A few times since coming out & telling people that i'm planning on transitioning i've been refered to as she but most people refer to me as he, I don't mind this as I still have a male body no matter what gender my mind/soul is but a few times people have refered to me as "he,she. . . . it"

Every time it happens my blood boils & I just want to scream "i'm not & never will be an IT!!"
I find the term "it" extremely insulting. The most regular offender is my ex girlfriend, i've let her get away with quite a few insults/snide comments because she's still very angry about me not telling her this earlier & she feels betrayed by 8yrs of dishonesty, she is making an effort to stop the snide comments & we are gradually becoming friends again but this is one thing that makes me see red.

Does anyone else get called "it" & if so does it make you as mad as me or am I just being over sensative?

I have only ever been called "it" once or twice and it was purely intended to be offensive. But the opinions of these people didn't matter to me enough for it to bother me. But the whole, "He, she... it" thing is infuriating.
He. It's simple. I'd even accept "she" if it comes from a person who doesn't know I'm trans. But I absolutely cannot and will not accept IT.

Yeah, I've been called all kinds of things. When I was first going through my transitioning it took a long time for my mom to get it right, she would still call me by male pronouns, not intentionally, just out of habit, and even after having my name changed she still occasionally called me by my birth name, I expected it, its not an easy thing to get used to, these kind of changes, so drastic and sudden for them, but it still upset me. Now from strangers out in the world, he-she, and it were very commonly used, it pissed me off, I wanted to bash their faces in, but instead put it to the back of my mind, payed them no more attention, they were jerks that had apparently more problems than I did to have to go around calling people different from them names or other such worst derogatory things. Sometimes I'd get so angry I'd have to go someplace to hide and cry it all out. Not everyone does it intentionally to hurt you, they just don't understand and know how to act towards people such as us, so naturally they're going to feel uneasy, call you by the wrong pronouns, treat you in a way opposite of that which you desire, they lack knowledge, how are they supposed to address this thing, what is it. Which brings me to titles, such as sir, maam, most people especially in the professional world feel these are necessary attachments, and when someone comes along that looks the opposite of what title they just used, there's a slight chance they could get that wrong, even with someone that's not transgender, some women get mistaken as men, and some men as women, and because of this mistake, though most of the time unintentional, can offend and hurt the person it was just said to. The way I see it, don't take it too hard and personal so long as you know in your gut that it wasn't done to you on purpose to hurt you because you are different from the norm. But obviously if terms such as "he-she" or "it" are used, it is intentional, respectful people just don't act like that towards another human being.

They call you IT to your face ? That is so rude and discriminatory.... Some people are just beyond words

I even find it hard to use pronouns for myself, each one has something painful about it

So Ill try to empathise with others, I dont expect anything at all from them...but maybe a moment comes where I will feel more comfortable with myself and start transitioning where Id like my loved ones to change certain "ways" towards me

I was called 'it' on an internet forum regularly but it didn't bother me because I felt no emotional connection to the people doing the name calling.   The fact that all the people doing this were male also helped.   I simply didn't care about their opinions as male rejection of all things female and feminine is almost a knee-jerk reaction, i.e. it was business rather than personal so to speak.   I was once very upset when in a thread at the above forum a female member joined in an attack upon me by a male member who was in an extremely bad mood and everyone was getting bashed that night(he later committed suicide).   Right from the start she had shown hostility to me calling me a 'travesti' and asking if I was a prostitute.*  Even though she was a highly disagreeable person I still felt awful when she used male pronouns regarding me in her post though.   


* She was a strange woman, she kept telling everyone how beautiful she was, and how she owned her own business which made her millions and allowed her to travel constantly and meet men in exotic places.   I thought that she was a fantasist and I scrupulously avoided her because of this and also because she had a nasty tongue.

Quote from: Princess of Cups on April 28, 2011, 04:49:21 PM
I was called 'it' on an internet forum regularly but it didn't bother me because I felt no emotional connection to the people doing the name calling.   The fact that all the people doing this were male also helped.   I simply didn't care about their opinions as male rejection of all things female and feminine is almost a knee-jerk reaction, i.e. it was business rather than personal so to speak.   I was once very upset when in a thread at the above forum a female member joined in an attack upon me by a male member who was in an extremely bad mood and everyone was getting bashed that night(he later committed suicide).   Right from the start she had shown hostility to me calling me a 'travesti' and asking if I was a prostitute.*  Even though she was a highly disagreeable person I still felt awful when she used male pronouns regarding me in her post though.   


* She was a strange woman, she kept telling everyone how beautiful she was, and how she owned her own business which made her millions and allowed her to travel constantly and meet men in exotic places.   I thought that she was a fantasist and I scrupulously avoided her because of this and also because she had a nasty tongue.

Very recognizable, also the part about that you in truth don't care about their opinions, because they - often guys guys in their twenties who talk 'gay this, gay that' and very anti-anything-that-resembles-feminity- aren't what you identify as anyway. It hurts what they say about you, but their not people you feel connected to.

I've grown to dislike and stay away from these people, enough nasties in real life ^^

When I worked for my last company one of the other companies we worked with would send a woman who happened to be trans to our workplace. This was before I came out to anyone and was still coming to terms with being trans myself. She had a job to do was always pleasant, friendly and helpful. She did her job and would be on her way. My coworkers  would call her a he-she and it but never to her face or where she could hear. It was always meant in a derogatory way. It was meant to imply that she was something less than a person. I was shocked at their intolerance. The names they called her disgusted me and always in the back on my mind was this is what they would think of me if they knew the truth. No one wanted to work with her except for my boss and I. I'm mad at myself for not having the courage to confront them and certainly would now.

I've never heard anyone use the term he-she or it as anything but as a dehumanizing term. It greatly offends me.

I grew up in the 1950s and 60s and from about the age of 5 onward people just didn't know what to make of me. If I had $1 for every time I was called "it" I would have been very wealthy! By college at age 19 I simply couldn't pass for a boy any more and was almost universally assumed to be female even in "boy clothes" so I wasn't called "it" very much though I still confused some people.

I suppose if people had started calling me "it" as an adult, I would have been upset.

I use to have a friend who would jokingly call me he-she and it.  I told her I didn't like being called that and she did it anyway.  I don't talk to her anymore.

Oh, you have no IDEA how furious I get when I hear someone calling someone else an "it." It doesn't even have to be directed towards me. I scared my friend one time by going ballistic on him when he jokingly called my flamboyantly-gay friend that. It was even worse, because he knew I was trans and he knew how much I hated the term.
But man, that is one of the few things that break me out into a rage instantly. It's scary to witness or experience, I've been told.

Jane, I feel you. Big time.
I've been called an "it" since I was in third grade. Even when I was trying so hard to be girly, I was still called an it. I nearly had the security called on my in highschool once for talking in the girls bathroom, and they all started screaming and trying to bang the door down because "There's some boy in here!"

I gave one of the women where I worked a serve when she did this.  I told her as I had a close relative who was trans, my son actually , which was a medical condition, she had been extremely offensive. She shut up.  I guess she is still trans and homophobic, but at least she keeps a civil tongue in her head.
Karen.

Part of me likes the notion of reclaiming "it" as a neutral pronoun. The other proposed gender neutral / gender ambiguous pronouns for people have an odd and forced feel to them to me.

After all, right now, the offensive part of "it" is that the word implies an object that is specifically not a person. But we all labor under the lack of gender neutral pronouns in English, which combines with default male-form nouns to form a very limiting vocabulary.

That said, I've been offended when I've been referred to as "it" also.

Never been called an "it." I was called "they" once, by someone who meant well but didn't know how to handle the pronouns...nipped that in the bud real quick. I'd rather be a "she" than an "it" or a "they" - at least "she" is a definite specified person.

Quote from: Catherine on April 28, 2011, 02:20:43 PM
They call you IT to your face ? That is so rude and discriminatory.... Some people are just beyond words

The few times i've been called "it" have been deliberate attempts to be offensive, I didn't react outwardly but my blood boiled each time.
The only person who hasn't made my blood boil is my ex girlfriend, when she does it she uses the sentence "he,she. . .it" & from the look on her face it's clear that she finds this whole experience painfull to deal with, whenever she has said this I only feel guilt at her difficulty in coming to terms with this.
Fortunately she is doing this less now so I hope she's learning to accept this now

Quote from: LifeInNeon on April 29, 2011, 07:46:57 AM
Part of me likes the notion of reclaiming "it" as a neutral pronoun. The other proposed gender neutral / gender ambiguous pronouns for people have an odd and forced feel to them to me.

After all, right now, the offensive part of "it" is that the word implies an object that is specifically not a person. But we all labor under the lack of gender neutral pronouns in English, which combines with default male-form nouns to form a very limiting vocabulary.

That said, I've been offended when I've been referred to as "it" also.

I understand your idea of reclaiming "it" as a neutral pronoun but I doubt it will ever happen due to the people using this term doing it in a blatent attempt to be offensive

I agree while I don't bezerk at begin misgendered I only get alittle frustrated if someone dose it repeatedly. begin called "It" dose piss me off because non-human inanimate objects are "it"s I am a person and it's very personally offensive begin called that.

I am more concerned with the tone and attitude behind uses of the word.  "It" has a strong correlation with negative tone, but I think in all things you try to respond with an attitude that corresponds with the other person's attitude.  If someone unashamedly "gets it wrong" with the knowledge of what they are doing, there is really no mistake that the person is being rude, but sometimes the crime/violation is less malicious, and you want to respond accordingly.  I've been to a "gender" meeting where some TSs were hasty to peg myself (a male-bodied person who sometimes happens to wear a dress) as a woman, and some of them had to be not just notified but persuaded that some of us happen to be men with no desire to pass as otherwise (and a couple of them probably think I'm in denial or "on the way over"), so prejudice can cut both ways.

If it were used as a proper, gender neutral pronoun then I would have no issue with it.  However, it would piss me off if someone were to use it as a demeaning term.