Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I mean seriously, if I can't get a Miss or a Madam dressed this way who can?? ;) (kidding)

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fxmung.com%2Fimpossumbly%2F16-01-31-grace.jpg&hash=490022a5f3de14ae9a9df7175860bcb175e9d77a)

It was while I was buying lunch from a salad bar, the woman hands back my change and said "thank you, sir". I was a bit stunned, it took me a few seconds to put my brain into gear, but then I asked her "did you just call me 'sir'?" She apologised and said she had done it by accident, I just kept looking at her with an "are you serious?" look - she squirmed a bit more and she apologised a few more times. I shook my head and walked away.

I guess I should have a better sense of humour about this sort of thing and be should have been more gracious and accepted her apology but it really made me feel lousy and angry. I actually felt I looked pretty decent and getting called "sir", accidental or otherwise, was a massive kick in the guts.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day... I'm not going to let it get to me, just needed to vent.

There's a lot of dumb people in this world. I'm not shocked by anything that comes out of the mouths of morons these days.

Had to be a total accident!
💜💜💜

Sounds like a serious case of eye disease.

Yes, we are.  Especially those of us who are tall like you and me.  I still get sir'd every now and then from people who are not paying attention.  I just respond the way you did, "really did you just call me sir?????"  Once they actually look they are usually embarassed.

Sorry that it happened Grace. It does sounds like a total accident. In certainly makes you wonder what they were thinking when they made the mistake. Hugs
Mariah

Well I can attest to the fact that you are a tall, slim, feminine, good looking woman, and anyone mistaking you for a guy is just dumb, made a mistake or didn't know who they were addressing.

If it is any consolidation, that happens to me regularly. Pic in the avatar.

Outside work, when they address me, it is usually slips after we have had conversation ~mind my voice~ but is unintentional. At work, I am known as that trans person. Got to say, I still work on correcting people nicely. And some are defiant. :(

That woman apologized to you and that counts a lot. Recently I shared experience about somebody who apologizes too, but not really:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,202749.msg1804009.html#msg1804009

You look fantastic! No way this is anything other than a person NOT paying attention.

Moni

That would never happen in the US

The ONLY thing I can think of is if she had something else on her mind or had been serving several males in a row and she was just on a roll.  I've done things like that (when you misname somebody because you have been talking to the person the name belongs to right before that).

Judging by your picture, there is no reason to "sir" you.  And the fact she apologized for it tells you it wasn't even a case of her clocking you and being a jerk.  No... I'm pretty sure she would have said "sir" right then no matter who she was talking to.

You looked great It really Must have Been an accident.

I however seriously havent experienced this in a complete  month full time . I dont know how I would feel / react

You were called "sir" by an uneducated bigot - simple as that

Quote from: Ms Grace on January 30, 2016, 11:35:39 PM
I mean seriously, if I can't get a Miss or a Madam dressed this way who can?? ;) (kidding)

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fxmung.com%2Fimpossumbly%2F16-01-31-grace.jpg&hash=490022a5f3de14ae9a9df7175860bcb175e9d77a)

It was while I was buying lunch from a salad bar, the woman hands back my change and said "thank you, sir". I was a bit stunned, it took me a few seconds to put my brain into gear, but then I asked her "did you just call me 'sir'?" She apologised and said she had done it by accident, I just kept looking at her with an "are you serious?" look - she squirmed a bit more and she apologised a few more times. I shook my head and walked away.

I guess I should have a better sense of humour about this sort of thing and be should have been more gracious and accepted her apology but it really made me feel lousy and angry. I actually felt I looked pretty decent and getting called "sir", accidental or otherwise, was a massive kick in the guts.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day... I'm not going to let it get to me, just needed to vent.

Looking good Ms. Grace

I find that most sir-ing that I get these days is at food outlets. It may be based on my voice (still a work in progress) or just sheer stupidity. Some may be bigoted.

It is depressing, but it's more an indicator of their dumbarsedness than how you look. And, of course, you look terrific!  :D

You're for sure female. Innocent mistake.

I was called ma'am on accident, and I had short cut hair, masculine clothing, no hormones... She didnt correct herself, but if I was called ma'am people make mistakes at times.

But I was shorter than her.... I think thats why.

I think that people in service industries get harried and go on autopilot, not seeing much more than broad outlines, like a silhouette. Someone tall is male. Someone short is female. And then they look...oops.

My trans buddy is a bit under five feet and has had trouble with misgendering. I guess he's a little androgynous, but I honestly can't see it...and if a person isn't sure, avoiding both "sir" and "ma'am" is a good option. I think my friend's height is the deciding factor when people aren't looking closely.

It's really difficult for me to imagine anyone ever misgendering you Ms Grace, you're so pretty

Unfortunately it does happen sometimes

My guess is that they weren't really paying attention

Hugs

That's pretty bad

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

How about when someone seems very nice, then after I speak they instantly change and make sure they give me a heavy SIR.... like were you really that dumb? I surely dont think Im fooling anyone

They must've had a severe eyesight problem Ms Grace because you're definitely all woman.

Some people are just dumb!!
You look absolutely beautiful in that picture Grace!! :)

I get sir'd now and again, but i just roll my eyes and walk off!! Its not worth worrying about these silly people!!

Grace, sometimes it just happens. I'll be the first to admit I don't look anywhere as good as you do, but mostly I get by. Yesterday I tried an experiment, wearing foundation and using some beard shadow hiding tricks to work. It went over well but needed some adjustments so I tried again today. A stranger asked me a question through my car window as I was pulling out and finished by saying, sorry to have gotten in your way sir. I don't do well with people at six in the morning to begin with. It took me four hours to turn my mood around again. Everyone else is right, people make assumptions. We need really thick skins, but don't you hate it?

You might try a hairstyle where bangs cover forehead and brows.
People imo are much more likely to accept a nice feminine face then.

You look very nice, and your dress fits you very well.


hugs

Well i worked in a restaurant for years as student job. Having ADHD when it was smooth in the afternoon i "missgendered" lot of people because i was out of my head they werent trans or even close to look androgynous.

Maybe she is too?

I've seen this happen with cis women more often than you'd think. Service people usually have a lot going on and "sir" is the canned response. They have too think to say "ma'am" for some reason. They might have keyed of the guy in front of you or behind you. There may have been some small trigger that kicked in when they weren't paying attention.

I've been "sirred" from time to time and I look just like I do in my avatar. I never get it on the phone but my voice slips down in public from time to time when I'm not thinking. That might be the trigger. I've been "sirred" from behind a few times as well. I have narrow hips and that might be the trigger.

In any case, I know that my sister looks very much like me and she gets it from time to time as well quite possibly for the very same reasons.

BFD. Ms Grace, you are a lovely woman. This incident is of no consequence.

Chin up!
Cindy

It had to be accidental, as there's nothing masculine about you as far as I can see.  I do believe that there is a general bias that people in the US have against misidentifying males as female that's probably tied to sexism.  A few months ago, my wife and I were dining, and the restaurant manager approached us from behind me, seeing only my long hair and called us "ladies."  I smiled and laughed a little as he passed, realizing his mistake.  He was almost painfully apologetic, as if he had just insulted me in the worst way possible.  I didn't bother to try an explain that I had actually taken it as a compliment, as he was already as uncomfortable as I'd ever seen a person before.

Accidental, most definitely. :) Nothing, but absolutely nothing to worry about.

Sorry that happened, it definitely can hurt ones feelings. Me and my husband were at an auto shop last week; the waiting area was small, and there was another woman waiting for her car. Anyway, I asked the service manager if they had WiFi for customers, and he replied "yes, sir". The other customer was in the restroom, but I'm sure she heard it since the restroom was in the immediate area, so it was exceptionally embarrassing to be misgendered in the presence of another woman. The service manager did not miss a beat, and continued to explain how to access their WiFi; I said thank you, but I was fuming inside. The other woman's car was ready, and she left when she came out of the restroom. I continued to think about it, and I was pissed that someone could be that rude and disrespectful; after all, I may be trans, but I am clearly not a man. When the service manager left the front desk, I brought it up to my husband, and he told me that he was pretty certain that the service manager was addressing him as sir when I intially asked the question (which could have been the problem, since I hadn't used my voice for 30 minutes or so before I asked about the WiFi, so it may have sounded a little lower pitched, which is something I will work on). I decided to stand up for myself (and as a teaching moment for when he encounters other trans women) and when he returned I said that it was very rude of him to call me sir; he seemed shocked, and denied saying it, but he apologized if he did, and actually hung his head and walked out, so at that point I'm thinking that maybe he was addressing my husband when he said sir, but then again maybe not; I don't pass 100%, but I should be treated like any other woman and if someone disrespects me, especially in front of one of my peers, I am going to let them know that it is not acceptable.

  Hi , Grace, may I add that you look awsome to the heaping pile of compliments you have here.  I think it is something we all go through, but we should not have to.  I believe that if we have make up an femme hairstyle that at least denotes a "ma am" .  Saying that you cant fix ignorant or stupid.

  I used to get very angry and militant at being called sir. It got me nowhere. I now just point to my chest and say exuse me, that is almost fool proof for an apology. 

  How I heal is to tell my self how far ive come n how bad I used to feel as a male and how good I feel as a female. That has a tendency to help remove the anger and bad feelings About the situation. 

I can think of several situations where I was mis gendered  and now look at it as a moment that I learned and got a lil more  stronger to not let it bother me.

                                                                                   huggs Sister.

Quote from: Zoe Louise Taylor on January 31, 2016, 08:26:39 AM
I get sir'd now and again, but i just roll my eyes and walk off!! Its not worth worrying about these silly people!!

Yeah, it happens to me on the rare occasion. But, I just shrug it off. It's the only way to do it. Because if you let it get to you. It will just ruin your day, (or next few days, as it was for I).

Sorry that happened to you.

It could have been an accident - I have done it myself.  In a previous lifetime, when I was in the Air Force, I had to phone the base commander's wife about something or other.  When she told me what I needed to know, I just automatically replied, "Thank you, sir," responding to the rank, not the gender.   ::)

It happens occasionally, I just raise a quizzical eyebrow now when it happens to me. That or roll my eyes, depending on whether they admit their error. I don't think it'd kick us in the gut as much, if we remember we don't need everyone's validation. Our gender isn't up to other people, as long as we all know ourselves random people making a mistake shouldn't phase us as much. That being said, random people doing it intentionally deserve to be given a middle finger IMO.


     Hugs,
- Katie
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Quote from: Arch on January 31, 2016, 03:10:47 AM
I think that people in service industries get harried and go on autopilot, not seeing much more than broad outlines, like a silhouette. Someone tall is male. Someone short is female. And then they look...oops.

This I think explains it; I'd bet $100 bucks on it.

The irony is that getting angry over this situation:

Quote from: Ms Grace on January 30, 2016, 11:35:39 PMbut then I asked her "did you just call me 'sir'?" She apologised and said she had done it by accident, I just kept looking at her with an "are you serious?" look - she squirmed a bit more and she apologised a few more times. I shook my head and walked away

...will make you stand out even more.  Honestly, this is not how cis women would react and I know how hard it is not to let it bother, but reacting with vitriol serves to not only make you look bad but really hurt the other person's feelings in return (if truly an accident, which I can honestly assume it was based on your pic Grace; you look great).

Example to what I said above: think of Zoey Tur's reaction in that interview:  Guy was a ->-bleeped-<-, no doubt, but Zoey threatening to cause bodily harm made her look like an angry, hostile man frankly... very embarrassing for her and the people she was trying to represent (us).

Some cis women would handle the situation the same, and others would not, it depends on their personality. And TBH, there aren't a lot of cis women being called sir, and the ones that do certainly don't share our life experience. IMHO saying sir to a trans woman is on par with a racial slur, and as such is completely unacceptable. I worked retail at one time, and I noticed each and every one of my customers, so unless it was pitch black and the cashier was working by candlelight, she should have been called on her mistake.

Total customer service fail!
You're right. If you get misgendered we stand no chance.

Quote from: Ⓥ on January 31, 2016, 08:11:09 PM
The irony is that getting angry over this situation: will make you stand out even more.  Honestly, this is not how cis women would react and I know how hard it is not to let it bother, but reacting with vitriol serves to not only make you look bad but really hurt the other person's feelings in return (if truly an accident, which I can honestly assume it was based on your pic Grace; you look great).

Example to what I said above: think of Zoey Tur's reaction in that interview:  Guy was a ->-bleeped-<-, no doubt, but Zoey threatening to cause bodily harm made her look like an angry, hostile man frankly... very embarrassing for her and the people she was trying to represent (us).

Yes, I believe you are right. I did try to temper my reaction believe me, it's just that in the moment I was feeling embarrassed and angry. Fortunately I was able to walk away before I made a major issue out of it. I could have laughed it off and accepted her apology, I expect, as you say, the majority of cis women would... need to work on my knee jerk reactions.

Thanks for your thoughts, feedback, support and kind words everyone! ;D

Feeling better now, like I said, just needed to vent.

you should visit the US and see if they accuse you of being an anomaly 

Don't forget some people are just stupid. I have worked in call centers for over 12 years, and let me tell you with having both a male and now female voice, they mis-gender its just what they do. Some people are incapable of accurately using mam's and sirs no matter if you're cis or trans or whatever. This is especially so in the south.

Quote from: Cindy on January 30, 2016, 11:47:37 PM
Sounds like a serious case of eye disease.

I have that but I can tell too..!

And hearing loss, ouch for me.  But hey.  Low frequency hearing loss.  I guess I didn't have to listen to my awkward low 13 y.o. voice so much, I probably would've hated it more than anything (phew)

 :police: Let's try to stay on topic folks

Did you have nail polish on?

At a point in my life when I was more or less in denial about being trans, one of my first jobs was in a call center. We were told to address people as 'Sir' or 'Madam' during training. After a while, I noticed a pattern. The male callers generally responded well to being called Sir. They liked it. However, female callers didn't respond particularly well to being called Madam. In general, they didn't seem to like it that much. I wondered whether terms Sir and Madam, which I personally think are quite old fashioned/arcane, conferred a perhaps more advanced age on the caller and the women didn't seem to like that much??? Or maybe the men seemed to like Sir because it conferred authority??? I'm stereotyping, but this was based on observation across thousands of calls I answered.

So after noticing this, I continued calling male callers 'Sir' but I found other ways to talk to the female callers, which they seemed to like better. Unfortunately, once you're using 'Sir' more or less exclusively, it gets easier to make the occasional mistake of calling women 'Sir' out of habit, particularly when you've been taking not stop calls for hours and your brain is going into melt-down. This was often sub-conscious and even happened when the caller obviously sounded stereotypically female. Time for very humble apologies, although it was possible to accidentally do this without even realising and occasionally I'd get called out.

The other thing that happened is I realised that a surprising number of people don't have voices that fit their gender stereotype. So it is possible to accidentally misgender someone, because their voice isn't in the typical range. Thats kind of a separate issue to what I detailed above. Anyway, despite what I'd been told to do, I more or less stopped using Sir or Madam unless it was absolutely 100% obvious who the caller was (eg they told me 'Hello I'm Mr Smith, and I wonder if you can help me with......').

I remember my first call from a trans person, a few weeks after I started. I mistakenly called her Sir. She rightly called me out and explained and I apologised. Later she complained to my supervisor, though I didn't face any disciplinary action because it was pretty much an unavoidable mistake on my part and besides, I'd been told by the company to address people as Sir or Madam.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is, it was not uncommon to for me to misgender people (and I'm trans) even when they were clearly sounded like their assigned or preferred gender. I did misgender a number of people, both trans and cis, but every single one was an accident and never deliberate or malicious in any way. That's not to say that some people don't deliberately misgender people (and that needs to change).

There was some discussion in training about the best ways to address people:

From what I can remember Sir and Madam were considered the safest. They said don't use ma'am as it is american and we were in the UK.
Alternatives included:
-Mr Smith/ Mrs Smith (still gendered and you needed to know the person's name which often you didn't learn until later in the call)
-First names (personally, I don't much like it when call center staff do this to me, it can sound really patronising and over-familiar)
- Love, Pet, Honey etc - Can get you in trouble, but some people can get away with using these to address others (Sadly, I'm not one of those people!)

Basically, I evolved my own system in which I just found ways to talk with people in a friendly, polite way without needing to use titles or names much.

They didn't cover much in the way of trans issues or anything gender-neutral, but this was 15 years ago.

Just thought I'd chip in as I've been on both sides of misgenderings quite a lot. And sincere apologies to all the people I misgendered over the years.

Quote from: stephaniec on January 31, 2016, 12:23:02 AM
That would never happen in the US

Um, yes. Absolutely....this?

Quote from: Ms Grace on February 01, 2016, 02:01:29 AM
Thanks for your thoughts, feedback, support and kind words everyone! ;D

Feeling better now, like I said, just needed to vent.

Ms Grace,

Totally cool rant.

Humans. So predictable in their randomness and maybe tiredness.

Great to hearing your are feeling better.

You do look great.

Joanna

I prefer Miss to Madam. :)

I work in a call center and I've done it before by mistake. I'm so use to calling people either sir or ma'am and sometimes it just slips and I end up apologizing. I'm sure that is what happened in this case. You look great!

Been called Sir twice, I think by call center agents and my voice sounds unequivocally female. Habit! They don't even realize it. You can tell it's habit because they sound so robotic, so repetitive. It's actually quite sad, if you ask me.

????? I can't imagine. You're new avatar and photo are stunningly gorgeous and totally feminine. I see no male whatsoever. Never, Never, Never.

lust nickname her "Tommy" - deaf, dumb and blind.

Quote from: saraht123 on February 03, 2016, 08:37:03 AM
- Love, Pet, Honey etc - Can get you in trouble, but some people can get away with using these to address others (Sadly, I'm not one of those people!)

Here in Nova Scotia, everyone is a gender-neutral "dear".  It is considered to be an endearing part of the local culture.