Quote from: Battle Goddess on February 20, 2019, 03:19:59 PM
I usually pick up a cup of coffee on the way to my tdoc.... There's one nice young fellow at the window who sort of flirts with me. 

Quote from: Ryuichi13 on February 20, 2019, 06:04:53 PM
OOH!  I say, GO FOR IT!  Flirt back!  It'll help build your confidence!  Plus, its fun to be considered desirable, isn't it? 

Ryuichi

Quote from: Battle Goddess on February 20, 2019, 08:25:32 PM
You kidding? At this point I'll take p much anything I can get!

Today he called me by my chosen name when I picked up my coffee! Squee!



He knows my name because I use an app to pay at the drive-thru, and I have changed the name field in the thing to reflect my chosen name, and it shows one's name next to the bar code you pay with. I thanked him for using my name, and he says he knows a few other trans gals and does the same for them.

Unfortunately, when he had taken my order earlier in line, he called me "Sir." As in "Thank you, Sir."

Bummer.



It's not like he was yanking my chain or anything. He could only hear my voice when I placed my order, and as I've mentioned in other posts, my everyday voice is a deep baritone. Nothing femme about it. He was taking a guess as to my gender, and from a typical perspective it was a pretty easy guess, and he got it wrong, but he sure did make a nice recovery! This gal drove away with one big-ass sloppy grin on her face!





But why did he have to call me "Sir" in the first place?

Why was it necessary to drag gender into the conversation at all?

For pity's sake, I'm just ordering a cup of coffee. A simple "Thank you, please drive around," would have sufficed. "$2.93 (it's one of those fancy places), see you at the window," would have done as well, no?

Yet there's simply no way I can fault him, for I think I would have done the same as he.


I grew up in the USA, and I was raised in a tradition where it simply does not do not to say "Sir" or "Ma'am." In fact, it is grossly impolite not to use them except in cases where one is on familiar terms with the other person. A parallel might be in European languages such as German's "Sie" or Italian's "Lei." "Sir" and "Ma'am" are just a part of the lubricant that greases the wheels of social interaction. They are both a token of respect and a holding at arm's length, a signal that one expects no great emotional interaction with this other person and that they may relax their guard. In this context, it's actually not a bad thing.

For me, "Sir" and "Ma'am" are utterly reflexive, absolutely expected, clearly helpful, and obviously unnecessary because there's absolutely no need to drag gender into simply ordering a freaking cup of coffee.

But I'm dying to be called "Ma'am." I actually crave having gender dragged into the conversation. All I want is for people to somehow guess right.



One last thought: I recently attended an evening event for tech-savvy professionals. There were about fifty of us. The facilitator asked us to go around the room introducing ourselves and to add our chosen pronouns if we so wished.

Great. All I need is social pressure to out myself. "But you can still use masculine pronouns if you want," I can hear the facilitator retorting in my head.  Uh-huh. So I, who am grappling both with dysphoria and with accepting myself being more and more femme in public, should be pressured into choosing between pronouns that make me sad and pronouns that I'm not comfortable using professionally yet?


What if you hadn't forced the issue?


What if you hadn't dragged gender into the conversation at all?


In the first place, even though English is a gendered language, it's only third-person pronouns (he/she/it) that are gendered. I planned to be using first-person (I) and second-person (you) pronouns with these folks. Gendered pronouns weren't very relevant at that meeting.

In the second place, my gender is my own business, and pressuring me to declare it publicly is inappropriate. I'll reveal it when I want to, and not before. The facilitator may claim that they're "creating a safe space for gender expression," but I didn't feel very safe at all.

In the third place, "What pressure?" Oh, yeah? If everybody does it but me? That pressure.


So many dilemmas, folks, so many horns. There's no obvious need to introduce gender into public discourse, yet it makes people happier and makes things work better, and I'm finding deep personal meaning in transitioning from publicly declaring mine male to publicly declaring it female. I want people to guess my gender, and I want them to guess right despite all obvious cues to the contrary, and I don't want to acknowledge it publicly, and I don't want to have it publicly acknowledged.


Stupid gender.

Quote from: Battle Goddess on May 26, 2019, 02:30:57 PM*snip*

One last thought: I recently attended an evening event for tech-savvy professionals. There were about fifty of us. The facilitator asked us to go around the room introducing ourselves and to add our chosen pronouns if we so wished.

Great. All I need is social pressure to out myself. "But you can still use masculine pronouns if you want," I can hear the facilitator retorting in my head.  Uh-huh. So I, who am grappling both with dysphoria and with accepting myself being more and more femme in public, should be pressured into choosing between pronouns that make me sad and pronouns that I'm not comfortable using professionally yet?


What if you hadn't forced the issue?


What if you hadn't dragged gender into the conversation at all?


In the first place, even though English is a gendered language, it's only third-person pronouns (he/she/it) that are gendered. I planned to be using first-person (I) and second-person (you) pronouns with these folks. Gendered pronouns weren't very relevant at that meeting.

In the second place, my gender is my own business, and pressuring me to declare it publicly is inappropriate. I'll reveal it when I want to, and not before. The facilitator may claim that they're "creating a safe space for gender expression," but I didn't feel very safe at all.

In the third place, "What pressure?" Oh, yeah? If everybody does it but me? That pressure.


So many dilemmas, folks, so many horns. There's no obvious need to introduce gender into public discourse, yet it makes people happier and makes things work better, and I'm finding deep personal meaning in transitioning from publicly declaring mine male to publicly declaring it female. I want people to guess my gender, and I want them to guess right despite all obvious cues to the contrary, and I don't want to acknowledge it publicly, and I don't want to have it publicly acknowledged.


Stupid gender.

What did you finally end up saying as your pronouns?

Yeah, I get it.  Sometimes gender is stupid.  Sometimes, I just want to go on without having to acknowledge it.

Ryuichi

Quote from: Ryuichi13 on May 27, 2019, 04:06:33 PM
What did you finally end up saying as your pronouns?

Finessed it.

A few people at the start of the go-around seem to have felt pressured to do the Gender Reveal, but turns out that most of us were noncompliant, so by the time we were about a third of the way through, everyone was blowing it off. Made it easy for me to not have to make any declaration one way or another.

Edit: Let us recognize that perhaps those who did the Gender Reveal actually wished to do so. However, I would also observe that it seems that group conscience pretty quickly decided that it was not a necessary part of one's introduction.

Quote from: Battle Goddess on May 28, 2019, 11:02:19 AM
Finessed it.

A few people at the start of the go-around seem to have felt pressured to do the Gender Reveal, but turns out that most of us were noncompliant, so by the time we were about a third of the way through, everyone was blowing it off. Made it easy for me to not have to make any declaration one way or another.

Edit: Let us recognize that perhaps those who did the Gender Reveal actually wished to do so. However, I would also observe that it seems that group conscience pretty quickly decided that it was not a necessary part of one's introduction.

Oh, that's good to know. 

If you don't feel like outing yourself, then you shouldn't have to.  Nor should you be forced to say what pronouns you are if you don't feel comfortable enough to do so.  Either way, its not always the thing to do.  Not everyone is ready/comfortable/etc to do so.

Ryuichi

Quote from: Battle Goddess on May 26, 2019, 02:30:57 PM
One last thought: I recently attended an evening event for tech-savvy professionals. There were about fifty of us. The facilitator asked us to go around the room introducing ourselves and to add our chosen pronouns if we so wished.

I'd desperately want to leave. Should anyone start making introductions that include "chosen pronouns" there'd be nothing I could do to prevent all of my senses from automatically going on alert for the slightest incongruences between them and appearance and demeanor. Except perhaps getting very drunk.

I believe the same goes for many others... and I definitely don't want or need the extra scrutiny.

Quote from: Battle Goddess on May 26, 2019, 02:30:57 PM
I want people to guess my gender, and I want them to guess right despite all obvious cues to the contrary, and I don't want to acknowledge it publicly, and I don't want to have it publicly acknowledged.

I feel the same...