Jennifer R. Povey
1 min readMar 22, 2022

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I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that I firmly believe cis people DO experience dysphoria if they are misgendered. We just don't get misgendered as often and some cis people may go through their entire lives without being misgendered and knowing how it feels.

My husband used to get misgendered a lot in restaurants because of his long hair. Now he has a bald spot so it doesn't happen, but the number of times people greeted us as "Ladies" was high. And he flinched every time. He says now he'd take it over getting old.

I have a friend who has a name that is 90% a male name. She's a cis woman. She gets misgendered in email correspondence constantly. Sometimes she uses it against sexists, but she has said it makes her uncomfortable.

Now, of course, this is very different from the body dysphoria some trans people experience. It's not remotely the same thing as wanting to get a mastectomy because your breasts are giving you dysphoria.

(I've only been misgendered twice and both times it was by TERFs who thought accusing me of being trans was a terrible insult. I laughed and blocked them. But I also don't get dysphoria if somebody calls me he/him or a male gendered term so it didn't bother me beyond making me roll my eyes).

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Jennifer R. Povey
Jennifer R. Povey

Written by Jennifer R. Povey

I write about fantasy, science fiction and horror, LGBT issues, travel, and social issues.

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