A lovely trans guy friend of mine just talked about having a rare time where he felt seen and understood by his family. I'm delighted for him, but (selfishly) it reminded me of some of the hurt I've been experiencing lately with mine and with society at large.

I live with my mother and, after her husband passed, we moved in with my grandmother (her mother), both as a way to afford a house and to take care of her. My grandma and I have a complex history, especially due to nasty behavior around her religion and my eating disorder in the past. She has since realized how harmful her behaviors were and made (largely successful) efforts to amend our relationship, but I still have lingering feelings of hurt.

The bigger problem is that she misgenders me a lot. Don't get me wrong: she is supportive of my being trans. In fact, despite stereotypes about Christians, she has never once made any negative comments about being LGBT (although I admittedly only came out to her after she had seemingly softened her zealotry). In some ways, she 'gets' it better than my other family members (I'll get into this in a little bit). When I remind her of my gender, she seems to genuinely 'believe' I am thta gender and just sort of get it. But it doesn't mean she doesn't almost always misgender me. She always uses incorrect pronouns and usually uses incorrect gender words (although has been pretty decent at correcting herself and being cool about it when I have in the past).

My mom and my sister are also frustrating. My mom is very supportive in most ways, and paid entirely for my top surgery and the revision I've had. On the other hand, despite being quite politically active in her sphere (which is... liberal), I had to basically beg her to care about/follow trans issues right now. While the conversation hasn't come up enough for it to be a thing recently, in the past she (and my left-leaning sister) have gotten annoyed with me when I get upset at their or other people's misgendering. My mom basically told me I was 'insecure' and needed to have my internal sense of gender identity be enough, and that the only reason it upsets me to be misgendered is because... I guess I don't "believe in myself" enough? Her and my sister have both implied I'm annoying and bothersome for caring at that I'm basically harassing people by asking them to gender me correctly (and flat out told me that I'll never be gendered correctly).

Earlier in our relationship, she also got in several large fights with me when I asked her to put even a small amount of effort into gendering me correctly and insisted she was "trying as hard as she could" (despite never being gendered correctly over 2 years) and that it was "impossible for her to do better" and that I was being mean. I has an emotional breakdown and I think as a result she did finally start working on it and got quite a bit better but still regularly takes excuses to misgender me (like around my grandma, which she also frequently makes excuses for because she's older and has memory issues -- I don't see why this means I'm never allowed to care or correct her even once, or why it gives my mom a free pass to misgender me in front of her...)

My sister is a cis lesbian who acts like she gets everything I go through because she's also queer. I had to get on her case to get her to use my correct pronouns at all (although she does do it consistently now). When I first came out, I told her the gendered term for sibling that is associated with my AGAB was fine (but I would prefer just 'sibling'). This is genuinely true. However, she exclusively calls me the gendered term and then proudly relayed to me a story about how she 'defended' me against someone who called her out for that. She said it was ridiculous and told them that I told her I prefer the gendered term and don't like sibling. She also will try to get me to compliment her frequently for 'defending' me or other trans people in ways that are frankly ineffective or inaccurate. Content warning for quite intense transmisogyny: She'll say things like how she doesn't want to date trans women because she feels "objectified" by the way some trans women talk about other women sexually, applying this broadly to all trans women and saying it's too triggering. She'll imply (but never say) that this is something to do with having an AMAB body. She obviously thinks of herself as some sort of trans ally and it feels insulting at this point.

I feel like I'm losing my mind sometimes. I no longer live with my sister and my mom genuinely has improved (it's mostly just the fact that she still misgenders me about 50% of the time now), but god. I see a lot of folks in trans spaces saying how they're so happy their family is accepting and their family is clearly 'worse' than mine. It makes me feel ungrateful for the support I do get.

​