Voluntary misgendering for fun and profit?

Trans men in women's spaces. Trans men looking to date lesbians. Trans men, in whatever capacity, claiming some kind of honorary womanhood because hey, they have a vagina too. It's disrespectful to women, it denies male privilege (yes, trans men do too have male privilege), and by promoting an essentialist definition of womanhood it's especially harmful to trans women. These are all very good reasons for trans men to knock that shit off already.

But I want to talk about something a little bit different, because I really don't understand why a trans man would want to be in a women's space in the first place. I know that trans men aren't magically immune to obnoxious entitled dudeness, but there is one aspect of being a trans man that's different from being a cis man: the ever-present threat of misgendering.

Moving through a cissexist world, I sometimes end up with no choice but to use a space marked "women". People assume that anyone who has a cervix, or anyone who menstruates, must be a woman. In some places, they haven't even figured out that a small child's main caregiver won't automatically be a woman. Or without labels, if I'm in a group of women who are all reading me as a woman, it will function as a women's space unless I speak up, and speaking up isn't always safe.

So it happens, but I hate it. Being reminded on such a regular basis that not everyone considers me a man corrodes my confidence painfully. Worse, I end up thinking I'm going to be judged and found wanting: that if ever I go before a gender recognition panel, they'll bring documentary evidence of that time I nipped into the Ladies loo and throw out my case. Some of it is paranoia, but some is simple awareness that the world is full of people looking for any excuse to inform me that I'm a woman.

I don't let those people dictate my life. I do a lot of feminine-coded things, to the point where family members have suggested I join the Women's Institute. But even if it wasn't constitutionally a women-only organisation, I'm not going to misgender myself that way. It doesn't matter whether I'd be welcome or not: I wouldn't feel right calling myself a woman.

But some trans men apparently don't mind it. To have that androgynous look that's cool in queer circles, they have to be fairly early in transition, so I would have thought they - like me - get their fill of misgendering as they move through the world. Why would they voluntarily offer themselves up for more of the same in their social lives? Is misgendering somehow OK if they're getting sexual attention? (Misgendering rarely puts me in a sexy mood.) Do they feel so secure in their manhood that misgendering just slides off? (Would they feel the same if it was a shop assistant calling them "ma'am"?) I can't fathom it. The whole thing makes no sense to me.