Quote Originally Posted by golentan View Post
We were talking about Exalted, and started talking about the Tya (women who declare themselves men to avoid supernatural disaster). And I started bringing up precedents for a wide variety of precedents in the real world for non-standard gender not necessarily based on identity. But I did it in a joking manner. And I didn't realize it until right when she was about to leave but I was horribly upsetting her. I apologized, and she told me she felt I was insulting her as a woman, insulting her intelligence, and calling her a hypocrite, and none of those were my intent. So I tried explaining that, and putting my intent without elaborating because when I tried to elaborate in person I had made such a botch of it she thought I was saying horrible things about her identity as a trans woman and her worth as a human being but I'm afraid that might sound like I'm trying to avoid blame because I don't think I'm at fault and the apologies were not in person and I haven't heard back from her and I've been in full on psychotic break mode interspersed with panic attacks and crying fits since then because I'm worried that I've done something irreparable and I had to call in sick just now because talking about aliens and bursting into tears isn't work appropriate behavior and it's all my fault because I knew this was a conversational land mine because it's one of the things about humanity I just don't get but we'd had conversations of the sort before and I thought I was doing okay and I just want to bash my head against something until it breaks because I'm a bad person and I hurt the person I care about and nothing I can say can possibly make it better.
Oh geez. As somebody else who sometimes says things that he doesn't mean before realising how asinine the things sound, I feel ya. *hugs*

Though usually I get away with a mild beating and a sincere apology.