Ba Sing Se Boarding High

Lessons That Need Learning

*Katara POV*

This is a few months after the last chapter. Aang and Zuko are still working on the Sokka issue.

Today was a great day. Our 3 month anniversary is coming up. Oh, come on. Jet's nice, and he hasn't forced me to do anything. The anniversary is on Friday. I had to remind him, but guys tend to be forgetful. I'm sure he has something in mind for us.

I walk into the dorm and am about to get started on the homework, but the freak is at the desk. Great. She (Katara is purposefully using the wrong pronouns) is always in the way. I called her a weirdo in front of everyone else and they looked at me like I had a second head. It doesn't matter. When she sees me come in she turns around in the chair and looks at me. Guess I have to pretend to be polite again. 
"Hi, Katara," be a great time for Toph to walk in. I glance at the door.
"Hi," she seems to notice my constant glances at the door.
"Toph's not coming. She's hanging out with Aang, Zuko, Suki and Sokka. I didn't go because we need to talk," (Shameless accidental reference towards Steven Universe). Great. They must have tattled on me.
"What about?" I'm trying to play the innocent card.
"I know you're not an idiot. You know what we need to talk about," she glares at me. "I know you constantly call me a freak and a weirdo behind my back. And use the wrong pronouns for me," tattletales.
"So? You are a freak and a weirdo. Do you seriously think that you'll continue acting like this the rest of your life?"
"Yes, I do think I will be like this the rest of my life. Just because you need educating on my identity doesn't mean you get to hate on me," what a bitch.
"Excuse me? Are you calling me an idiot?"
"No, I'm saying that you need to learn about this kind of thing. I'm not going to be the only trans person you meet," that puts it slightly better.
"I have nothing against trans people. But what you're doing is ridiculous," she looks like she's about to get mad but takes a deep breath. Then she looks at her screen. 
"It's not ridiculous. Do you know what gender dysphoria is?" I shake my head. Sounds weird. Quick warning. This will not be accurate for everyone. It's different for everyone and I made Nebula based directly on me, other than looks. You may have a different experience. This is based on mine. 
"No, that sounds weird,"
"Well, it's also not weird. It happens to a lot more people than they think. Gender dysphoria is basically when you don't like your body, but not from fat-shaming or anything like that, but more like you don't like the parts of your body that make you determinately female or male. It's like a trans girl wanting breasts, but being unable to grow them without estrogen. For me, it means I envy people who look more androgynous than I do, and I wish I didn't have breasts and wide hips (this is a really big deal for me, but I can't get binders or change my hip structure). And it's always there. Some days, I can't even stand to have a shower due to dysphoria. Not that you have to have dysphoria to be trans, but most trans people tend to have it. Sometimes you can find out your trans by fantasizing about being in the body of a different gender. It's different for every trans person though. It's kinda like a little girl looks at a guy and wishes her body looks more like his," that... actually makes a lot of sense. 
"That makes sense for binary trans people, but what about freaks like you?"
"Well, nonbinary means that you don't fall into either end of the gender binary. It is an umbrella term, however. This means that it can be your only identifier, or you can fall under one of the terms under it, like agender. The asexual umbrella is another example of this. You can identify as just asexual, or you can identify as demisexual or graysexual, which fall under slightly different parameters, but still have the same basis," the more I listen, the more this makes sense. Now I feel really bad for being a jerk to them. (CELEBRATE! KATARA IS ON OUR SIDE! WHOOOOOO! Okay, I'm done now)
"Oh. I'm really sorry I was a jerk about your identity earlier. I guess that would be like someone calling me weird for being a waterbender," 
"Yeah! I'm glad you understand. Now I go need to talk to Aang to make him realize that being ace isn't weird," I have no clue what she- I mean they mean, but I'll find out later. I need to do some thinking.

A/N AGH! Finally. This is sadly not the most realistic scenario. My family is semi transphobic, and I wish that it would just take a short discussion to make them understand, but I'm just a kid who knows nothing. Yup, I just totally had NO idea what to do when I ran away because I TOTALLY didn't know that the CAS would do jack shit to help me out of an abusive situation. And I'm an idiot and know NOTHING about why Rosie and Tadgh's scanario is so horrible because I left them behind. I'm a totally idiot who happens to have a high IQ. Yup. I know nothing. 
I apologize for the rant. I just don't like getting called stupid and that I know nothing about the real world. I'm probably more street smart than half the people here, but I don't know many pop culture references and I'm a kid so I'm an idiot. I hope this chapter educated some transphobes into realizing that their views are wrong. But it probably didn't.