What can you do when others misgender you?

It depends on many factors such as the cause and whether it is deliberate. Here are some of the things that transsexual persons and others who get misgendered do.

1. Work on your own appearance and presentation. Perhaps you are starting to get lazy in your appearance or hygiene. Perhaps you could benefit from voice practice or a deportment class.

2. If it just happens once, just correct them.

3. If it happens repeatedly in a place of business, government agency, or financial institution, one strategy some use is to break down and cry or otherwise put on a victim act. Or they would go to the manager, ask them if they don't appreciate their business, pointing out the number of faithful years of patronage and/or money spent with them, compliment the place, say if they continue to be mistreated that they will go elsewhere, and then tell what happened. The trick is to appear as a victim to gain sympathy, not appear as an aggressor.

4. Or alternately, in place of number three, try to keep any anger about this under control. Instead, wait until you get away from the place to vent, and then call the place. If it happened repeatedly by the same one(s), and they were particularly nasty or malicious about it, don't be afraid to go after their jobs. If you loudly curse them out in person, you could be banned, but if you call the management, maybe mention press attention or a boycott, and demand that they be fired, it just might not happen again.

5. Avoiding the businesses of those who do so is another tactic, though publicly stating it as a boycott might work better. You can start a blog about anti-transsexual businesses or write to the editor of a newspaper.

6. Doing it back to them is another tactic. If they get offended, let them know how it makes you feel.

7. Another tactic is to grow a thicker skin if you can. However, nobody should just settle for abuse.

8. Talking to a therapist is another thing you can do. It won't fix the problem, but perhaps you can change your perspective, or the therapist can give some pointers on what to do.

9. Joining a support group may help, as long as it is one that addresses basic how-to issues and pragmatic concerns. It won't help if you attend a group that diminishes the seriousness of the issue for you, tells you to "just be yourself" while giving no practical support, attacks you for being "read," or insist that you are really gender variant and should just "learn to accept it."