my coworker called me a bitch and I haven't stopped smiling

ok so this is going to sound unhinged but bear with me. i work retail and there's this guy in the back who's been a dick to literally everyone since he started. yesterday i asked him to restock something and he muttered "whatever, bitch" under his breath as he walked away. like genuinely rude, my manager would lose it if she heard him.

and i just stood there in the aisle grinning like an idiot. because he didn't even hesitate. there was no pause where his brain went "wait, is that the right word." i was just a bitch to him the same way any other woman in the store would be. i've been on hrt for 14 months and i still flinch every time someone has to gender me, waiting for the wrong word to land. but he didn't even think about it.

i felt weird about feeling good about it though, like am i broken for being happy a man was hostile to me. i'd been writing about this on a journaling app rae chat, and the reflection it gave me afterwards actually made me cry a little.

"Being seen accurately, even cruelly, can feel safer than being seen kindly but wrongly. That isn't broken. That's a body recognizing the first time it stopped having to translate."

yeah. that's it exactly. i'm still annoyed at him obviously, he's still a dick. but i floated through the rest of my shift.