The point Cathy is making is that it is not actually respectful to be misgendered, and that the implication that a person is being respectful by assuming that you’re a member of what they take to be the ruling gender is not really that cool. NOT AS COOL AS THE DELICIOUS SNOW CONE SHE’S PURCHASED, ANYWAY
RANT: I mean really, is this hard? If you don’t want to ask what pronouns someone prefers because it would be an impossibly brief customer service style interaction and therefore awkward, which I get, then here’s a tip: if you can tell that someone is trying to project signals of being one gender or another, go with that! If someone is obviously dressed in a female manner, use female pronouns. Your RATE OF GIVING OFFENSE will probably not be zero, but it will be substantially lower than it will if you decide to go the SLY DETECTIVE route and say what’s “really” going on. (If you don’t want to ask what pronouns someone prefers when you see them regularly, or if you know what pronouns they prefer and just decide that it’s too hard for you to use the right ones, then MAY SEVEN BLIGHTS DESCEND ON YOU)
I understand that it is human to want to Solve Mysteries, but it’s maybe irritating also. I promise that I will try to be funnier on this subject in the future. IN THAT VEIN, please tune in THURSDAY, when Mona and Inez try to put together a flyer for a local event.
I maintain that it’s also really easy to have a simple interaction like this without EVER bringing in gendered terms — “Here’s your snow cone! Have a nice day!” — and that this is a surefire way to avoid giving offense if you’re ever legitimately unsure what the stranger you just met would prefer.
But yes, someone who picks up on projected signals like this and deliberately rejects them is being a real asshole. Especially if it’s with this sense that the person they’re talking to is like some kind of trickster figure.
Okay okay what do you think of the pronoun/honorific/mutual friend introduction PROTOCOL in the comment below? Like the way you refer to the queen directly as “Your Majesty,” i.e. “If your majesty desires it,” so if a friend’s honorific were “Lady of Shadows,” you could just say “what is my lady of shadows doing this evening?” You could also get a warning sign about people based on the honorific they pick, like if some guy was “knight of BULLSHIT” or “COUNT FAILURE” you would either want to or not want to talk to them, depending on the sort of person you were. It seems error-free and it seems like it would make life far better!
I’m absolutely in favor of custom, self-chosen honorifics! It’s kind of like living in a world of legitimized internet screennames.
What if the person you just called a dude is, in fact, genetically female and dressing as female. Wouldn’t you feel like a real dumb ass?
I think I’ve read somewhere that based on EXPERIMENTS, each “male cue” is worth four “female cues” in people’s perception, leading to more women of all chromosomal makeups being sirred than men of all chromosomal makeups being ma’amed (I don’t know if the latter EVER happens, actually.) I feel like we should all just institute some kind of alternate system of address, like if each of us assigns ourselves a TITLE and HONORIFIC, and there’s a new protocol on meeting someone new where a mutual friend must introduce each person using said title and honorific. Then, if you must use a pronoun, you know which to use, or you can just use the honorific.
If I knew more about how to do stuff in WordPress’s comment system, I’d want to just implement that system in these very comments.
I know (albeit through about six degrees of acquaintances) of a genetic female who was actually physically assaulted for being mistaken for “a guy” dressed as a lady — whoever would do this is clearly the most hateful dumbass imaginable, and it’s just stupidly compounded by the perception being *wrong*.
Also, the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen seems to suggest that the #1 factor for men getting mistakenly ma’amed is having long hair and being seen from the side or back.
Yeah, but what if the guy isn’t transgendered, but a transvestite? They don’t want to be ma’amed, they identify as men, and WILL be insulted. How can you tell which is which on the fly? Sometimes transvestites are convincing, sometimes they’re not, same as transgendered people still making the switch.
First: Lilana!!
Second: In White House decision making processes they do this thing where they have a list of options that increase in severity: (1) is always “Do nothing” and (5) is always like “launch the missiles” or something terrifying. Here is what I think is maybe the best increasing severity list for this situation:
(1) Do nothing
(2) What Kathleen said (just avoid all gendered pronouns)
(3) Ask what the person prefers being called
(4) Use pronouns that match person’s obvious attempts to project gender, use no pronouns if there is some middle area
(5) Use pronouns that match person’s obvious attempts to project gender, making some kind of coin flip in the middle area
(6) Use pronouns that match THE TRUTH OF ANATOMY, AS YOU SEE IT
(7) Immediately close your business and leave the city; the modern world and its confusions have struck down your will to proceed with life
I feel like if for some deep psychic reason you can’t avoid gendered pronouns, like you were cursed by some kind of devil and must see things in binary terms, then it makes more sense to go with social markers of gender than with like, anatomy when picking your inevitably somewhat insulting pronoun. Social markers are willed rather than fated, so I can’t imagine one would feel imprisoned by them in the same way. I could be wrong in this, though? It just seems strange to me were such a transvestite to put on a dress & heels and spend a bunch of time on makeup, go to the store, have a clerk say “Will this be all today, ma’am,” and think HOW DARE YOU!! I AM AS MALE AS THE SUN IS BROILING!
If what’s talked about is an attempt at androgyny I guess this makes more sense? I don’t know! I think the best solution is just to give ourselves titles and pronouns and make the world into a big ren faire. Like Mx Justin Bond, whose pronoun of choice is “v” (and whose honorific of choice is “Mx,” pronounced “mix”.) V is pretty neat
PS – I also kind of don’t think “convincing” should be a marker, since it’s like, there are plenty of people who will just never be convincing. And why should there be this requirement to convince people, pretty much?
PPS – I also like how “Do nothing” on this list is actually kind of a severe option, since someone would be talking to you and it would imply that you should just stare mutely at them
I just realized you’d written back to my comment! Eh, I know it does seem forced to have to use a pronoun, I think people are just so used to using them with abandon and having no problem, it just causes a real record-screech when it’s not obvious.
Also, this reminds me of my checker days at Tom Thumb, where they always insisted you thank the customer by name (so as to make the store feel more homey) (this was accomplished by scanning their rewards card, which displayed their name on the read-out), and one day I told a little old lady “Thank you, Mrs. Hurd”, and since I said it somewhat quietly, she thought I’d said “Thank you, Sir”, and there was much confusion. Sigh.
Also also, I came across this: http://nymag.com/news/features/transgender-children-2012-6/ What do you think about the argument about having parents effectively ‘stop puberty’ for a few years so the child can have more time to ‘decide’ if they want to start hormones for the other gender to avoid later corrective surgery? Personally, I think it’s cruel to stunt them for years if they have obviously wanted this their whole lives.
Oh man, I super don’t know about the trans children/stop puberty argument. I truly truly don’t know. I think that in cases where it’s like 100% A+ gold star obvious that this is not going to be a decision that the kid later regrets — like the first kid in the story — then it should be strongly considered as an option, as long as the kid is really on board with the idea. I think in cases where it’s more of a legitimate crisis — a “what am I” kind of situation — then the right course of action is to wait. I think basically I agree with you, but it’s not a one size fits all thing I guess? If there’s any ambiguity at all, it’s better to wait.
-Personally haven’t run into this problem, but I have some butch friends that get mistaken for men
on a regular basis.
-The only reason you should need to “know” someone’s gender is if pertains to your interest in having a romantic/sexual relationship with them.
-when there was a mixed group of my friends hanging out, I used to say “Hey guys” to address them, some females were bothered by this. I always felt that “guys” had kind of lost some of it’s connection to the male gender.
RE: Honorifics – I hate being called, miss, mrs., ma’am etc. If someone needs to get my attention, I guess it’s better than “hey you”, but “excuse me”, pretty much does it. Whenever possible, I avoid having an honorific on any forms or credit cards…also why is it anyone’s business if a female is married or not.
– I loathe being called a chick, even by other women.
You English speakers have it easy. What about languages where every verb has a feminine or masculine ending? You are really pushed to decide which gender the person you’re talking ABOUT is. In my language–Russian–you can get away with uncertainty as long as you are directly addressing the person of questionable gender in present tense; the minute you need to use a verb in the past tense, even in second person, you need to make a decision on what gender ending to say. Sorry to get all grammar school on ya, but it is confusing nowadays.