How to explain transphobia and safety to my kiddo?
I'm 1.5 years on T and pass about 90% of the time in places where people don't know me already, almost always *if* I'm being really mindful of my voice. My girlfriend and my kids and I will be traveling through some areas of the US south soon, and I'm getting a little nervous about it because my kids still call me Mom/Mama/Mommy often. They sometimes use "RawrRawr" which they adopted because I'm "older than the dinosaurs" but I haven't pushed it - been sort of in the camp of "they get grandfathered in and I'll be ok personally no matter what they want to call me" but I started thinking about how dangerous it might be to be in red hat areas with them still misgendering me out loud. My 12yo gets it - she can usually intentionally shift to he/him and RawrRawr but my 8yo cannotttttttt get the hang of it. (It doesn't help that my ex husband, his family, and my own mom refuse to properly name and gender me. She knows that some people think it's weird or wrong and get mad about it and we've read and talked a lot about LGBT stuff over Pride month and just in general when it's relevant, but she doesn't have to deal with feeling afraid the way that black and brown kids do growing up.)
Anybody have any advice on how to gently explain transphobia to my 8yo in the sense of "I need you to call me he or him and RawrRawr to keep people from being mean to us" without scaring the crap out of her?