First of all, its never okay to be rude to service workers. To treat service workers rudely is the lowest of the low and a gauge whether a person is a decent human being. Service workers are among the most hardworking people in the workforce despite the reality that most of them are paid minimum wage. Rule of thumb is to always treat service workers with utmost politenes. They deserve respect and humane treatment from everyone.

Having said that, i dont tolerate people who are rude to service workers. They are my pet peeve and i would judge someone who is rude to wait staff, service crews, cashiers etc as an awful person. In the incident in Cebu, the trans woman involved was really in the wrong for treating the waiter the way she did. If the waiter genuinely just mistook the preferred pronouns of the trans woman, the latter should have just politely corrected the waiter otherwise if the waiter was just really spiteful and disrespectful by deliberately misgendering the trans woman, she should have just taken it calmly to the management and let the management take care of it and leave it at that. No fuss. She shouldnt have made the waiter stand for two hours and humiliate him. Thats just low. Thats not how you educate people. Its rude and awful to power trip and act high and mighty. This would not have escalated if she was decent enough to be polite.

As a non-passing trans woman, I get how hurting it is to be misgendered and to be negatively impacted by it. It contributes a lot to gender dysphoria and chips away the little self confidence i have. But would I be rude to a wait staff who misgendered me? Of course not. If he was deliberately being disrespectful (which almost always isnt the case) then I'll politely ask/tell the management about it and let them handle it.

However, a wrong cannot be corrected by another wrong. This incident opened the floodgates of transphobia especially online towards the trans woman involved. People started to point out that the said trans woman is non-passing and doesnt even deserve to be treated as a woman nor deserve to be referred she/her and many more transphobic words were hurled.

While, i do not agree with how she handled being misgendered. This doesnt give anyone a license to just start hurling transphobia to any trans woman. All the more that it does not justify making fun or pointing out that a trans woman does not pass. This has always been a common problem in our country. If a trans woman doesnt pass as cis, if youre not Lars Pacheco or Kevin Balot prototype your trans womanhood is not valid. Filipinos look and treat you as just mere "man in a dress". You have to be pretty, have boobs, look afab just to gain minimum respect and tolerance. This is very obvious with the comments and reactions from online.

Being trans in this conservative and often times transphobic country, its already a struggle to live as a trans person. Its even worse for us trans who doesnt pass. On top of the creeping depression brought by gender dysphoria, its gets more difficult when people dont seem to afford us the humanity we deserve just because we dont pass and fit "qualities of being a woman" Its heartbreaking.

I guess to cap this off, my take away is if we could all just be kind, respectful, and accepting we'll have a community thats free of hate and intolerance. If only we learn to see the human in each other regardless of our status in life, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, race or religion there's more empathy and humanity in us.