Missgendering, Distancing, Sabotage, Passive Aggressive People

As a transgender woman, I face a lot of challenges that cis men and cis women take for granted, or flat out abuse. In this post I want to talk about four forms of toxic behavior I deal with, why they're damaging, and why they need to be recognized.

Edit: I want to add here that as a transgender woman I forgive and look past much. Yet there are times when you can't. Writing about the failings of myself and others helps me in some therapeutic way, and I hope it helps you too. Please read on with this in mind.

Misgendering

First is misgendering. I run into this from time to time.

Last night I was at New Seasons. I'd gotten my food and was checking out when the register malfunctioned. The receipt mechanism popped out and paper went everywhere. An older woman waiting nearby leaned in and said, warmly, "Oh, it's been doing that all day. It's not your fault."

That was kind. She didn't have to say anything. She saw a stranger standing in a small mess and decided to make it easier.

Then the attendant came over, and the same woman said, "He is causing problems with the register."

A joke. Cheerful, offhand, meant to keep things light. And she had no idea what she'd just done.

I was already moving toward the door, so I let it go. That was a choice, not a retreat. I get to decide which of these is worth my afternoon, and that one wasn't.

But here's the part I want to sit with. In the time it took me to reach my car, I had built her a complete defense. She's older, maybe her eyes aren't good. She heard my voice. I wasn't wearing makeup. Maybe I still read a little masculine in the wrong light.

I put myself on trial and returned a verdict, and she never even knew there was a hearing.

So let me say the thing I didn't say in the parking lot. I have boobs. I have hair. I was in leggings. I'm shapely. I was not in disguise. And even if I had been, hair in a knot, sweatpants, not a scrap of makeup, none of that is the entry fee. My womanhood is not a performance I have to pass in order to be spoken about correctly. The bar is not unmistakable. The bar is a person.

Here's what I think actually happened, and it's more ordinary than either of us being at fault. She was warm to me when she was talking to me. When she turned to speak about me to someone else, some fast automatic part of her brain reached into a drawer and pulled out a pronoun. She wasn't looking at me anymore. She was looking at the attendant. Whatever file she'd put me in, that's the one that opened.

That's the thing about the third person. The pronoun someone uses when they're talking to you is manners. The pronoun they use when they're talking about you is filing. You find out where you've been put.

I don't think she meant any harm. I suspect she'd be mortified. There's a small irony in it, too: the first thing she said to me was that it wasn't my fault, and the second thing she said made me the punchline. She was being nice both times.

Kindness and accuracy are different skills, and plenty of people have the first without the second.

That one was an accident, and accidents can be let go. Then there's the deliberate kind, the people who know exactly what they're doing. That's a whole other thing, because contempt doesn't usually stay in the mouth. It moves to the hands. And then, if you defend yourself, you find out whether the law was ever written with you in mind.

Ask Ríhanna Kelver.

In September 2025, Kelver, a 28-year-old bartender and trans activist, was outside the Crowbar & Grill in Laramie, Wyoming, smoking a cigarette before her shift. The Crowbar is the closest thing Laramie has to a queer bar, and it has been vandalized before over its Pride flag and its all-gender restroom signs. A man across the street, later identified in court documents as Scott Durham, started shouting anti-gay and anti-trans slurs at her. He was with at least two other men. He came across the street and shoved her to the pavement hard enough to injure her tailbone.

She was on the ground, alone, hurt, outnumbered three to one. She pulled a pistol from her bag, chambered a round, and pointed it at him. The safety stayed on. She never fired. They ran.

Then the police arrested her.

Durham has not been charged with anything. Kelver is facing two felonies, aggravated assault and possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent, and up to fifteen years in prison. This is in Wyoming, a stand-your-ground state, where the statute says a person who uses reasonable defensive force shall not be criminally prosecuted for it, and where the very assault law she's charged under carves out displaying a firearm when it's reasonably necessary for self-defense.

Some of the facts are disputed. Durham told police that Kelver approached him first and that he pushed her because she was the aggressor, though he also admitted the encounter was three-on-one. The charges have moved around, too: the county attorney knocked them down to misdemeanors last November before they climbed back to felonies. In May, a judge found there was enough evidence to send the case to district court, while noting Kelver can still argue self-defense at trial.

So no, this isn't settled, and I'm not going to pretend I know how a jury will land. But I know what I saw in the sequence of events, and I know what it means that the man who threw the first hands is not the one facing fifteen years. Stand your ground, apparently, depends on whose ground it is.

Sources: The Laramie Reporter, which broke the story; Slate on how self-defense law gets applied selectively; Cowboy State Daily for the procedural history.

Distancing

This is where someone supports you as long as you can do something for them. Then they go cold and distant. Never a true supporter. Never a true friend.

Some of the ways it shows up:

• The friend who was fine with you until you became inconvenient to be seen with.
• The friend who doesn't have your back the moment you push back on someone who is transphobic. They just distance themselves because they don't want the discomfort.
• The friend who loved spending time with you until you transitioned, and then it vaporized.
• The friend who's around when their life is in a lull, and gone the moment it picks up.

These people eventually show their true colors. They don't really support you, and if things got bad they would look the other way. You are better off without them.

Sabotage

These are people who support you to your face and then talk behind your back, or say something to paint themselves in a good light at your expense.

One version of this hits trans people especially hard: reaching back to who you were before transition and using it to define you now. That uses something you can't change, and never consented to have used. It ignores the struggle you carried for years, the challenges you faced then, and the ones you face now.

That probably could be called betrayal. You are better off without people like this in your life.

Passive-Aggressive and Insensitive People

Passive-aggressive behavior is when someone says something mean folded into a fake compliment or a snide remark. A few I've heard:

• "You look great, but older people should dress their age."
• "Really? You went into the women's bathroom? Huh....."
• "Well... I support transgender people, just not in sports."

People like this are often insecure, bringing others down to feel better or superior themselves. And for transgender people the danger is real, because these little cuts add up. At the root it's a lack of empathy, or even basic understanding, of the transgender experience. As a transgender woman, I'm not afforded the same "free" card a cis woman gets, and comments like these are a reminder of it.

Closing Remarks

The world isn't perfect. There's selfishness, insensitivity, a lack of empathy, an "I got mine, good luck getting yours" attitude, people who only see the world through cis eyes, and bigotry that is alive and well.

The only way to combat this is to:

• Stand up for your liberties and rights as a citizen.
• Don't allow others to diminish you.
• Be a friend, but don't be a doormat. Once you identify one of the behaviors above, let them go.
• Be clear on how you wish to be treated.
• Finally, stand up for what is right.

Those who really have your back will work to have your back. They will apologize, and they will be there for you, not because they can get something out of the relationship but because they truly care about you. Those are the people you want in your life. All the rest... let them go.