The NYT dead-naming Aimee Stephens, who died while waiting for SCOTUS to decide if it's cool to just fire her for being trans, in her own obituary is such an excruciatingly effective reminder of how hard & how often trans folks have to fight just to exist in public with dignity.

Name and pronouns. That's it. So simple! Like the bar is just so very low and cis folks can't help but trip over it, so they can take all of the energy and emotion and turn it into yet another exhausting trans 101 discussion like it's the height of discourse instead of square one

It just wears me out. Like how can we even conceive of achieving equality in housing, the workplace or health care when we have to stop what we're doing five times a day to ask people to respect the basic fact we have names?

And, they fixed it. But only after so many people called them out. Trans folks are constantly making their trauma performative for the benefit of cis folks because society has trained us that's literally the only way we get to be seen, however briefly, as fully human. I'm tired.

Last time I asked someone to consider practicing my name before calling instead of constantly apologizing for slipping up on my dead name, they acted so hurt and centered themselves so thoroughly I found myself wondering if I was being extreme. For wanting to be called my name!