When people go out of their way to gender you

[martine]

Mini rant ahead !

I know I don't pass and I'm not trying. After all I've only been 6 weeks on estrogen. Patience is a virtue they say ! But people are starting to give me those strange looks all the time which I suppose is because of my increasingly androgynous appearance since friends and family all tell me so. But what mesmerizes me is that the more I slip towards a feminine presentation, the more people appear to go out of their way to gender me. Indeed, I think I've never been sired so much in my life ! And it seems to bring joy upon those who do so, as if they were proud of successfully being able to bin a non-trivial sample of our species in one of the two socially acceptable genders. And each time this happens, it pains me more than I ever thought it would [emoji22]

I know, I know, patience ....

Rant over !


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[Majj Wynn]

People don't understand what this is like, what it's like going through.

I have a confession to make. When I still didn't know much about ->-bleeped-<-, I met someone who was probably transgender, I couldn't tell if male or female, and I wasn't judgmental but my curiousity really got the better of me, so I right out asked 'erm what 'se was,.. and it didn't come out well either (how I said it)! 'Se got real upset, of course. Was I out of line? Probably, from one point of view, but from another, what's the big deal, I didn't know what I was seeing, I really wanted to know. It wouldn't have occurred to put myself in 'ers shoes, and how se's probably had lots of other people gender 'erm.
It's pretty bad but funny too, looking back at it now.. :O

[Emjay]

I know *exactly* how you feel.  I've posted about it before myself, it's almost like people are trying to affirm something to themselves when that happens because it's so overdone.

I'm sorry for the pain you feel when this happens, I know it's soul crushing when it happens.  You know who you are though, and that's the important part.  Give the HRT some time to do it's thing, it will get better (Congrats on starting BTW, that's a huge step!)

Hugs, Martine, Hang in there! 

[AbbyKat]

I'm going to have a difficult time explaining this properly but I think I know why people do this.

While I was still struggling with keeping up on all of the male-affirming things I could during my "suppression years", I expressed plenty of feminine qualities and always defended those things as "manly" and how "men can look pretty, too!"  If anybody had gendered me as a "she" at that time, I would have corrected them (I wasn't ready to look into that Pandora's box yet).

I think back now at a few times I ran into people who, in hindsight, may have been transgender and I remember using male pronouns, thinking I was empowering their right to express their maleness however they wish.  Looking back, it was another way for me to confirm that I could be as feminine as I want but still insist to people I was "manly".  It was a very strange dichotomy I had constructed around myself and I now realize I may have hurt some people with it since I never really knew much about transgender folks (purposefully avoided it... Pandora's box again).

So... yeah.  Some people might think they are empowering you by saying "sir", thinking they are supporting your right to express yourself however you want and may be afraid of calling you by female pronouns.  It sounds weird (and it is) but I'm sure it's more common than we think.  Media doesn't help, of course.

[Ian68]

Hang in there!  It sucks, but a lot of people are actually trying to affirm what they assume is your identity - they mean well even though it hurts.  It'll get better soon.

[Emily E]

I think that's the way we people process things in our life we automatically take things as we see/perceive them and put them in categories in our head and if things fit neatly in a whatever category its basically ignored and the brain moves on to the next thing but when something doesn't fit neatly in a category we stop and look harder while our brain tries to make it fit somewhere. 

So the fact that people are starting to look harder at you means you are looking less like a man and starting to look more androgynous to the point they have to stop and look harder to make you fit into some category the cool part will be at some point in the future they will stop looking so hard which means you will be fitting neatly into the woman's category.

[Dee Marshall]

The people that you know have sorted you into the "male box". Once a person does that they hold on to that categorization with both hands and get really upset with the thing that makes them doubt their first impression. You can see the same behavior all over with all kinds of things. No one likes to reexamine things and people will fight to keep things as they are, no matter how much evidence you hand them. The longer they know you, the harder it is for them.

[martine]

Thanks for all the replies ! I agree with you all and keep telling myself these people mean well. Abysha, I used to be exactly how you described: proud to be a different kind of man. Of course, this was to convince myself that transition was not necessary and only a fantasy. We all know where such thoughts lead !

I'm looking forward to the day when people will say "madam" !

Cheers,

M


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[LeaP]

I don't know.  I get sirred a LOT, but there are so many complicating factors. A big one is that I moved South.  Sometimes I think Sir and Ma'am constitutes half the vocabulary here.  I'm also more sensitive to it for obvious reasons.  Finally, you get more of it the older you get, and I'm at an age when even people at work are calling me sir.  Yech. 

So I treasure the moments when I'm gendered female in drab.  The last was kind of funny.  I stopped at a gas station, went to use the restroom (men's and outside entrance) to find it locked.  Went to the counter inside to get the key.  The woman at the counter hands me the key, and I spent several minutes trying to get the stupid door open.  She gave me the key to the ladies room! 

[Zoetrope]

I know who I am, and anybody who has known me for longer than half a minute, knows who I am too.

For everybody else - I am whoever/whatever you want me to be.

I have no interest in forcing other people into seeing things my way. The only way to understand transsexualism, I think, is by knowing a trans-person. Words alone aren't going to convince a person who has no concept of something. I need to be a 'good example'.

If somebody has *decided* that they don't believe I am real, fine.

Smile, wave, keep on walking.

[Erica_Y]

Six weeks is not along time and a drop in the bucket on this marathon, perhaps your frame of reference and sensitivities are changing also creating a different level of awareness. Patience and a thick skin is key in this game and it takes awhile for everything to come together such that our expectations are met if they ever are

Keep moving forward!

[Jasper93]

Mini rant ahead !

I know I don't pass and I'm not trying. After all I've only been 6 weeks on estrogen. Patience is a virtue they say ! But people are starting to give me those strange looks all the time which I suppose is because of my increasingly androgynous appearance since friends and family all tell me so. But what mesmerizes me is that the more I slip towards a feminine presentation, the more people appear to go out of their way to gender me. Indeed, I think I've never been sired so much in my life ! And it seems to bring joy upon those who do so, as if they were proud of successfully being able to bin a non-trivial sample of our species in one of the two socially acceptable genders. And each time this happens, it pains me more than I ever thought it would [emoji22]


I know, I know, patience ....

Rant over !


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I remember the increasingly androgynous phase all too well lol.  At least for me, I don't think that people's reactions to my appearance were advanced out of malice so much as incertitude.  For example, towards the beginning of my transition, I took patrons' orders at a deli at my university, and a lot a lot a lot a lot of people called me "sir" -- way more than was the case before.  As time progressed, the same customers would eventually call me "ma'am"/"miss" -- or just treated me very kindly, obviously not aware that I was the "guy" they used to be familiar with.  I recently reconciled with people's reactions advanced during my earlier days of transitioning and decided that their calling me "sir" or "bro" so frequently was their way of making me feel equal to them in spite of looking pretty effeminate for a guy.

Of course, here I am at around 7 months or so into the hormonal aspect of my transition, and I pass seamlessly.  In spite of this, I've faced multiple instances of intentionally being misgendered (and therefore outed) by people who must not have respect for who I really am.  For example, I went to an employment training seminar recently, and the manager there thought I was cisgender female for quite a ways into the training.  Eventually, I had to give her my name for something, she looked me up, saw that my sex was male, and decided to start referring to me as "he" and "him.  I got a lot of weird looks, so I totally decided to lecture her, which is a different story altogether.


Maybe in line with this, at an old job around two months ago, there was this guy who kept flirting with me and talking to me every chance he got.  I was confused because I assumed that everyone in the workplace saw me as male since I presented as such, and I was really puzzled as to why he treated every other guy like a "bro" while around them.  Soon after, I learned that he thought I was female, and so another girl in the workplace told him that I'm transgender, and he has been treating me like a joke ever since.

So, my point is that there are A LOT of variables, but maybe people generally deserve a benefit of doubt.  Also, I'm sure that you're aware of this, but so much will happen to you physically between now and the 2-year mark.  It's absolutely insane.  I mean, as a testament to this, my own mom didn't recognize me at the 3-month mark.

G'luck!

Ally