Yeah, though I will present a counter argument for why they do that.

A) I do think there’s are a lot of people who see us as a separate third gender (an experience I also find myself getting as a lesbian), and I think they’re on both sides. This comes down to the fact that even the people who insist up and down that they see me as a man still mistreat me in a feminine way. Even when I was terribly disliked pre transition there was a respect and deference I received that I just don’t anymore. Man hating terfs treat me differently now than then and it is more in line with how misogynists treat me.

This is especially the case with supposed allies (and sometimes trans men) weaponizing my assigned sex at birth. They aren’t treating me like a man, they’re engaging in female socialization of me in a way that is comfortable to them. They can push feminine expectations onto us while still acknowledging that those same expectations are damaging to themselves by using this.

B) More importantly, it’s a shut up button. It’s irrelevant to what they think and believe because it’s an easy way to force us to back down. It’s an easy way to force us to be smaller, to be quiet, to pressure us to put up with shit. It’s the only explanation for why I see it used by trans men on us and by cis monosexuals on their trans partners. People who clearly do genuinely see us as our gender pull it out for these purposes.

When a trans woman does bad things, the misgendering her seems to also be an attempt to just hurt her, invalidate her, etc. The right will focus on her trying to frame us all as evil and some on the left will attempt to claim she’s not really a trans woman (sometimes accepting right wing narratives in the process), or just the “this is a bad person, we hurt bad people, misgendering is how you hurt a trans person.” And I’m not even going to go into v coding of trans prisoners, which most people don’t even know about, and some who do still don’t care about how it’s a material reason to not put trans women in men’s prisons.

C) Yeah the pressure to be meek and infinitely understanding for fear of hurting us all. The fucking gamestop video ensured I ask cis friends to correct people who misgender me. I have a friend who offers to be a Karen for me because she knows how afraid I am of standing up for myself in public. Hell this has contributed to my difficulties maintaining my boundaries (not entirely related to being trans), which has resulted in some traumatic experiences.

I hide behind cis people I learn I can trust for a reason, and I didn’t start out that way. Since starting transition I’ve been heavily in lesbian spaces and communities. I was “taught womanhood” by tough dykes who encouraged assertiveness in each other and me. It’s just that eventually I learned all the above and how to gage if a space or group will treat me ok when I stand up for myself.

Conclusion: Sorry this went on way longer than I expected it to. But yeah, for anyone reading this for whom it’s all new information or stuff you’ve experienced but haven’t heard much of people talking about it, if you look into transfeminism you’ll find more of it and even some arguments on why and what to do from people who are much better at feminist theory than a woman who’s sitting around writing lemmy comments at work. Transmisogyny is difficult, and yet transitioning is still the best decision I ever made. I’m genuinely happy, I just would like these difficulties to go away.

And there are cis people I sincerely trust, and not even a shortage of them. My best friends are cis and treat me as fully a woman. My ex would occasionally forget I was trans because it was only sometimes relevant. Hell one casual acquaintance got cheated on by his ex husband with a trans man friend of his because the acquaintance was “too fem” and at no point even when hurting about it did he treat the other man as anything other than a full man.

Edit to add: This is part of why I feel making friends with other trans women is vital, even if you’re looking to go stealth. It’s so important to have other people in your life who have first hand experiences with this stuff.