"It's she, you piece of sh*t."

Deliberate misgendering of a trans person is not only transphobic but it is also an act of violence.

What are you saying @sapphic? How can it be a act of violence, if no one's getting physically hurt? ...are you some kinda special snowflake?

Well it is, they do, and FIGJAM.

First let's get our definition of violence sorted, using the WHO's definition:

"the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation." WHO definition of violence

We live in a world where transphobia is socially acceptable, institutionally approved and state sanctioned.

Now don't get down, my fellow trans and woke cis allies and concerned citizens, it's not always been this way and it won't be this way for long, but for now cisgender people and institutions attempt to maintain a position of privilege, power and authority over transgender people's bodies, minds and identities.

"...being able to communicate gives people the power to influence their own and others' daily lives. " Words, once articulated, can reveal considerable power " , according to Reichertz (2011, p. 148)..." #1

One of the key ways that this power is wielded, is through the use of language to enforce cisnormative paradigms based in biological essentialism, the driving force behind the misgendering of trans people.

"...word choice reifies the idea that gender is fixed, immutable and decided at birth, a biological fact rather than a social construction. The limiting of a person’s ability to be who they would like to be is a form of violence." #2

This enforcing of biological essentialism, this base mentality that sex is biological and binary, violently impacts on a trans person's identity by subjugating bodily integrity punishing the individual for deviancy, and defying cisgendered hetronormativity, all of which leads to psychological harm.

"Identity misclassification, or the experience of not having one's social identity correctly recognized by others, is psychologically disruptive. These experiences undermine belonging and coherence needs (Bosson, Weaver, & Prewitt-Freilino, 2012), disrupt the social identity process (Burke, 1991), and reflect a failure to have one's social identity accurately verified by others." (cf. Swann, 1990). #3

Now people might disagree with the level of harm that is actually experienced by misgendering and those with a taste of academic research and data, should do further reading of #3 and #4 of the reference texts, but the harm is real and has real world impacts.

"Transgender people experience widespread stigma (Institute of Medicine, 2011; Grant, Mottet, Tanis, Harrison, Herman, & Kiesling, 2011). Stigma is defined as an attribute that is devalued by society, rendering individuals who possess such attributes with less status and control (e.g., Goffman, 1963; Link & Phelan, 2001; Major & O’Brien, 2005).

For transgender people, stigma manifests in a multitude of ways, including limiting access to education and employment opportunities, the quantity and the quality of the healthcare they receive, their overall acceptance in society, and high rates of physical and sexual violence (e.g., Badgett, Lau, Sears, & Ho, 2007; Brewster, Velez, DeBlaere, & Moradi, 2012; Grant et al., 2011; Norton & Pre-publication Draft MISGENDERING AS MINORITY STRESS doi: 10.1037/sah0000070 Herek, 2013; Stotzer, 2009).

Bias directed toward transgender people may be due to the tendency for people to respond negatively toward those who deviate from normative gender expectations (Eagly & Wood, 1991; Miller & Grollman, 2015; Norton & Herek, 2013; Rudman & Fairchild, 2004; Tebbe & Moradi, 2012) or an implicit belief in gender essentialism—that is, gender is immutable and differences between men and women represent an inalterable biological or genetic essence (Gelman, 2003)." #4

And yet current science laughs it this most basic understanding of sex, this laypersons fascination with binarism, this denial of our understanding, all to maintain a dysfunctional system.

Currently our society, institutions and states, will, and are coming to terms with this incongruence, and in time our understanding of our ourselves will deepen, our paradigms will shift and we will move forward towards being better ethical beings, and history will look back awkwardly at this time and shake their heads as to how we could have been so naive.

"Yet if biologists continue to show that sex is a spectrum, then society and state will have to grapple with the consequences, and work out where and how to draw the line. Many transgender and intersex activists dream of a world where a person's sex or gender is irrelevant." #5

As far as the special places in hell for those people that do misgender trans peeps, well imagine a matrix of overt/covert and deliberate /accidental and then merge that with Dante's Inferno, but I hope its something like this:

Thanks for taking the time to read what turned out to be a totally different post to what I started, constructive feedback is always appreciated.

References:

1. Reichertz, Jo. (2011). Communicative power is power over identity. Communications. 36. . 10.1515/comm.2011.008.
2. J King, The Violence of Heteronormative Language Towards the Queer Community-Aisthesis: Honors Student Journal, 2016 - pubs.lib.umn.edu
3. McLemore, K. A. (2014). Experiences with Misgendering: Identity Misclassification of Transgender Spectrum Individuals
4. McLemore, K. A. (2016). A Minority Stress Perspective on Transgender Individuals’ Experiences With Misgendering.
5. Claire Ainsworth, Sex redefined: The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.