Why I’m No Longer Bothering to Correct People Who Misgender Me

There was a time when I corrected every misstep. I'd hear the wrong pronoun and feel heat behind my eyes, my breath tightening, the moment souring. I'd push back, insist, make sure they knew they were wrong. And sometimes, they'd fix it. More often, they'd just get defensive, and I’d be left wondering whether I’d really gained anything.

These days, I don’t bother.

I know some people—especially in my own community of proud trans people—will see this as surrender. But choosing which battles to fight isn’t surrender; it’s strategy. It’s self-preservation. There’s a difference between giving up and deciding that not every fight is worth my time.

Because here’s the thing: I don’t just want people to use the right pronouns because they feel socially pressured into it. I want them to say she because they can’t imagine saying anything else. And if someone misgenders me, that tells me something useful—not about them, but about where I am in my transition. My goal has never been to get people to memorize the right words. My goal has always been to be a woman in the world as it exists today. If that’s not coming across, then that’s my answer: I still have work to do.

That realization used to feel unbearable. I wanted to be seen a certain way now, and I wanted people to have to see me that way. But the older I get, the more I understand that I can’t force anyone to see me differently than they do. I can’t force them to validate me in the way I wish they would. The only thing I can do is decide how to respond.

And that brings me to something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: the Serenity Prayer. Yes, I know—it’s corny. The kind of thing you see cross-stitched on a throw pillow or hanging in a church basement. But there’s a reason people return to it:

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

There are so many things in this world that I can change—my appearance, my voice, the way I move through space—but the way others perceive me isn’t always one of them. And if I hinge my happiness on forcing every stranger, coworker, or acquaintance to see me exactly as I see myself, I will spend my life exhausted.

I also know that I'm not the only one who has felt this way. Every trans person has noticed the way we jump on each other for the slightest transgression. Nearly all of us hate it. We watch each other pick apart missteps, real or imagined, and we know exactly how that scrutiny feels. Is it really so hard to acknowledge the possibility that other people—cis people, even—have felt that sting too? That they've pulled away from its pain and rendered their verdict on the experience? A verdict no different from the one that many of us quietly share?

That doesn’t mean I have to tolerate disrespect. There’s a difference between someone making a mistake and someone weaponizing language to hurt me. I don’t owe anyone my time or my patience. But I also don’t owe it to myself to spend my life fighting battles I can’t win.

Democratic House Member Sarah McBride has shown one way to deal with intentional disrespect: by calmly misgendering a cisgender colleague who refused to show her respect. The truth is that society already requires us to accept changes to how people want to be addressed as a matter of courtesy—Representative Mary Miller shouldn’t be called “Mary Meyer” just because that’s a more accurate reflection of her lineage, and Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t denied the courtesy of her own last name. House Speaker Mike Johnson was given the name "James" at birth, something that he might consider if he insists on withholding from others the same kindness he assumes for himself. There are countless other workplaces and schools where people in positions of authority should model politeness, if only to set an example of how to be a decent person. There is no harm in pointing that out, nor is there harm in exiting a situation where people are being unkind.

And ultimately, that’s the choice each of us has to make. Do we put our energy into demanding respect from people who refuse to give it? Or do we walk away, choosing instead to invest in spaces where we are valued? At the end of the day, I can let every misgendering sting, treating each one as an injury, or I can respect myself for the progress I’ve made. I can refuse to let an occasional failure to make the impression I want diminish that progress or the humility it has taught me.

I don’t expect myself to single-handedly change society, and I don’t expect society to reorganize itself around my desires. To expect otherwise is to invite resentment—toward a world that has never owed me understanding, and toward myself for failing to achieve the impossible.

So I do what I can. I adjust, refine, move forward. I pay attention to the feedback the world gives me, even when it stings. And I put my energy where it matters—not into arguing, not into proving myself, but into becoming the person I set out to embody.