Whenever I'm misgendered...

[Alyssa M.]

If I'm at a restaurant, "sir" means, "Gosh, no, I don't really want a tip, after all!"

[Arch]

Yeah most people don't like being called an 'it'
I'm one of the few people who doesn't mind so much

I've read some old British books that used "it" to refer to individuals in a mixed group of children--like, "After every child had had its dinner..." I don't know how common this was because authors can usually write around such usage, but I don't see why we can't use a neutral pronoun to refer to people. And on occasion I've referred to myself this way. On the other hand, I never liked being called "it" or "that" rudely or derisively. That hurt.

I was pretty mortified when I was trying to decide between "Is it right to call J a he?" and "Is J a he or a she?" and wound up saying "Is it a he?" Gah. I've never done that before.

[Jeatyn]

If I'm misgendered I become immediately conscious of the fact that I must look like a badly dressed butch dyke. It's worse if I'm wearing shorts and I'm like "oh god, hairy legs and they see me as a girl arrgh"

[Fencesitter]

I was pretty mortified when I was trying to decide between "Is it right to call J a he?" and "Is J a he or a she?" and wound up saying "Is it a he?" Gah. I've never done that before.

This may happen if you mix two sentences in your mind, don't worry too much about it.

Might have been a sentence from me  . German language knows 3 genders - male, female, neutral. Sometimes the neutral gender ("es" = "it") is used for people as well (like: das Kind, das Mädchen, das Bübchen - it kid, it girl, it little boy). Moreover, in the regional dialect of Saarland, "it" is also used for all women: "Es Gertrud, es Elisabet, es Dorothea..., wo ist es ( = where is she) ". So calling an MTF transsexual an "it" in German is still an insult, but less harsh than in English. I know an MTF from Saarland and she cannot always tell when people want to insult her and when they just use the regional dialect. And I shared a flat with a genderqueer person (body at birth female, unchanged yet) from close to the Saarland border, where they speak this dialect too. 13 years ago or something like this. And this person insisted on being called an "es".

For non-people and non-gendered animals, German uses the 3 genders almost randomly, which is one of the main reasons why learning German is such a pain in the ass.

[insanitylives]

For non-people and non-gendered animals, German uses the 3 genders almost randomly, which is one of the main reasons why learning German is such a pain in the ass.

believe it or not, that's true with most other languages

[Fencesitter]

believe it or not, that's true with most other languages

I believe it, I've studied languages. However, roman languages as soon as you get away from Latin tend to boil down to two genders. Basically. And be very gendered in their speech, which means pre-transition you tend to out yourself accidentally all the time unless you really concentrate on language until you internalize it. Which I never did, as it was "only" my second native language and I got corrected all the time... you're a girl, so use this form etc. Meh.

I envy English native speakers for having such a mostly ungendered language.

[insanitylives]

And be very gendered in their speech, which means pre-transition you tend to out yourself accidentally all the time unless you really concentrate on language until you internalize it.

Who said anything about it being an "accident"...

(then again, second language means it's all too easy to misuse gender towards self/inanimete objects (i underrstand it just IS, but it's a pain in thou-est buttock to try to get it right))

[M.Grimm]

I'm at the point now in my transition where I'm androgynous. I'm noticing a distinct pattern:

Males refer to me as male. Females refer to me as female.

It's really making me feel odd. I'm wondering if it's because I'm so androgynous at the moment, that people just assign me to their own gender without thinking much about it.

[insanitylives]

I'm noticing a distinct pattern:

Males refer to me as male. Females refer to me as female.

really? I seem to get the opposite. age has some influence here (older people of either gender read "girl") but usually girls read boy and boys read girl.