How do you, or would you, deal with being misgendered?
Since I’m not out at agender it happens all the time. It’s never fun, but it was a lot worse when I first learned about and adopted the agender label. What was so frustrating was stereotypes associated with my assigned gender. I wanted to scream that those things weren’t me and I would get unreasonably mad at people for treating me like the gender they thought I was. Then there was the problem that I couldn’t just point to someone in the media and say “I’m like that.”
I’ve only explained agender to one of my coworkers and it was exceedingly frustrating. I don’t want to have to do that with every single person I know so that’s part of the reason I’m not out. I would rather not talk about it than have to deal with explaining it to people. I would rather just deal with being misgendered then try to explain it to people.
One of my friends I had known for years said they didn’t like the idea of using “they” as a singular pronoun. I don’t use “they” as my pronoun, but I was still so frustrated that my friend said that. We were talking about how Spanish speakers were using the @ symbol for gender neutrality and he wasn’t cool with that either and I fell like I wanted to hit something. I don’t want to come off as a jerk for saying this, but talking to cis-men about this issue has only been frustrating. I can’t talk to my younger brothers about this issue without wanting to pull my hair out, I can’t talk to my cis-male coworkers without feeling frustrated, and I can’t talk to my cis-male friends without feeling alienated. There’s only so much I can do by myself, but until there’s someone I can point to and say “They’re just like me” I just have to wait it out. It’s not fun, but I don’t see a healthier alternative.
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