I apologise in advance if this topic is upsetting to some--it sort of was to me, because I kept trying to think of what it really meant.
So, we often talk in here about others mis-gendering us. This can happen for many reasons. However, I've been wondering, for a long time, about two other forms of that: 1) what it means when a trans* person--specifically someone who is sympathetic to the wishes and needs of other trans* people in terms of gendering someone correctly--mis-genders her- or himself when thinking about themselves, and 2) what it means when you are seeing a trans* person in front you who, for some reason, does not pass well and, in your mind, you initially mis-gender them as you're thinking about them.
I bring this up because both have happened with me. And I wonder what it means because it happens subconsciously. I am always quick to anger when someone mis-genders me or another trans* person on here if I read their story--yet why do I sometimes mis-gender myself and other trans* people when I think about them, then have to correct myself afterwards?
As an example of 1), I might be thinking about someone else telling a story about me in the third-person--someone who would gender me correctly in real life. In my mental narrative, however, I find myself using 'he' or my original male name. This disturbs me. I identify as a woman and am transitioning physically and have lived full-time for about six months now. Yet I wonder if there is something in me that still isn't on board with it all: fear of transition, doubt about the outcomes of my transition, or some kind of bizarre internalised transphobia, even though I cherish being trans*, despite the pain that has come along with it. Am I alone in doing this?
But I think 2) is what worries me the most. As an example, I may see a video clip of a transwoman who looks somewhat passable visually but who has a very masculine un-transitioned voice, and sometimes--though not always--I subconsciously think 'I don't agree with him' or somehing else that is mis-gendering. It does not happen with trans* individuals who, to me, pass very well--I have never mis-gendered Janet Mock or Laverne Cox subconsciously, for instance, or any MTF or FTM I've seen on YouTube who passed well.
I know these might just be blips on the brain, and I don't take them to mean anything, necessarily, about me, since I don't need to prove to myself that I recognise myself and my trans* brothers and sisters as the genders we identify as. But I wonder if some cisgender persons, particularly those who are ignorant about trans* issues, mis-gender us sometimes because their mind puts together gender traits--voice, appearance, etc.--and they see us subconsciously as one gender, even if they may politely refer to us as another. When I taught my students last semester, for instance, I was mis-gendered often, though I presened as female, and I kept thinking a big part of it was my unpassable un-transitioned voice: were my students subconsiously seeing me as male, despite my relatively passable visual appearance? And what of if/when we do this?
I don't mean for this topic to cause any triggering or problems. I just was curious if anyone could share any experiences or thoughts here about this kind of subconscious mis-gendering. It's one of those weird things that just leaves me uneasy.
With regards to referring to myself internally sometimes it is mis-gendered however it is usually when I'm thinking of something where as a FAAB person I have to deal with. I try to think of myself as a genderless being for my childhood and for my pre-transition life. In addition to this I always speak of my past in gender neutral terms because I was not presenting male and was treated like a female. Internally with the name I never used my female name as it bothered me. However, 1 year since full time I will occasionally use my new name in thought.
As for other transgender people I will sometimes I locate them. The other day I noticed a trans lady, but solely because of her beard stubble. I would have referred to her a female base on the rest of her appearance. At my work there is a FAAB person that is uses a male name. I'm not sure if they are FTM or gender queer, so I only use their preferred name. I'm usually pretty good with pronouns if I don't know the person well. I try my best to block out the mis-gendering however sometimes it will subconsciously come out. I think most people try to be respectful of gender if they notice with the exception of small children and teenagers.
As for mis-gendering yourself it is partially due to how you were living for most of your life, so it needs to be untrained overtime. Also the longer you are full time/out the less you stress/think about pre-transition life.
As for mis-gendering other people it is a biological thing that subconsciously is the first reaction. The second reaction is how you choose to refer to the other person. Over time if you get to know the person the subconscious mis-gendering will go away.
The voice is a very powerful gender marker, like it or not. We also have some cultural conditioning, courtesy of the media. We are subconsciously conditioned by television shows and movies to think of someone female looking with a male voice as being a man in drag because this combination always happens in a comedy setting, and we are socially conditioned to want to be "in on the joke."
In terms of thinking of yourself as male, I do not think it is fear of transition, or internal transphobia. I think it comes more from a fear of society's reaction to you and your psyche calling on the male protector component of your personality.
I find that is the hardest part of giving up having been male was having to let go of the part of me that spent my whole life fighting back against the bullies and collected the battle scars. On the one hand, taking off the armor is a huge relief, but on the other hand, being vulnerable scares me out of my mind.
I think David touched on what I think and feel is the cause and it is all those years of programing and being referred to and even hearing that voice that it takes time to undo. Even now every now and then I will in my own mind say my old name even though I know it's not mine. We are creatures of habit so it takes time. I can't say it will ever go away completely, but it's gradually disappeared in my mind. Hugs
Mariah
I think that at the beginning of transition mis gendering trans people is going to happen because us as people are still trying to find ourselfs like our voice, the way we percent ourselfs through style our movement and so on but after practice and time things will just click and we find who we are and i think when we do being mis gendered stops or happens very rarely..
It can be a very scary time at the beginning and being mis gendered ca n have a hurtful effect on people but i do think that it can help us find ourselfs and motivate us to improve ourselfs.. cis gendered people have never had to face these conflics so they will never understand where we stand on this subject but that is what makes us as strong as we are. Everyone of us are beautiful people being male or female in gender and that is all that matters..
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I'm two years full-time, and I still misgender myself. Can't get it through my thick head that I'm really a woman. I've accepted that my identity is always going to be a bit non-binary - that I'll never completely see myself as female.
I think habit also plays a part. Sometimes you just think or say things because you're used to it.
In such cases, there may be no deeper meaning than "oops"...
I have personally misgendered someone. A good 4 or 5 times right to their face on complete accident. So if you ever had a directv technician in colorado offend you, It might have been me and I'm sorry. I am terrible.
I do misgender myself but I'm doing it less and less.
The voice is a very strong marker, so much that it will override everything else.
Thank you for the replies and thoughts so far. Very helpful. It's interesting, if problematic, to think we can be so trained by the media to see transwomen as the comedic 'man in a dress' trope that our subconscious response might be that to transwomen who retain certain 'male' features, particularly on the voice level. And I do wonder if, as some of you suggested, we may still think of ourselves as our birth-assigned gender from habit--which is both understandable and bizarre all at once.
Yes I too mis-gender myself and others but am getting better at slowing down and thinking before I open this big yap.
The subconscious part is at least not a public struggle but reminds me of the scholarly work done on unconscious bias related to race and the suggested ways to open our minds and change that.
That you care speaks volumes.
Right now I am having a real big problem with others on this board. I am working greetings and problems where couples are both in some stage of transitioning. Often it takes me more time to figure out what the correct gendering is than to come up with a solutions to their problem. I suspect I have gotten a few of the wrong and I hope nobody was offended because that wasn't my intent. It was just so much simper 30 years ago when it was one transitioning and the other was not.
Starting with others: I suppose we sub-consciously mis-gender when presented with behaviour we perceive as being 'male' is exhibited by a trans-woman. It's an unusual phenomenon and one that presumably all of us experience now and again - in that we appear to have an innate gendering system within us. Why? It makes absolutely no sense, but does provide an explanation for our gender crazed society. It's worse in Europe - according to the French even tables and croissants and the Eiffel Tower have genders!!! To an English speaker well versed in 'the' it makes no sense. It's a dichotomy: on this side of the channel Melissa types on her gender neutral laptop; across a few miles of ocean Melanie types on her male computer. Yet both were made in the same factory in China.
Melanie, who can't speak English very well, has no understanding of why objects shouldn't be gendered. Melissa, who can't speak French (so will let the funky music do the talking, love Girls Aloud!!!), has no grasp of why they should be.
And we do the same thing with people. Except we do it worse. 'Le' and 'La', as metaphor. Melissa did 'La Baking of La Cupcakes then went in the shed and did Le Engineering with Le Tools'. Ignore the inherent sexism, because that's irritating, in fact don't. We're conditioned to attach gender norms to particular activities through social construction. Girls get twin-sets, boys get train-sets. Whatever.
Those on the trans spectrum have it a little different. A non-trans person (woman, otherwise I have to write everything twice and my nails are bad enough already) does a 'Le' thing. I don't know what, something really 'Le'. That doesn't, in the eyes of anyone else, make her less of a woman. She's just doing what society has reserved as male. Essentially we can't reduce that; she may be viewed as expressing a male behaviour, but no-one can say she's doing that because she's actually a man. Or used to be.
The danger we have is the second stage of reduction, in that a trans-woman does a 'Le' thing and it's seen as an expression (externally) of the man she used to be. Or in many cases never was. I'd like to offer a solution - except I think it's something that's pushed deep within us. The only way round it is to stop focussing so much on gendering activities and things. Which would be beneficial to society, women, everyone really. The way out of this is greater sexual and gender equality - I dream of the day when girls and boys do whatever they like without the fear of being labelled as sissies or tomboys or whatever. By extension that sort of functional feminism is important to trans people. It'll be the thing that stops the reduction I mentioned earlier.
However it's part of our conditioning, and I have done it myself. Sorry! But I just have. People do it, I suppose, less with me as my interests are somewhat stereotypically feminine and in some ways I do alter my behaviour to emphasise that. For instance I'm far less likely to be misgendered if my afternoon consists of coffee with girlfriends than if it's, I don't know, going to something that men like. Errm, steam trains? They seem to love steam trains. I digress.
Essentially we need to stop speaking French and start speaking English when it comes to our activities. 'The' is a lovely word. :)
As for myself..... Hmmm. ;) I have a past, a present (sort of a hiatus) and a future as the true me. Yet. What about the past and how to think of myself. I've managed to think in almost gender neutral terms of what happened in those scant years, dappled by long waned moons and tied together with unspooled cassette tape # Nineties Baby!!!
I think of myself, back then, as a number of semi-fictional constructs used by Melissa in order to serve her needs at the time. They weren't strong, well liked or even particularly convincing. Instead they were little white lies she told in order to keep going.
It's like: Ellen Ripley kills some aliens. Did Sigourney Weaver kill any aliens? No, it was a fiction. But only a semi-fiction for Sigourney because she was actually there. She has the real memory of going on set, in character, and possibly even believing she was holding a real, working ray-gun. It's worse with obsessive-level characters. I've heard a radio interview with Nichelle Nichols that sort of summed this up. She played Uhura in Star Trek (never seen it really) and was famous for, amongst other things, the first televised inter-racial kiss. The interviewer asked her how it felt to kiss William Shatner. Her response was: "I didn't kiss Will, Uhura kissed Captain Kirk". I don't have any interest in Star Trek, but something in her response struck a chord. I'd find out why years later.
What Nichelle did, nicely, was to touch on the weird interface of an event being a fiction and a reality at the same time. It happened, their mouths physically touched, yet the emotion that drove it came from the make-believe realm.
Which kind of sums up how I used to be. Uhura lives in the minds of many, as does my male presentation. Fewer people have met Nichelle, but she's the truth of the situation. She can make Uhura do things, same as I can make him do things, but she isn't Uhura in the same way I'm not him. The two identities exist concurrently. I just can't wait to hang up my suit jacket for the last time. I guess in the same way she was happy to slip out of sixties high-camp nylon!!
I sometimes misgender my self. It's a rare occasion despite the fact that I am not out at work.
I think that most cases that I do is when I think of people I'm not out to (Coworkers) referring to me. I attributed that to the fact that I have never been referred to as she with them. So I think most of the time we refer to ourselves with the wrong pronoun we are actually just trying to break a old habit.
I think it is easy to misgender other trans people. Especially if you know a bunch of people that belong to different trans identities. I have even misgendered cis people who look like your regular cis person. It doesn't mean that I think of them in as that gender it just means that I am around so many trans people that it's bound to happen..... For awhile I used they for every one just so no ones would get offended. Then I realized that it might be offensive to non binary people so I stopped.