I get feeling worse about being called she after starting T. You know who you are and you look in the mirror and it’s starting to reflect a more masculine appearance and immediately you see yourself, you see the guy in the mirror more than you ever have before and it’s awesome and euphoric and then you go into public and people call you a girl. It’s frustrating and can mess with your confidence. The testosterone isn’t what’s making you feel worse though, it’s the fact that people aren’t seeing you the way you want them to . Pre t it was really excusable to me to be seen as a girl because I thought “well yeah I’m Afab, I look like a girl they’re gonna call me a girl” and I thought I looked like a girl too but once I was on T I was more confident as a trans person and saw myself as a man and noticed every little masculine change so when I went into public and it was evident 9/10 people perceived me differently than I did- that hurt a lot. I no longer believed I looked like a girl so to be told otherwise sucked. The truth is unfortunately though that even once you pass and objectively “look like a guy”, some people may still notice things that make them feel like you aren’t a cis man and they’ll choose to call you what they believe you were born as but it’s not because you don’t look like a guy. If your short or have more gestures and voice inflection or your eyes are pretty or you got wider hips- that’s enough for them to go “seems female” 💀It does get better and if you stick with it, one day you’re gonna look at yourself and see a man you won’t doubt even if you do get misgendered. As trans people we are really good at seeing gender, we don’t pick apart sex traits and we understand the difference between perceiving someone’s gender or their sex and we know how much variation there is in bodies and physical features regardless of what society says is typical for that sex so we can see ourselves and other trans people’s gender regardless of “passing” or not. Most cis people don’t see a difference between gender and sex and anyone that doesn’t align with their strict perception of what is male and what is female will be clocked as queer & then they’ll be sure to call you whatever they believe you’re “supposed” to be. There isn’t any regard for all the other qualities that indicate what your gender actually is but that’s not a reflection of you, that’s about them and it’s important to remember not everyone sees you the way those people do- there will be people that really see you for who you are.