AskTransgender

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A place to ask transgender people questions and get answers about the trans experience.

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Have you experienced a drop in customer service after socially transitioning? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 6 months ago by marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/asktransgender@lemmy.blahaj.zone

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I have read similar complaints about some other types of situations. I think it is informative because with trans people there is the Before/After factor. So have you noticed a drop in customer service that you can attribute to being perceived as transgender?

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[–] hovercat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I honestly feel that in general people are far nicer to me post-transition (MtF) than pre, especially so with cis women. With customer service reps, I've also learned that even a little voice training helps immensely. Even if they're bigoted, it's a mental hurdle for them to overcome when they hear a feminine voice, build the mental model of you being female, and then see your "before" information with the incorrect gender. It's gotten to a point where I've had employees saying "Okay Ms. Hovercat, let's get your information pulled up. Oh, for some reason they had you in here as 'Mr. Hovercat', I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, let's correct that for you".

I know it's become a meme at this point about how much transwomen loathe voice training, but I notice a very, very distinct difference in the way I'm treated by people out and about vs my friends who haven't voice trained yet, and it's seriously been by far the best thing I've done mentally for eliminating a lot of dysphoria.

[–] marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 6 months ago

I am many years in and I have had on and offs with voice training. The benefits of voice training are immense. On the other hand, voice can be the only clue after several months on HRT, but it has a big effect.

I know that people are more nice to (perceived) women, I seem to have a blind spot about that. I mostly focus on all the little things can go wrong if your voice lets on you are trans, in waiting times, wrong orders, inappropriate amounts of chili, lower quality food, as well as gossiping, outing you, staring from waiters/staff etc.

Apart from staring I used to write off most of this stuff. I only registered that many times I realized consistent misgendering was correlated with selling me faulty products or food gone bad or heavily worn out banknotes. My theory was that there is a "second class customer" class, and being trans puts you into it.

But then I read a thread on Reddit about mixed-race couples and I realized that some of the items in the first list are oddly familiar, and started thinking if people do them to trans people out of aggressiveness.