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A trans woman recently took to Twitter to recount her unsettling experience attempting to receive phone-based customer service assistance from the beauty product retailer Sephora.
In the multi-part thread, she explained the Sephora customer service representative misgendered her twice—and one of those times came after an uncomfortable clarification.
The woman uses the handle @hypersonicorn and is listed as "Dana" on Twitter.
She shared how she listed her proper gender identity in her online account, but everything went off the rails once a real-life conversation with a customer service rep happened.
All because of gender stereotypes.
The representative's skepticism and disbelief about Dana's gender forced her to explain that she was transgender.
As the thread continued, Dana zoomed out and addressed the broader, structural flaws leading to what she was forced to deal with.
Dana then made an important distinction that plenty of other brands have been called out for too.
@hypersonicorn/Twitter
Toward the end of her thread, Dana explained she was able to speak with Sephora about the issue.
Her tweets left plenty of people outraged right along with her.
Online news outlet Daily Dotreached out to Dana for comment.
She offered some concluding thoughts on the incident.
"Sephora, like almost every other company, should take a critical look at their policies and procedures to see if they negatively impact trans people and actively try to be more inclusive."
"I get it that the world is very large majority cisgender, with only about 1% of the population trans, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make an effort to be as inclusive as possible. (For perspective, people with red hair are about 2% of the population, so we are a small percent but not insignificant)."
"With such a large majority of people being cisgender the default for most people is to assume everyone is cis and the trans experience is not even considered, this is what we need to change."
With no sign of any public response from Sephora, it is unclear if Dana's experience will lead to improvements for the beauty industry giant.