Pre-scriptum – To the person who inspired this post, I’m not trying to rag on you! You just made me coalesce my thoughts on something that’s been bugging me in general for a long time.
People gender other people all the time. Along with race and apparent age, (perceived) gender is one of the first things that you notice about someone when you meet them. It’s pretty much instantaneous, unless you’ve trained yourself very hard not to do so. The only time people tend to notice that they are gendering people, however, is when they come across someone they can’t instantly categorize based on physical appearance. The point of asking, “Is that a guy or a girl?”
To start, this is irritating as it presumes binary gender, but also implied is a level of cissexism. Although some people may ask this really meaning “I wonder what this person’s gender identity is,” the vast majority of times, the meaning is “Was this person born with a penis or a vagina?” The answer to which is always, “None of your business.”
Realistically speaking, I can’t ask people to stop gendering everyone. Goodness knows I wish I could, having lived through the painful time of looking like one gender-normative person and feeling like another. But there are improvements that can be made that I don’t find to unreasonable. If you see someone who is gender-ambiguous walking down the street and find yourself wondering about their gender, STOP. Just backtrack and forcibly turn your thoughts elsewhere. You’re never going to see them again, their gender doesn’t matter to you.
If you’re in a situation where you need to know a person’s gender, things can get a bit more awkward, but my suggestion is to ask. Do it politely and privately. Regardless of potential uncomfortableness, doing it this way is much better than guessing and finding out later that you were wrong.
I won’t pretend this is a perfect solution, or that I know what such a solution would be. But it will help make the path a little easier for gender non-normative folks out there.
(I assume I’m the person who inspired the post? As I said in my post, I really hope I’m not being offensive, but I’d value criticism if you think I am.)
I completely agree with you. ‘Guess the gender’ is insulting in so many ways, what with the fact that that information is none of the guesser’s buisness, and I think it often arises out of discomfort with the idea that the guesser’s binary, cis ideas don’t fit everyone.
You’re not the inspirer, actually! I’m still attempting to gather my thoughts into something coherent about your post.
It really highlights the extent to which gender is woven into society, that people get so uncomfortable when they don’t know to interact with a person as a man or a woman. Having been on the receiving end of both, the social cues are really different, and people freak out when they don’t have those cues to work off.
Even if stopping isn’t an option- at least don’t get violent about it! People can be horrible to anyone who is either obviously trans or extremely androgynous. Snickers about “I wonder what it is” (the only sure-fire way to misgender a person with unknown gender is via “it”, if you buy into the binary), even going so far as deciding you have a right to forcibly look at what genitalia the person has.
I swear, “it” is the high schooler’s favourite way to insult anyone. Especially if they’re trans/androgynous/gay (naturally being all the same to such people.)
I actually discovered that there’s another sure-fire misgender someone via a screened comment on my Justin Bieber post: refer to someone as a boy and then call them she, or refer to them as a girl and call them he. Then you’re disrespecting their gender identity either way! *facepalm*
Trans=gay is a pretty common theme. Transphobic insults generally come along with homophobic ones (calling a boy both gay and a girl in the same sentence). Some people genuinely don’t see a difference between a trans woman and a gay man (other than that a trans woman is significantly more likely to be attracted to women than a gay man…). It really does suck- it just confuses both issues, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s part of why the cLGB is so quick to sweep the T under the rug.
And I don’t know if that would be considered a way to misgender people by some idiots. Apparently the thought processes of some bigots with trans people is something like “This person is a man- I’ll just call him a girl. But the freak wants to be called a girl! I can’t use ‘she’ like I do with normal guys, that’s what he wants. But they ARE a man- so calling them ‘he’ isn’t wrong, so it’s not an insult! A-ha! I’ll just call the freak it.”
People make me sad.
But the rest of the time- that’s a seriously confusing way. It’s like the person is too lazy to come up with a real insult so just throws in a wrong pronoun, or is too lazy to get the pronouns wrong when throwing out the wrong label. It’s just really hard to take someone seriously when they do that. I don’t even know if I could get seriously upset about that. I’d just want to tell the person to go back to troll school and come back with a real insult.