So I'm telling my colleagues about a little adventure I had over the weekend wherein I went to see Spider-Man 2 but somehow ended up in the wrong cinema and didn't realise my mistake until The Other Woman started playing. I hightailed it out of that cinema before a minute had passed and I said to my colleagues "the other people in the cinema were probably thinking, 'wow, he must really hate this movie'"...yes, I referred to myself as "he" without even realising. It was the slightly widened eyes of my colleagues that made me realise I'd slipped up, but I decided to ignore it and just continue with the story. They never made light of it but wow, I feel like a dope. If I can't gender myself properly I can hardly get cross at other people for slipping up! 

I have done the exact same thing.  I spent 35 years thinking I was uncomfortably cisgender, so the occasional "she" happens out of habit...

I have done that too Grace and my friends graciously corrected me LOL.....

It's hard to break old habits.

Totally! I often think of my life being narrated in the third person, because I'm grandiose like that. It's such a habit to think of myself as "he."

You're not the only one.

That will come with time! It happened to me a few times shortly after going full time. It's especially funny when it's around someone you recently had to remind about proper pronouns

Like my best friend a little over a year ago.. He kept misgendering me and even though it was on accident I still felt like I had to remind him (he was of course super apologetic and it was never a problem again). But then I misgendered myself once and he gave me the biggest grin with a look of "ohhhh!!!!!" Yep, I deserved that look.

A lifetime of habits.  Very understandable.

Fortunately it doesn't come up that often in English.  I'm a bit worried about slipping up in Spanish where most words referring to yourself have a different ending for men and women.  For instance, "I'm Mexican" = "Soy Mexicano/a"   So for me saying "Soy Mexicana" is going to take some getting used to.  But at the same time I really like saying it that way.   

I'm certainly glad to hear I'm not the only one to do it!

I'll just have to be more careful when I get carried away talking about myself in the third person!

Funny thing is, this thread made me realize I'd never gendered myself at all until I started gendering myself as female. I guess I was never talkative enough to call myself in third person until now. Now I'm always typing little things like, *sleepily drinks her coffee* or something. I never did that before. As far as I know, I've never slipped up doing that, but maybe I have and just didn't realize it. It's not like I can see anyone's shocked facial expressions through text.

Quote from: Ms Grace on April 28, 2014, 05:22:51 AM
I'm certainly glad to hear I'm not the only one to do it!

I'll just have to be more careful when I get carried away talking about myself in the third person!

Hah!  Just do it the way the Japanese girls do it.  Refer to yourself by your own name!
I almost outed myself at work once by almost referring to ladies at work as "the other girls" >.<

Took me a lot of effort to stop doing that...
We were used to it so its difficult to stop it...

Do you think it had anything to do with the activity you were doing? By that I mean running from the "chick" flick to the "boy" flick? Yes I know girls read comic books and love Spiderman too but you can't have too more gender opposite movies and I do think of my boy side of myself as the geekier of the two.

Ha! Well I did wonder about that. I wondered for a moment if I shouldn't stay with The Other Woman, having since seen the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes I'm glad I didn't!

I've done it a number of times myself. Especially if I'm telling a funny story or something about me when I was a kid and like I've told it so many times and have it down a certain way and will slip up and say she O_o then I'm like -facedesk-

Quote from: katiej on April 28, 2014, 02:19:20 AM
Fortunately it doesn't come up that often in English.  I'm a bit worried about slipping up in Spanish where most words referring to yourself have a different ending for men and women.  For instance, "I'm Mexican" = "Soy Mexicano/a"   So for me saying "Soy Mexicana" is going to take some getting used to.  But at the same time I really like saying it that way.   

Actually Katie, I find the gender references in Spanish much easier for me - I don't misgender myself in Spanish.  In fact, at work, where I am not yet out, I have to catch myself quite often, and have slipped and gendered myself as a girl quite a few times.   My one female colleague has no doubt noticed it. 

But I find if I am referring to myself in ironic mode in English, I screw up:  "Actually, he said to himself..."   Aaaargh, oh gawd, oh gawd.    A lobotomy is needed, urgently :-)

This just goes to show that we must be very patient with the people closest to us....even after almost 3 years FT I still refer to myself as he sometimes....and I even call myself by my old name when mumbling to myself!! LOL

It still hurts when my children or sister do it the very few times but I must remember its not because of what they see but what their use too....imagine having to call a window a door, or a nickel a quarter. Or think about how many companies change there name and it takes time to get use to that!!

It happens to me a LOT. It makes sense, no matter how you are inside, you have an entire lifetime of being referred to by the wrong pronouns and your birth name, so even when you break free of that, there's still a habit you have to break. It's not just other people who have to break that habit, but yourself, too.

Doh!

Quote from: FalseHybridPrincess on April 28, 2014, 08:46:57 AM
Took me a lot of effort to stop doing that...
We were used to it so its difficult to stop it...

Yep. Still doing this myself.

Maybe every time we do it we need to give a "get out of jail free" card to whoever misgenders us the next time.

Quote from: Julia-Madrid on April 28, 2014, 04:16:50 PM
Actually Katie, I find the gender references in Spanish much easier for me - I don't misgender myself in Spanish.  In fact, at work, where I am not yet out, I have to catch myself quite often, and have slipped and gendered myself as a girl quite a few times.   My one female colleague has no doubt noticed it. 

But I find if I am referring to myself in ironic mode in English, I screw up:  "Actually, he said to himself..."   Aaaargh, oh gawd, oh gawd.    A lobotomy is needed, urgently :-)

Julia, that's really interesting.  I wonder if it's because we don't really have the opportunity to misgender ourselves in English very often, so it just slips out more easily.  But in Spanish, we have to use those modifiers every time we talk about ourselves, so maybe it's easier to do because you get in the habit of saying it the new way.

Quote from: katiej on April 30, 2014, 10:04:51 PM
Julia, that's really interesting.  I wonder if it's because we don't really have the opportunity to misgender ourselves in English very often, so it just slips out more easily.  But in Spanish, we have to use those modifiers every time we talk about ourselves, so maybe it's easier to do because you get in the habit of saying it the new way.

Hi Katie

I think you're probably right... as you say, most adjectives and adverbs have to match your gender, so you tend to think about these more carefully...  Partly it might have to do with Spanish being my 2nd language, so in any event I have to think a little harder about what I'm going to say, compared to English for example.

xxx
J