r/FTMMen•
GoldObvious6370

How to get my classmates to address me correctly without being an asshole? Please help.

Help/support

Hey everyone, for context I (29) have been on T for around 5 years. I also have had top surgery. I am quite short, and my body has unfortunately retained a lot of what first puberty did to me. I am very curvy despite having a flat chest now, and although I have had some success with diet/strength training, it has been nominal.

I know I do not pass, and I frankly don't know if I ever will, which is really painful to accept. Before you ask, my levels are good. Many people in my life struggle to use my correct pronouns, which are simply he/him. This troubles me in all areas, but one of the particularly rough ones is in my cohort at school.

I am in undergrad, doing a Behavioral Health program and planning to transfer after the end of this to a Social Work Bachelors+Masters. There are maybe four people who use my correct pronouns at school. We have to do a lot of group work, and are made to branch out to different combinations of peers, so I interact with everyone quite a lot in class. A lot of people use she/her for me, and then there are several who default to they/them, some of which know that I am a guy but just can't seem to bring themselves to address me correctly.

Maybe I am a coward but I find it physically impossible to correct people on my own behalf. I literally can not get the words to leave me, I feel my throat tightening when I try. I have a long history of abuse from multiple sources growing up, so I am sure that part of my difficulty here is trauma related. I feel ashamed and that people will think I am unreasonable for expecting to be addressed as a guy because of how they perceive me.

I feel a real aversion to wearing a pronoun pin too, as no one else does and I feel like it just draws attention to the discrepancy. Does anyone have ideas for how I can go about handling this situation that consider my issues with confrontation? I am working on those too, but this is becoming a more urgent problem. I do have my pronouns next to my name on our online portal, so for classes where we have discussion posts that is visible and it doesn't seem to help. I don't want to be abrasive, but it just makes me want to fucking disappear at this point.

Posted Sep 5, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

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