Recently, two friends invited me to hang out and also meet two of their friends, one of whom is a trans woman. This was my first time meeting her, and it went well, as we got along and enjoyed the conversation. However, I also got her pronouns wrong a couple of times by sheer force of habit, since I'm used to addressing most people as members of the gender matching their sex (as I suspect most people are used to, given that most people's gender indeed matches their biological sex). Our mutual friends told me that it was okay and that she didn't have any issues with such mix-ups as long as they came from people who didn't intentionally misgender her.
This has made me wonder whether others here have had similar experiences due to habit, though. The question is merely out of curiosity, as such unintentional mix-ups haven't been even remotely a big deal, whether for trans people I've met or their friends who have introduced us to each other. It's also rare for any trans people where I live to have had sex reassignment surgery, since there are extremely complicated steps to doing so (including financial costs that are prohibitive for many people), not to mention that the social stigma and taboos surrounding it can lead to severe discrimination and safety issues.
The rest of this post is just for further context as to how about half of my close group of friends offline are LGBT and how I've been in situations like the above in the first place, so you can skip it if you're not interested in reading further without missing out on anything crucial to the question.
LGBT people, like irreligious and non-Abrahamic people where I'm from, have to keep that part of their life hidden from the vast majority of people they meet in order to avoid discrimination and threats to their safety, so some of them participate in LGBT communities online to meet accepting people with whom they can safely be themselves. This is part of why there's considerable overlap between some non-religious and some LGBT online communities frequented by people from the region—there are a lot of common experiences and shared challenges, not to mention that many LGBT people become irreligious or retain religious belief but are quite liberal, so they belong to both types of communities.
Basically, if you're a member of an online community focused on either group, you're almost guaranteed to meet many people from the other group, which has been the case with me ever since I started seeking out accepting company in irreligious communities online.
This sometimes results in unfamiliar situations and a need to rethink old habits and assumptions, but I've been immensely thankful for the accepting and non-judgmental atmosphere my friends and I have found within our current friend group. Most of us also see the majority of those situations as learning opportunities, so they're rarely cause any problems.
This has made me wonder whether others here have had similar experiences due to habit, though. The question is merely out of curiosity, as such unintentional mix-ups haven't been even remotely a big deal, whether for trans people I've met or their friends who have introduced us to each other. It's also rare for any trans people where I live to have had sex reassignment surgery, since there are extremely complicated steps to doing so (including financial costs that are prohibitive for many people), not to mention that the social stigma and taboos surrounding it can lead to severe discrimination and safety issues.
The rest of this post is just for further context as to how about half of my close group of friends offline are LGBT and how I've been in situations like the above in the first place, so you can skip it if you're not interested in reading further without missing out on anything crucial to the question.
LGBT people, like irreligious and non-Abrahamic people where I'm from, have to keep that part of their life hidden from the vast majority of people they meet in order to avoid discrimination and threats to their safety, so some of them participate in LGBT communities online to meet accepting people with whom they can safely be themselves. This is part of why there's considerable overlap between some non-religious and some LGBT online communities frequented by people from the region—there are a lot of common experiences and shared challenges, not to mention that many LGBT people become irreligious or retain religious belief but are quite liberal, so they belong to both types of communities.
Basically, if you're a member of an online community focused on either group, you're almost guaranteed to meet many people from the other group, which has been the case with me ever since I started seeking out accepting company in irreligious communities online.
This sometimes results in unfamiliar situations and a need to rethink old habits and assumptions, but I've been immensely thankful for the accepting and non-judgmental atmosphere my friends and I have found within our current friend group. Most of us also see the majority of those situations as learning opportunities, so they're rarely cause any problems.
