before your recognizable as female does it bother you that people understandably call you sir. It drives me insane even though it's totally understandable on their part.
Yes. It bothers me quite a bit.
Jen
So far it doesn't bother me too much though I'm not yet presenting as female so it's not like its going against what I'm trying to portray. It makes me smile when I get misgendered as female over the phone at work but I look at that as an added bonus.
I'd love to get where I'm going a little faster but I'm not frustrated not to be there yet. I'm enjoying the ride :)
It makes me depressed if I think about it. But I deal with it.
I can understand why it happens, but it still stings. Just something I gotta deal with for a while longer.
You know it has been a long time since I went through that annoying time but heres the funny part that might be hard to visualize.
You see a lot of us post op girls on occasion feel this way and that is long after all the sirs and hes are replaced with female references you can start to second guess yourself. you can wonder how the world sees you and since you no longer have the annoying feedback your talking about you really have no idea. You simply have to go with your best guess and gut feeling and carry on. So the moral of the story is perhaps the annoying feedback is a good thing in some ways, some day you might miss it.
Katie
I find it even stranger when I'm out dining with my wife and the waitress asks us "what will you ladies have?"
I'm bald with big boobs and the boobs seem to overrule the baldness, even when in male clothes.
Randi
It's like someone is shooting a needle into my heart and leaving it there... It stings, every time, and takes a long time to go away.
One week ago today I got ma'amed for the first time. There are simply no words to describe the happiness it gave me. It was instant joy to the point where I wanted to cry. I will never forget that moment.
But the sirs... the hes and hims and hises... they bite like a rattlesnake, and sink in to me like venom. They hurt. They always hurt. And sometimes it feels like they will never stop hurting.
And I don't even have anyone to blame.
With Passion, Maka
In person I get sired, on the phone I get mamed. So weird sometimes.
Right now it doesn't bother me as much but I haven't really found my footing in this whole thing. At first I wanted to free the girl and go all the way with surgery and everything. Now at this point I am on hormones but that by itself has just made me feel so much better. I don't really care if "they" call me mam or sir as long as they don't look at me like I'm a monster. This of course may change in time but right now I'm doing my best to just be me and let the cards land where they may before deciding what hand to play.
I loathe it when I get misgendered, but I kinda expect it. At this it feels like my appearance is rather... difficult to judge... until I say something.
I try to use my femme voice, but all it takes is a, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you" for me to have to answer with my practiced, pedagogical baritone... The same voice that helped me control the classroom when I was teaching has become my Achilles heel. :'(
It never really bothered me too much.. I haven't been gendered as male in about 2 years (I was still trying to present as male on occasion back then.. ) Hrt was pretty kind to me. Getting used to female pronouns took a while though, and to start with was quite surreal.
Quote from: Katie on December 10, 2013, 09:58:27 PM
You know it has been a long time since I went through that annoying time but heres the funny part that might be hard to visualize.
You see a lot of us post op girls on occasion feel this way and that is long after all the sirs and hes are replaced with female references you can start to second guess yourself. you can wonder how the world sees you and since you no longer have the annoying feedback your talking about you really have no idea. You simply have to go with your best guess and gut feeling and carry on. So the moral of the story is perhaps the annoying feedback is a good thing in some ways, some day you might miss it.
Do they look at your crotch before 'gendering' you?
The 'annoying' feedback ought to be replaced with positive feedback, no? Or is there a deafly silence?
I gotta second what Katie said. Sometimes a proper and honest feedback can be helpful rather than if people deliberately choose words to not hurt you.
During the intermediate phase, it shifted. At first I was happy about every reference to me as female, that was with still clearly boy clothes and pre-HT, then it was still very great during the time I was starting HT, then at some point this was becoming more common and I started to get annoyed the heck out of people misgendering me. It got worse the more effort I put into being properly gendered then (mostly covering the facial hair and eventually also some femme accessories, I started to wear rings and earrings and such, more femme cut pants and shirts and sneakers). Eventually it hurt really badly everytime it happened. What I found is that these comments hurt the more the more one tries to show others ones real gender with outward appearance clues (e.g. wearing femme clothes and covering facial hair and maybe even makeup etc) - and the other correlation is clearly for me that the less often this happens, the worse it gets. This topped for me in me going all nuts over FFS and VFS and going into this forum more or less as a result of 3 misgenderings last summer - something I would have felt bad about during transition but not nearly as bad as it was now.
I don't get misgendered, people only use female pronouns for me or sometime, not often but everyso often a lack of pronouns.
Believe me, it sux just as bad when someone refers to me as "this person."
It's a blatant refusal to acknowledge me as a female. But at least it's rare, thank gawd.
The first few weeks I was out, I got sir'd a few times tho, my presentation wasnt up to snuff at the time.
I have almost nothing in the crotch department to speack of so thats not a giveaway, ever.
But yes getting used to being calles female pronouns does take getting used to. I alwasys assume everywhere I go, ppl can tell I'm a (trans) girl. So when they say she or her or this girl and are talking about me, I assume they know but are just being polite.
A lot to get adjusted to still and am working on confidence and stuff, its quite a journey.
I know my face in a weird stage I guess where there is slight but noticeable change. I haven't got to the mam yet ,but this checker kind of chuckled when she said thank you sir Although I was also buy cosmetics at the time too. It does tend to pierce the soul , but I always laugh inside thinking what they are going to say in a years time. It's kind of weird too , I live across from a college campus and the girls smile at me and the guys kind of give me a puzzled stair. I mean I'm bi so its kind of fun , but the sir is annoying
I got sir'd once today, and it stung. Always nice if I can get away without being gendered at all.. However, all the guys I encountered were surprisingly nice to me, despite my being in "boy-mode". They could have just been nice regardless, but I like to think my radiant femininity had some influence. :laugh:
The guys I work with no longer call me sir or mister except by two. Every day at 0515 I get Mister and 0900 I get Mister. Most of my staff are ex military and those two spent a long time in the military. I am out to the one and he said when I come out to the organization he will comply. When I am having a bad day, he says Mam which lights me up full smile.
Sir and Mister make me feel like I will never get there.
no one calls me sir. I mean my friends that use to know me wen I was presenting male sometimes slip up and say he or him, but then I correct them and they correct themselves, but people that don't know me such as cashiers, waiters and people like that they always call me mam or miss.
but to answer ur question yes it bothers me when my friends call me him or he, but they have been my friends over 12 years and they have to get use to calling me she and her.
Yes... it definitely is.
It's like you've waited your entire life to be yourself, and when you start on the meds to become your true self and have to wait for a long time in order to be the person you've accepted as you its very hard.
I just sit and remind myself that I have an attainable goal (243 lbs to 198 lbs so far!) to be good looking enough to make myself happy and I work on this goal every day. If I didn't have this goal I'm sure I'd be incredibly depressed because its so hard to lie about who you are to your coworkers when you spend so much time with them...
Just don't give up! 42 days HRT and onwards >>>>
In Australia "mate" is the equivalent of "buddy", "pal" etc. It's used generally in informal settings most commonly (but not exclusively) between men - whether they know each other or not. And I hate being called "mate", always have. Most men wouldn't call a woman "mate" unless she was a close friend. But men who don't even know each other will use it. I know it's just a friendly way of interacting, but it is heavily gendered and being called mate really annoys the $#!^ outta me. I just grin and bear it but almost always never use it myself unless I'm being really sarcastic. :P
Mate... I worked with a guy from Australia.... And he coined that term and "budgie smuggler"
LoL
Good cat, but I definitely know where your coming from sister!
I never got sired too much pre transition....only by people that knew me....and I did get disgusted but they weren't doing anything wrong since they had no idea and never knew how I felt.
People that know you well (family, friends, coworkers, and business associates) will never see any change....and even if they do, the thought of you changing your gender never crosses their mind.
The one of the few times I was sired pre-transition was when I went to the pharmacy where my children's RX's were....the clerk knew me fairly well...in fact I think she may have been somewhat attracted to me. Well....it was a couple of months since I was there and even though my appearance was similar to what she seen before, I was being gendered almost exclusively female by most people then.
.....ok, I'm standing in line and the lady beside me told the clerk that "she" (pointing to me) was next. The clerk quickly and directly said to her "no she is a he!!!" the lady and other people there looked at her with disgust, wondering why she would think that!! and why point it out. I thought this at first....but the way she did it was not to offend me but more to DEFEND me....thinking I would be insulted to be referred to as a she! Oh how she was wrong :)
One of my many strange experiences during my 1-2 years pre transition! This is similar to what some other MTF's get, unfortunately it may be said directly to them making them feel even worse.