Quote from: ElizabethK on July 07, 2018, 07:08:34 PM
I read your encounter with a colleague who misgendered you. I feel for you as I have always been very sensitive to being misgendered and misnamed. Part of the reason being that I had no confidence in my ability to move through the world as a woman without encountering a lot of resistance. I became and probably still am to a much smaller extent sensitive to misgendering and I was at one point almost hyper vigilant when it came to my name and pronouns.
Hi Liz,
Thanks for your wise thoughts. I admit that much of my aversion to being misgendered is due to self-esteem issues. I have friends who are strong and confident enough that they just brush off such things. One told me that GCS turned her mind completely around. There could no longer be any doubt who she was, and if other people don't get it, that's their problem. Maybe that will happen with me, too, but it looks like I won't find out for at least a year.
Hyper-vigilant is a good term for my attitude right now. I hear "him" and "sir" all the time, and I have to ask whomever I'm with if it had actually been said. In every case lately they say they didn't hear such a thing.
QuoteI eventually came to realise that there was only one place I was being misgender and that was from people who had known me prior to transition. In many cases this was nothing other than muscle memory and people corrected themselves and moved on. I managed to actually narrow the misgendering down to a couple of people and to correct the situation with one of them. On the rare occasion they misgender me, that person now immeadiately corrects themself and continues with the conversation...which is exactly what I have always asked for. All this took a lot of tears and time to work out because misgendering feels (to me) like such a personal attack...one thing I had to learn about it, is that in most cases, its not an "attack" at all but a simple brain fart. In the cases where it is deliberate then that changes things because it beceomes about the perpertators real point of misgendering you.
Generally speaking, the people I've known for a long time are making a concerted effort to get it right. There is one in the neighborhood who doesn't seem to be putting any effort into it, but I believe it's not meant as an attack. The current theory is he's a little embarrassed by the whole thing and doesn't quite know how to handle it. It's interesting that when one of my other neighbors is in the group and gets it right, the reluctant one gets it right, too - a few times. Then he reverts back to the male pronouns.
I have never regarded any of the misgendering incidents as attacks. If someone did do it it wouldn't bother me nearly as much as those who make a simple mistake. In the case of those who knew me before, if they get it wrong now, it feels like disrespect - like they aren't willing to make an effort to keep from hurting their neighbor. I see these people a lot, and it's been ten months since I came out to them. After putting so much effort and so many tears into getting where I am now, it seems such a small effort for someone to figure it out.
In the two cases where I was misgendered by strangers, one cut pretty deep, and the other was a complete mystery. In neither case do I believe they were done as attacks - they seemed to be simple mistakes. So I ended up turning it back on myself. What did I do wrong? Do I really look that bad? What did they see to think I was male? How in the world do I fix it if I don't know why it happened? My brain would go round and round and I'd end up in a black hole of depression. Happily, it hasn't happened recently, but just those two incidents have me wondering all the time what people are seeing. Am I really a woman to them, or are they seeing the remnants of "him" and just being nice?
Since I seem to be doing better with strangers than with people I've known for a long time, I find myself in a strange situation. I'm more comfortable with complete strangers than I am with the people I love most. So I have the terrible choice of being with people who I used to enjoy being around who now make me uncomfortable, or being known as the correct gender but being utterly alone. In reality, of course, both situations are unavoidable, and the only choice is to just keep muddling forward, dealing with whatever comes up.
QuoteI think your cards are nice and they make the point very clearly. I wonder how it will change the dynamic of the interaction. I wonder if this will break the flow of conversation and throw a great big spotlight onto the person that has misgendered you....if that is what you want to do then I think it will do that.
My intention was never to "weaponize" the cards. Calling someone out publicly and embarrassing them is likely to have the opposite effect of what's intended. In the case of the guy who did it recently, I intend to catch him alone and give him one while quietly telling him that misgendering hurts, and that the card is meant to be a gentle reminder.
In the case of my neighbor, Cassie believes the situation will eventually be self-correcting. Some day everyone else will get it right, and he'll be the one that stands out like an idiot. That may be true, but he's a definite Type A personality and extremely sure of himself, so we'll see. The one thing I know is he's not cruel or uncaring, so I think what I may do, instead of confronting him directly, is just leave one of those cards where he'll find it, and say no more. He may not even realize what he's doing, and a quiet reminder may be all he needs.
QuoteIf that misgendering was deliberate then the issue is most likely goes deeper than pronouns so the card may be the perfect physical reminder of what is considered acceptable. Once received there is no excuse for getting it wrong deliberately.
My take on it is if someone does it deliberately, they have an agenda, and a card isn't going to change their behavior. Anyone who behaves that way isn't worth my consideration. I'll know that I hadn't made a mistake - they're just so-and-so's.
QuoteI hope you are feeling better about it all and I can see by the effort you have gone too how much the whole thing has upset you.
In this latest case, I felt more wry resignation than sadness or anger. And instead of stewing over it as I used to do, it drove me to try something new, and also gave an outlet to the frustration through a little artwork. So if nothing else, I was able to refocus on something potentially positive. We'll see how it works out.
Thanks so much for your insights!
Stephanie
