone calling me "she" is as devaluing of my identity as someone calling you Tracy or Jackie.

Now, I'm not making the claim that people who misgender me on accident are really disrespecting my identity. I understand that people make mistakes. But let me explain the following:

At any time, unless I am alone or in a space consisting of nothing but people who acknowledge my gender perfectly, I am living in almost constant discomfort. The space between the times when I am actively being misgendered is usually occupied with wondering when the next incident is going to happen. It's painful, like spending my life walking between bees' nests; I can stay as far away from them as possible but in the end I know that I must keep moving and that, when I do, I'm liable to be stung at least every few minutes and as soon as the last one stops aching another one is liable to hit. And each of these instances chips away at my feeling of self - because it is very hard to maintain that feeling when no one in your life is reinforcing it. Take away the activities and rituals that I use in my daily life to remind me of who I really am, and I may forget entirely (in fact, that is how Nic was born.)

I wouldn't liken an accidental misgendering to a bee sting. More like a friendly slap on the shoulder that you didn't realize was a little too hard. I can usually shake those off. But when I've been misgendered steadily for days and my skin is sore from stings, the pain is much more acute - and even more if I wasn't expecting it from you. The end result is that sometimes I may lash out unreasonably.

I'm not saying that's right or that I don't owe you an apology if it happens, but maybe now you understand a little better why it might happen. Thank you for listening.