I`m going into high school, and I am currently in band camp with older students along with my fellow future freshmen. I had hoped to start anew and go by Andy and male pronouns when starting highschool, but everyone is misgendering me and I am a ridiculously shy and anxious guy so I find it nearly impossible to say, "No, I`m a boy." I also hate confrontation so having to explain to an (almost) stranger what being transgender is would make me freak out.
First of all, good for you, coming out. I've been friends with a transman for several months and we've done a lot of chatting. We met on an online forum while he was in the process of first coming out. He told me that when people would misgender him, he would correct them simply and quickly and go on with his business. For example, someone would say "she's doing that" (when referring to my friend) and he would say something like "actually it's he". To strangers he'd introduce himself as his new name, and to old friends/acquaintances he'd explain that he was transitioning to male and would like to be called his new name. From what he's told me, you just have to be firm, yet patient. I know it must be really hard being shy when you have an issue like this, but don't stop correcting them or they'll probably never change. As for explaining, maybe say something like "I was born female, but I feel male and have since I was a kid, and want to be seen as a guy." It might help to speak to your friends in private and ask them politely to not misgender you and try to use your correct pronouns, and refer to you as male in front of new people. I'm not trans*, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I asked my friend if I could use him as an example and he said it was fine.
Times like this just make me want to carry around little brochures and hand them out to people! Wouldn't that be so much easier than explaining it again? And then you wouldn't have to deal with ignorant/rude questions because you could just put a brochure in their hands and walk away! In all seriousness though, I've been lucky enough that I realized I was genderqueer really close to graduating high school, so I just didn't bring it up. I'm going into college still using she/her, but if I want to transition to something else at any point it'll be easy because my school is super liberal and super queer friendly. But although I've never had to deal with this particular problem, I have some suggestions. First, I second everything the previous poster (sorry, hun, forgot your name) said so I'm not going to restate it. Next, do you have a Facebook? If so, start friending people at camp, fb will help reinforce your he/him pronouns. Then I would talk to the teachers. If they're on your side, eventually other people will catch on. If you're passing (or even sort-of passing), it probably won't take to long. New people will look at you, gender you correctly, and in the process remind everyone else. If you're not passing so much it might be more of an uphill battle. I think the biggest thing though, considering your shy nature, is to recruit friends. If you can get even one friend who is really on board with what's going on, then they can be the loud one and correct people persistently (also, it's often easier to stand up for someone else than for yourself). :goodluck:, keep us posted on how it goes!
