(As a disclaimer, my sister prefers being referred to as 'he' pre-transition and 'she' afterwards, when talking about things in the past.)
My sister 'Tina' has been bullied all her life. As a boy, 'Derek' would act very effeminate, insist on wearing pumps to school, dress up in dresses on the weekend and then as he got older he started to suppress it and would dress in hoodies, jeans etc. He was taunted endlessly by kids he was in Middle School with who remember the 'girly' Derek. He was suicidal and would self harm all the time and was generally a mess both mentally and socially. Only from the age of 20 onwards did he start to gain confidence and then last year he transitioned to 'Tina' after what I can only describe as a miraculous coming-into-money story that genuinely (I believe) saved his life. Tina is fully transitioned, including sex organs.
My boyfriend knows everything about Tina and the struggles she had when she was Derek . She is much happier now but occasionally she does get bouts of depression and questions her identity a lot. My bf knows about all of her struggles, they're not a secret at all an my sister speaks a lot about it online to uplift others.
My bf and I were watching American Horror Story. There was a scene where Denis O'Hare's transgender character was 'transformed' into a woman by Lady Gaga's character in a hotel room while he is on a business trip. Afterwards, his work colleagues catch him in a makeup and dress and start calling him a faggot etc etc.
O'Hare's character at one point gets on his knees and sobs at Gaga's feet that he feels ugly (I can't exactly remember the line) and my boyfriend started laughing. I brushed it off at the time.
Later on in the night he did an impression of Denis O'Hare's character and asked me to guess who it was, then he said 'that tranny guy from American Horror Story'.
I asked him why he used that word and he said 'that's what he was'
Later on, I broached the problems behind the word again and he said that being trans is a mental illness. I reiterated that my sister is trans and he said that while she is a 'cool chick', she still has a mental illness.
One of the problems my sister faced after transitioning was feeling like she was mentally abnormal and he knows this. I just odn't know what to do. Otherwise our relationship is fine but this feels like a dealbreaker.
TL;DR: After watching TV my bf called a trans character 'tranny' and when I confronted him he said that trans people are mentally ill. This stigma is one of the reasons my Trans sister had such a hard time mentally.
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