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Has there ever been research on how ordinary cis people would react to being persistently, deliberately misgendered? I don't think most of them would care once the initial shock wears off (which means all human beings are functionally non-binary), but I have no data backing this.
If by misgendered you mean referred to by a different pronoun with all else remaining equal then I think people could get over it, but if you mean actually treated as the opposite gender all the time then you end up with horror stories like David Reimer's. Most people who think of themselves as not having a strong gender identity are like white people in the US who don't think of themselves as having a strong racial identity. Take them out of their present circumstances by either treating them as the opposite gender or sending them to live in Africa, respectively, and they will discover very quickly that their gender or race are real and important to them.
I did mean the former, yes. I know that being forced to wear a dress and act feminine is not something most men would like. But I was just thinking about how upset trans and enby people are when misgendered. If someone isn't dysphoric (and almost no non-binary people are dysphoric), then the attitude towards misgendering should be no different from that of a cis person.
I mean, the trans people I know don't get upset when they are misgendered in contexts like someone who knew them pre-transition slipping up for a second, or a native speaker of a language without gendered pronouns like Mandarin or Persian getting confused.
The internet caricature of a trans activist who flies off the handle at the slightest infraction of pronoun etiquette is not something I've ever come across in the real world, even in extremely liberal areas and college campuses, and neither is the sort of person who would misgender them in an antagonistic manner to trigger such a reaction.
At most the people who have disagreements with modern gender politics, including me, just avoid pronouns altogether in situations where it makes us uncomfortable.
My experience with trans people (or other gender-non-conforming people) IRL is similar to yours, where pronouns aren't policed with the obsession of a hall monitor, and silly mistakes are considered silly mistakes. But one would get a very different impression of trans people based on talking to trans activists online. It's a good reminder that there is no reason to believe that self-proclaimed trans activists have any claim on speaking on behalf of trans people in general, and as such can be ignored when it comes to bettering lives for trans people (though one perhaps ought to not ignore them when it comes to preventing the worsening of one's own life); trans people IRL are different - often distinct - sets of people from the activists. It's really unfortunate that trans laypeople get tarred with the same brush as the activists, thanks in large part due to the activists intentionally trying to conflate the groups.
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