I’d rather be called a slur. I’d rather be misgendered. I’d rather be backhanded. I put my nickname in as my preferred name when I applied for my tech school but I’m still in the system as my legal name. So by default I’m always called my legal name by staff unless I speak up and say, “hey, call me this instead” and 50% of the time they’re like “well that’s not your name in the system and I can’t remember every single student’s nickname.” So I have to hear it every day getting lunch.

Then today in the lunch line, one of my friends was behind me instead of in front, and he’s never known me by my birth name, so when the lunch lady who took my student# said, “you’re good to go, [redacted]” he was like “wait [r]’s your name? Haha, you don’t look like a [r]! [r]! Hey, [r]! [r]! What’s wrong, [r]? Why aren’t you responding, [r]?”

And I kept telling him to stop but he kept doing it like it was some kind of fucking joke. I told him “I’m being serious, don’t fucking call me that ever again. I’d prefer being stabbed.” And he responded, “okay... [r].”

I’m so uncomfortable and if he does it tomorrow I’m going to just deck him.