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1/ It’s an absolute joy & privilege to be out-and-about and meeting new people again. However it also means a return to near-constant misgendering. I’ve been called ‘she’ so so many times over the last two weekends. It takes a toll. I come home tired & sad & deflated.
2/ As @FindingNevo1 writes (and I also use this metaphor in my book), it’s like paper cuts. Each individual instance of misgendering is a small thing, easy to brush off. But they accumulate, cut by cut. The pain grows harder to ignore. Eventually it becomes overwhelming.
3/ Yet it’s easy to gaslight yourself. To tell yourself it’s “no big deal” & that they “don’t mean any harm”. And it’s true, normally they don’t mean any harm. But that doesn’t mean it’s not acutely painful to be invalidated & disrespected by the world, day after day.
4/ @FindingNevo1 spoke about the toll of misgendering at our @bgowritersfest convo last night. It was so validating to hear someone else name this pain & insist that it matters. It highlighted how much I gaslight myself. And it was a reminder that we can & should expect better.
