I then corrected him, assuming he missed that little important bit in my signature:
And if he had simply left it alone then and there I could've dropped the issue entirely, but instead he decided to plead innocence:
The excuse seems pretty flimsy. I know for a fact "dude", although often reserved exclusively for men, can be used for anyone regardless of sex or gender, plenty of people do and this is becoming increasingly common. But as far as I know "chap" is very much still a gendered term regardless of how you, personally, utilize it and that this is just his way of being snide (the winking smiley, which seems rather smug, lends credence to this theory IMO). I then called him out on what I believe to have been him just playing dumb:
After which, he decided to double-down (again with a smiley which, again, seems smug and mocking):
I didn't think it was intentional at first but with his other posts coming off as having a condescending/mocking tone I believe he was intentionally misgendering me and IIRC that is against the rules as it constitutes trolling. At the very least it seems like he was baiting me. I've already Foe Listed him, but I'd like to see what a mod thinks about this exchange. I make it no secret I'm a transwoman now and if that upsets some random stranger on the Internet to the point they can't just nod and move along but have to try and sneak in subtle jabs at me and my gender identity then that seems like a them problem. He didn't have to respond to me at all, or call me "chap", but he did and after admitting he doesn't approve of my lifestyle choices it feels like it was intentional from the beginning.
For the record, I would have lodged a report sooner but I was on my phone earlier when this exchange occurred during my lunch break and trying to highlight, copy, and paste with my phone is an uphill battle because it never wants to do any of those things.
As I said: I've already Foe Listed him so this won't happen again in the future but I'd still like a mod to look into this because I do believe it's actionable.