(I don’t mean to make a whole saga of my life, I just wanted to talk about this.)

My (24F) sister Lena (14F), for anyone who hasn’t seen my previous posts, has a boyfriend named Dominic (16M).

Dominic has dealt with his ex James (16FtM). Dominic keeps calling James by his deadname because he doesn’t like James. He eventually blocked James and rarely mentions him.

“I will properly name and gender people who don’t abuse me”.

I wouldn’t say Dominic has zero empathy, but it’s definitely not a strong suit of his. Dominic, I hate to say this, kind of reacts to gender the way a 65-year-old dad with little experience on transgender would react if his kid was trans or something.

Dominic tries to understand, in other words, but doesn’t. I want to educate him, but I feel rude doing so, even though I will correct him sometimes. He will say stuff like “Sara is a trans girl, so she is actually a boy but now she is a girl.” I can tell that he tries to understand, just not with people he hates like James. But he does try to understand with most people like “Sara” in the example.

He has a good heart. He’s really a good kid, he just fails to empathize or understand sometimes.